Roll that Beautiful Bean Footage

I asked the wife to email me a picture of some of the beans we grew this year and she typed "Roll that Beautiful Bean Footage" as the subject line. I swear my wife is sucha  goober.

These beans are from the Burbee Heirloom organic line named Golden Dragon Tongue. What's interesting about them is that about seven years ago these beans were sold as a pole bean variety. I picked up about 10 packages of them because I thought they looked neat. I like growing off the wall stuff anyway. Usually I don't buy the big name packaged seeds as I prefer to go over to one of the Amish stores or order from Baker's Creek and buy their hand packaged stuff but the purple pods caught my eye.

Now the interesting part is when these beans came up only about a third of them looked like the picture and the ones that had these purple-ish veined pods did not climb like pole beans but grew as bush beans. The other two thirds from that planting that climbed and acted like pole beans had regular green pods.

And from that moment on the Small-Hold Pole bean experiment was born.

I truly do not know what happened. Maybe someone screwed up at the company or someone is lying but if these particular beans are heirloom they shouldn't have reverted back to a different variety, or so I think it works that way. Whatever the case the variety of pole beans I been growing for years now are somehow related to these bush beans. The next year I noticed these same beans being sold only this time they were clearly marked as bush beans.

Just for giggles I decided to try a package of these beans again and sure enough all of them came up as bush-type this year and all had the purple veined pods. I took a bunch to the farmers market today and handed them out and the vendors there were eating them raw and exclaiming they were delicious.

I still cannot figure out how that first batch I planted turned into pole beans though unless maybe someone mixed up some seeds. The other reason why I think there is something else going on is that inside the beans from either these pods or the pole bean green pods look exactly the same. a kinda distinctive very light tan to white bean with dark brown veins.

As bush beans go they are actually not all that prolific and kinda late developers. In fact other than for their unique coloration I doubt I would mess with them but the pole bean off shoot I got from them is a superb bean. They grow super fast, are very prolific and the pods dry wonderfully.

I still find it interesting to speculate how the mix up or cross breeding or whatever happened and since I have no clue and never will know I declared my beans their own special variety. I should package some up this year and send em out to everyone so the variety will live on.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!