"Vegetables of Interest"

Masai Snap Beans

Masai Snap Beans

(Phaseolus vulgaris v. Masai)

There are few more sacred beliefs amongst seed collectors than the notion that heirloom vegetables are manifestly superior to ‘modern vegetables.’  There is, of course, ample evidence to support that proposition and it is as close as the nearest grocery store.  Still, the assumed superiority of plant varieties selected fifty years ago vs. those from 20 or 2 years ago seems arbitrary without closer examination.  And while I consider myself an “heirloom man” by nature I’m also on board with Mark Twain when he quipped that “All generalizations are false, including this one.”

For some years I’ve grown haricot vert (aka ‘French/filet) beans with an open mind towards the ‘moderns.’  My wayward journey away from heirlooms can be traced back to Triumph de Farcy, an older (heirloom?) French bean that is widely recommend by French growers and chefs.  In my garden, however, Farcy was more fussy than fine.  The work necessary to find only the slender & tender pods required the timing of a stopwatch and the working conditions of a slave.  Since that experience I’ve been sure to include a new modern hericot vert bean in my garden plan each season.  Happily, the French are always up to something bean-wise and this year’s bean throw down featured the modern “Masai” snap bean.

I am unable to find any meaningful information about the background of the Masai bean other than it comes from an agribusiness giant which doesn’t reveal much about how they create new plant varieties.   I can report that it readily pops out of the ground in 6-7 days with the vigor one might expect from a hybrid bean.  The foliage is adequate but not lush.  The plants are upright and appear to hold the pods well above the ground  which is a good feature to prevent the consequences of pods-on-soil.  The plants freely bloomed despite a short period of shock after a sweltering heat wave and I’m picking the first crop of pods about 2.5 weeks post bloom.  The pods are green, of course, but not glossy.  The tips are slightly curved but none are ‘hooked.’  The pods can be detached from the plant easily (low ‘PDF’ or “pod detachment force” in the parlance of bean breeders) and I’ve broken few pods despite my casual approach to picking.

The attached picture shows a small early harvest of Masai beans.  For the technophiles out there I recommend picking haricot vert beans at a diameter of about 5mm which corresponds to the bean industry’s sieve scale at the high end  of  “Sieve 1”.  Commercial bean production sorts beans by diameter and length.  The Sieve scale parses beans by diameter using a scale of 1-7 with the larger numbers corresponding to fatter beans.   Commercial growers aim for the fresh bean market with beans at Sieve 4 diameter or  about 22/64th of an inch (8 ¾ mm). 

The harvest diameter of a snap bean is a compromise between a more tender (thinner) bean vs. a greater yielding (fatter) bean.  In addition to the tender vs. tough consideration is shelf life.  Snap beans loose their ‘snap’ and become limp as they loose 5% or more their weight.  Beans picked when very thin are prone to dehydration and consequently have much shorter ‘shelf lives’.  Some commercial bean varieties attempt to skirt this issue by breeding more fiber into the pods but the consumer is dealt a cruel surprise in the form of a slender, tough bean.

As noted above I pick my beans at about 5mm in diameter which is so thin that many commercial processors would discard them as a ‘cull.’ Even more fanatical, however, are some chefs who insist on beans little bigger than a comma.  Personally I find that 5mm provides all the tenderness and yield that I desire.  Shelf life?  It’s about 10 minutes from garden-to-plate at my house.  That’s plenty of time.

These Masai beans were organically grown in my garden in the Valley of the Moon.

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2008

“Slenderette Beans”

“Slenderette Beans”   

(Phaseolus vulgaris)

Slenderette beans are not an heirloom bean.  They were developed by Stavely and Joseph Steinke of Rutgers University in the 1980s as part of a project to enhance resistance to a common fungal parasite called “bean rust.”

Slenderette has a complex lineage but it includes some wild beans from South America which have broad resistance to many of the 55 races of rust infestations endemic in the United States. 

Slenderette is a dwarf plant which is strikingly productive.  The pods are nearly hairless which give them a deep glossy appearance.  The flavor is good.

These beans were grown organically in my garden next to a patch of heirloom zinnias.  They didn’t seem to mind.

Tarbais Beans

Tarbais Beans
(Phageolus vulgaris)



The Tarbais Bean is a gastronomic glory from France.  And like other things French it carries a long story accented by secrets, tragedy and a not-inconsiderable reluctance to share.

Tarbais Beans were introduced to France by the Bishop of Tarbes in the 15th Century. He championed the bean in his own garden and urged its production on local farmland.  Over time Tarbais wound themselves into French cuisine finding their ultimate place in cassoulet.  Tarbais have a distinctive rich flavor with a flour-like mouth feel.

Tarbais production in present-day France is tightly regulated.  Only members of a small, closed cooperative in Tarbais are allowed to grow  beans as "Tarbais" and a single strain, Alaric, is used to produced the coveted “Red Label”  designation that denotes a unique and true product.   Tarbais beans cannot be cultivated or harvested by machine.  Unlike most domesticated major bean varities there is not a dwarf form.  True Tarbais grow on tall trellises or on corn as suggested by one of its ancient names "Hericot mais."  Thus tarbais farming is not a casual project.

Seed source:  private collector, France.

These beans were organically grown in my garden in 2007

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest

Leather Britches Beans

Leather Britches Beans

(Phageolus vulgaris)

Leather Britches Beans or 'shucky beans' refers to an antique
technique of preserving beans that was closely associated with the
American South and particularly the Appalachian region.  Prior to the
widespread use of freezing or canning beans were preserved by
stringing them on a length of thin twine and then air-drying them over
several weeks.  Beans were picked at a stage when the seeds were well
developed but the outer hull remained green.  Leather Britches beans
were re-hydrated and cooked very slowly in an excess of water
containing a wedge of bacon or ham.

The beans used to make Leather Britches were quite specialized and
have been nearly lost from circulation.  Traditionally pole-type beans
were used and the favored varieties retained a tender hull at
maturity.  The hulls of today's beans all become very tough as the
bean matures.  Some gardeners will dry a commercial string bean as a
substitute for 'old time' Leather Britches beans but they risk
criticism from historians, Southern chefs and anyone who has tasted
the real thing.

By general acclaim the best heirloom bean varieties to make Leather
Britches include the Barnes Mountain Cornfield Bean, Pink Tip Greasy
Bean, Tobacco Worm Bean and the NT Half Runner Bean.  None of these
bean varieties are in commercial circulation but several hundred
heirloom beans once common in the American South have been saved from
extinction by a single collector, Bill Best.  He established the
Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center in Berea, Kentucky which now
has more than 400 varieties of beans in its collection.

These Leather Britches Beans were made from Barnes Mountain Cornfield
Beans that were organically grown on my farm in Northwest Iowa.

Seed source:  Mr. Bill Best


C Lindquist

Flageolet Beans

Flageolet Beans
(Chevrier Flageolet Beans)

(Phageolus vulgaris)

From our birth America has had a long-distance affair with things French.  Thomas Jefferson loved wines from Bordeaux.  Ben Franklin loved several French women.  Franklin Roosevelt loved Noilly Prat Vermouth.  And George W. is said to be ‘fond’ of something he calls “fries.”  As the French food writer Brillat-Savarin said, “Show me what you eat and I’ll show you what you are.”

For me, it’s beans.  French beans, of course (That’s not to mention white Burgundy, champagne, cheese and Calvados).  Many hundreds of bean varieties have appeared since the beans were first brought from South America to Europe in the 16th century.  But it is in France where the bean was given its due as something delicate, fresh and colorful.  It is the French who were amongst the first to develop the bean for the plate rather than the animal pail.

The Flageolet bean had its beginnings in France in the early 1800s.  The French were making refinements in dwarf bean types that had first appeared in England.  These early Flageolets were red, white or black but their tastes were described as similar.  In 1878, however, a farmer near Paris named Gabriel Chevrier introduced something entirely new.  His  bean was light green in color with a smallish squared shape.  And most importantly the Chevrier bean had a wonderful light, fresh taste.  It was an immediate sensation with fine French chefs.

Today the Flageolet bean remains a ‘classic’ in a number of French dishes and it is considered a bean of “refinement.”  The original Chevrier bean, however, has largely been replaced by ‘improvements’ such as Flavert, Soissons Vert and Triomphe des Chasiss.  In America any flageolet bean is difficult to find and the most common strain is the oddly named “Flagrano.”  These new introductions have disease resistance that Chevrier lacks and they tend not to display Chevrier’s tiresome habit of falling over.  Still, a few gardeners with supple spines and a sanguine outlook about occasional crop failures have kept the original Chevrier Vert in private circulation.

I have grown both Flagrano and the Chevrier Flageolet bean.  Neither seemed particularly keen to grow or produce well in my Northern California garden.  My guess is that they would prefer a cooler summer climate, better soil and more water.  So would I.

Flageolet beans are typically used as a dry bean but for a short time in August they can be found in France as a “semi-dry” or “shelly bean.”  I’ve read that the old time French farming technique to produce them is to pull up the entire bean plant when the pods are filled.  When the pods are slightly wrinkled they are ready to be shelled.  The technique sounds credible since it is the same used in Appalachia to made “shucky beans.”

The size of my 2007 Flageolet harvest was so-so.  The flavor and texture, however, were anything but.  They are tender, slightly sweet and have a fresh flavor that is akin to a baby Lima bean.  Merci, Monsier Chevrier!

These Chevrier Flageot beans were organically grown in my garden in the Valley of the Moon, Sonoma County, California.

Seed Source:  Private Collection, Paris, France.

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2007

Polecat Peas

(AKA  "Calico Crowder" and "Hereford Peas")

Vigna unguiculata

Polecat Peas are an American heirloom cowpea that can be traced back to the early 1800s.  Polecats are believed to have been brought to America by African slaves in the 18th century.  Their cultivation and use by white Americans spread across the South quickly.   By the time of the Civil War Confederate troops were dependent upon dried cowpeas as a staple.

The Polecat Pea is an aggressive climbing plant.  In my garden they have scaled nine-foot sunflowers and are still reaching for height.  In the South Polecats were often planted alongside tall flint corn to provide a natural trellis.  The long pods can be eaten green and are considered to be a fine-tasting cowpea.  Polecats can also be dried.  The seeds are small, cream-colored with a small beige eye.  The close packing of the pods with seeds is characteristic and is shared with other cowpeas that are called "Crowders."

Pre-Civil War varieties of cowpeas such as the Polecat are rare outside of a few Southern gardens and organizations such as Seed Savers.   New varieties have been selected for disease resistance, large pea size and for dwarfism.  It seems that "taste" along with the Confederacy lost the war.

These Polecat Peas were grown organically in my garden in the Valley of the Moon.

C Lindquist

Tavera Beans

"Tavera" French Filet Beans
(Phaseolus vulgaris)

The French cannot resist tinkering with filet beans and no one does it better.  This introduces "Tavera", a new filet type that is making the rounds in Parisian markets.

Tavera is a "tres fin" type meaning it is very slender and quite straight.  It has enormous yields and reportedly it is resistant to the typical pests and plagues.  Tavera is not, however, without its demands upon the gardener.  Like other filet beans it needs to be picked frequently and it likes to be watered "just so."  After all it is French.

Despite its modern and commercial origins this is one bean with much to recommend it.  I've grown several heirloom filets and I find Tavera to be their equal in taste and texture if properly grown. The qualifying phrase "if properly grown" is its own tale.  Very few filet beans are properly grown and harvested.  The perfect stage for harvesting a filet bean is a narrow window of time, perhaps only a day or two in the heat of summer.  Vigilance, a sharp eye and lots of handwork are needed to gather a basket of perfect filet beans.

My experience with Tavera is only one season deep.  After my crop of heirloom Fin de Bagnol filet beans sucummed to a late frost I vowed to "modernize" my last twenty feet of beans.  So I committed heirloom heresy and planted Tavera.  It's a keeper.

These Tavera filet beans were grown organically in my garden in the Valley of the Moon.

C Lindquist

Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans

Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans

(Phaseolus vulgaris)

Wading into the history of beans is tricky business.  There are several thousand named varieties and most of the older ones have multiple names depending upon where they have been grown.   Botanically speaking these multi-named strains are often landraces but for the casual gardener it presents a confusing picture indeed.  The fun solution to these confusions is to kick back and enjoy the story while carrying a few extra names.   And in the case of Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans the story is a good one:

The history of the Cherokee people in America is one of repeated and egregious betrayals on the part of the American government.   The penultimate insult was the forced depopulation of the Cherokee from the Carolinas to a site near Oklahoma City during the winter of 1838.  Estimates vary but hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the Cherokee died from exposure along the way.   The Cherokee named this fateful and tragic journey the "Trail of Tears" and  a rich lore of stories and customs honoring that experience remain to this day.  One such story is that of a black bean grown by the Cherokee in the Carolinas which had no name other than "bean."  It  was carried by the Cherokee along their journey as a source of food and a token of hope.  Once in Okalahoma it was re-named the "Trail of Tears Bean" and has been maintained by the Cherokee since that time.

In recent years the Wychee family who are direct descendants of Cherokee who made the trip in 1838 have made the selection available to collectors.   It has begun to make appearances in some heirloom seed catalogs but its vining habit will likely prevent it from ever reaching commercial production.

Trail of Tears is a vigorous  handsome plant, productive of many pods that are very tasty as a fresh bean.   As it matures the pods develop red and violot markings that turn into a deep violet by fall.  The dried bean is small, black and flavorful.  It is a wonderful foil to meats, particularly bacon and pork.  It is not as sweet nor soft as other heirloom American beans such as the cranberry types but it is a fine culinary bean with a rich history.

These beans were grown organically in my garden in the Valley of the Moon during the 2005 season.  They were cured and dried in their pods until shelling.

Mereville di Piemont (Wonder of Piedmont) Bean

Mereville di Piemont (Wonder of

Piedmont

) Bean

(Phaseolus vulgaris)

It is said that the world is divided into people who lump and people who split.    Perhaps the biggest splitter of all times was my fellow Swede Carl Linnaeus.  In the 1700s he took liberties with Latin and carved up the plant world into orders, genera and species.  When he encountered the bean clan, however, he seems to have lost interest in splitting and joined the lumpers.  He poured all

New World

beans into a single stock pot and gave them the inelegant name “Phaseolus vulgaris”.  Perhaps he hoped that future plantsmen and plantswomen would sort out this large and diverse group but, alas, we have made a muck of it. 

Even in Linnaeus’ time

New World

beans were known to have many different habits and appearances.  They were also known to have come from several points in

South America

.  Today we know from comparative molecular studies and archeological work that at least six distinct strains of wild

South America

beans were the founding plants for all

New World

beans.  Human selection and cultivation by native farmers created the stable landraces which were carried back to

Europe

in the 1500s.  These strains of beans were crossed and re-crossed countless times as bean agriculture ascended to an important food source in the European diet.

Today we enjoy the genetic inheritance of hundreds of

New World

bean varieties and more appear each year.   But our scientific nomenclature doesn’t help us break down this large and diverse group into manageable or consistent subgroups.  We also labor under an unusually large number of overlapping names for the same bean.  This situation makes bean scholarship a touch tiresome and bean picking almost exciting.

The story of Mereville di Piemont beans illustrate some of these points:  Mereville is a very old

New World

bean that is scientifically classified as one of many “ Phaseolus vulgaris.”  If you dig deeper into its many descriptions you will encounter terms that sort it into non-Linnaean groupings.  For example you will find it described as “wax,” “pole,” “French horticulture,” “Roma” and so forth.  These terms are common in gardening literature but they are more lingo than scientific.  Another difficulty is that Mereville has at least three different names depending upon whether you are Italian, French or English.  And if you thirst for even more trouble you’ll find that some sources claim that Mereville is identical to another old bean called “Dragon’s Tongue” which has more than sixteen synonyms in gardening literature.

All of these stories and names converge in agreement to describe a flat bean having a cream-colored or pale yellow background with playful purple striping resembling a tongue or a lick of fire.   The purple highlights vanish as they are cooked which is a characteristic of the purple-colored anthrocyanin compounds in many vegetables.  Mereville is a very old bean with a long history of cultivation in

Italy

. 

Italy

may not be its country of origin however.  Some say

France

while others claim the

Netherlands

.  Still, it is in Italy that Mereville has worked its way into culinary lore as a lovely, flavorful and tender bean that isn’t quite as “meaty” as many Roma varieties. 

Whoops!  )&(**)_)  Did I say “Roma?”  Where is Linnaeus when we need him? 

These Mereville di Piemont beans were grown organically in my garden in the Valley of the Moon.

Seed Source: 

Sementi

,

Italy

C Lindquist

Beurre de Roquencour Beans

(Phageolus vulgaris)

Beurre de Roquencour beans are an heirloom wax bean that came out of France around 1860.  Its origins beyond that are unclear.  Because it is a stringless bean, however, it may have some ancestry to beans developed by a New York plantsman, Calvin Keeney.  But the dating of Keeney's beans and stringless French beans make it unclear of who begat whom.

The term "wax bean" is a New England colloquialism for "yellow beans" that has become widely adopted in the seed trade in America.  A second inference of the term is that the beans are straight and thin.

Beurre de Roquencour beans are a semi-bush variety.  French growers in the 1800s developed many bush varieties from pole beans.    There was a strong interest in such beans since they could be grown in a glass house environment.  Many wealthy estates had these early "green houses" which supplied the owners which fresh vegetables over an extended season.

Now considered an heirloom, Beurre de Roquencour are principally grown by home gardeners in France.  Their lack of disease resistance and habit of slow-paced pod development make them unattractive candidates for commercial use.  But commerce's loss is our gain.  This French classic turns out loads of beautiful beans with remarkable tenderness and flavor.  Their flowers are also amongst the most attractive of bean flowers that I've seen.

An ideal method of preparation is to boil full-length beans in a large excess of water.  Then nap the beans with a restrained quantity of melted high quality butter seasoned with finely cut fresh herbs.  Dill or tarragon makes for a memorable presentation.  Add crushed finishing sea salt to taste.  It couldn't be simpler.  Nor better.

These beans were grown organically in my garden in the Valley of the Moon.

C Lindquist