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Members of the non-profit Seed Savers' Exchange (http://seedsavers.org/) maintain more than 2,500 different varieties of Phaseolus vulgaris, or haricot (from the Aztec) beans. What all these beans have in common are trifoliate compound leaves, bilaterally symmetrical, somewhat showy, flowers, and elongate legumes (pods) that contain from three to a dozen or more usually kidney-shaped seeds. There are dwarf or bush varieties that support themselves, and trailing or climbing varieties (called pole beans) that need support and may extend 15 ft (4.6 m) or more in length. (Beans climb by twining; they do not have tendrils.) Bean flowers may be pink, red, white or yellow and the pods come in various shades and combinations of green, purple, and yellow. Wax beans are so named because their pods are the color of bee's wax, which makes them easy to see amidst the foliage, and purple-podded varieties are popular for the same reason. The beans inside the pods come in every color in the rainbow.
Location
Green beans are easy to grow and the perfect vegetable for a beginning gardener to start with. The young pods of snap beans can be picked within 45-60 days after planting. Dried beans take 90-150 days. Pole beans take longer to mature than bush beans, but they produce over a longer period. Beans, like other legumes, can make their own nitrogen, so they don't need much additional fertilizer; in fact, too much fertilizer will result in a tangle of foliage but not many pods. See Floridata's garden pea profile for an explanation of nitrogen-fixing in legumes. Light: Like most vegetable crops, green beans need full sun. Moisture: Green beans need regular garden watering to produce good crops. If the soil is allowed to dry out too much, some of the beans in the pods will not develop. Hardiness: Green beans are frost-tender annuals that are planted after the last expected frost. Beans will not germinate in soil colder than about 55ºF (10ºC), so don't waste your time or your seeds by planting too early. Propagation: Plant green beans an inch or two deep and three or four inches apart in rows three or four feet apart. Climbing varieties need a trellis or poles, and even bush varieties will do better if you stick a branch or twig in the ground for them to climb on. Another method for climbing beans is to build a teepee with bamboo or some other kind of poles and plant the beans so they can climb up the poles.
Harvest green beans for use in the pod stage before they fill out fully; this will encourage more flowering and thus more pods, and the beans are most tender at this stage. Beans will produce for about three weeks, so start successive plantings to insure a continuous harvest throughout the season. Shelly beans are harvested when the pods are fully swollen, but not yet dry. These are then shelled before cooking. For dry beans, wait until the pods begin to dry and turn brown before harvesting, then allow the pods to dry thoroughly before shelling. Dried beans require a longer cooking time than shelly beans, and they are more likely to induce flatulence.
There are four species in the genus Phaseolus that commonly are grown for food: P. vulgaris (common bean); P. lunatus (lima beans and butter beans); P. acutifolius (tepary bean); and P. coccineus (runner bean). There are more than 12,000 species in the bean family, and only the aster family and the orchid family have more species. There are about 30 species in the bean family that are commonly grown for human food, and only the grass family is more important to Mankind. Some important legumes are: peanut (Arachis hypogea); garbanzo bean or chick pea (Cicer arietinum); soybean (Glysine max); lentil (Lens culinaris); garden pea (Pisum sativum); winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus); fava or broad bean (Vicia faba); pigeon pea (Cajanus cajun); hyacinth bean (Dolichos lablab); cowpea or southern pea, including black-eyed pea, cream pea and yard-long or asparagus bean (Vigna unguiculata); mung bean (V. radiata); adzuki bean (V. angularis); and jicama (Pachyrhizus erosus), which is grown for its edible root. Steve Christman 6/16/00; updated 8/16/03, 1/20/05
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