Jade, Blue Lake, Kentucky Wonder

As many of you will already know, the thread title are varieties of Green beans.

Green beans are one of the staples in home vegetable gardens because they are pretty easy to grow and withstand many different climate changes during their growing season.

I wanted to share with you the 3 types I grew this year and their overall results imo.


#1 Jade (Bush Variety)


Long slender, sweet and crisp, these are year after year our favorite tasting bean.
First to flower and to give early beans that we eat fresh raw, and then can the young tender pods to make the special green beans for the holidays and special occasions.

If you grow these on hills, mulch very well, they will continue giving the best of their beans all season long well into the early fall. They love a good boost of compost at the beginning but carry their own after that. We get our seeds from the local Mennonite community.


Zones: 3 - 9 annual
Height: 15-22 inches
Shade Requirement: Full sun
Germination: 6-10 days

#2. Blue Lake (Pole Bean, Climbing Variety)


We love Blue Lake Pole beans with their small little light colored seeds and tender sweet flavor, eaten raw, canned or blanched and frozen, a marvelous and trustworthy bean. We trellis ours between fence posts that we place bamboo across and then string for them to grow up. Really beautiful flowers that are sweet smelling and just lovely at every stage of life.

Days to Maturity: 60 days
Sun: Full Sun
Height: 6-9 feet
Spread: 18 inches
Thinning: 6 inches
Sowing Method: Direct Sow
Fruit Size: 6 inches

Kentucky Wonder (Pole Bean)


If you are looking for a bean that gets huge yields, this is the one for your garden. Now this is a string variety which means more work before canning but these are so delicious when canned pulling the strings are worth it.
These pole beans will continue giving fruit until well into late fall if you keep picking. This was your Great Grandmas variety and still one of the most popular among home gardeners today.

Height: 5 -7 feet.
Bloom Time/Days To Maturity: 67
Zone: 3 - 9 annual
Sun/Shade: Full sun.

Well, that's about it for now, I will try and get a few pictures of the garden and the canned veggies if you are interested. One more thing, although I can the different varieties separately, I LOVE the combination of all three together... butter, salt and pepper...Ummmm!

Opps I didn't do such a good job on that OP, sorry, and it may need to go to the food and cooking or even survival forum... OK back to canning the beans. (just wanted to take a coffee break and enjoy telling you about the different varieties.)

Anyone else having a bumper crop this year? What are your favorite beans to grow? Pictures?

reply to post by antar


I really wish I could grow those varieties. I grow snake beans down here. This is a small one. The pod gets a couple feet in length real quick so I have to be active when picking, but I only let them get that long for drying out the beans.

reply to post by Hollie


Beautiful, I tried to grow something like that a few years ago but let the grasses take over, but I do want to try them again. One pod could feed a family!

reply to post by antar


Well, it's funny about one pod feeding the whole family. These beans don't utilize all that space in that big long pod which is a shame. The beans grow about an inch or more apart inside that long pod. So you get about the same amount of beans as you would with common varieties. But the amount of pods you get on one vine makes up for the lost space

As well, once that pod gets to be over 6" to 8" inches in length, the pod is stringy, or fibery and hardly edible. Plus they make for great eye candy Here is a harvest. These beans at this size are not edible at this stage. And the bean inside is not fully grown. I picked them about 3 days too late for saute, and about a week too early for dried beans.



And here are the gorgeous flowers. I learned that when beans have a purple flower, the beans will be black. Who knew! I might have some seeds laying around here for trade.