to poles to support their beans. Many still think that the older open-pollinated corn varieties with their taller and stronger stalks are the best supports for climbing beans. Many gardeners maintain their stock of open-pollinated corn for beans to climb and also for grinding into cornmeal, because in many areas hybrid corn is thought to produce inferior-flavored cornmeal. A popular open-pollinated corn still sold in farm stores is the Hickory Cane (sometimes called Hickory King) or Eight Row variety.
Many growers now grow their climbing beans on trellises supported by strong posts and wires. This is especially true for those growers who grow heirloom beans for farmers’ markets, which are springing up throughout the Appalachian region. Such trellises allow for the greatest amount of sunlight on the leaves of the beans and for drip irrigation, which has greatly assisted bean growth during the dry summers of the past few years. Some gardeners also use concrete-reinforcing wire stacked two rolls high and supported by steel posts to create strong trellises. Trellises are becoming increasingly popular with growers, and climbing beans might someday be called “trellis beans” as a more accurate descriptive name.
Runner and Half-Runner Beans
I am often asked this question: “What is the difference between a half-runner and a full runner bean?” My reply is, “About ten feet.” The answer is actually more complex, since running beans have runners of many heights. The Peanut Bean, also known as the Pink Half-Runner and sometimes as the Six Week Bean, has runners about three feet long. Some growers contend that the true Peanut Bean has no runners at all, but I have never seen one that completely lacked runners.
Other beans, commonly known as “half-runners,” have runners up to at least ten feet. Full runner beans have probably never been accurately measured. I have experimented with bean posts sixteen feet tall on which the bean vines went all the way to the top and back down partway, limited only by the end of the growing season. I have also had running beans, under optimal temperature and moisture conditions, grow more than a foot per day, by actual measurement. As some people have said, “Watch out or they will run over you.” But they are not quite like kudzu.
For many years, white half-runners were the dominant bean in many areas of the mountains. This development did not escape notice by commercial seed interests and farm stores, especially those managed by co-ops, which started selling half-runner bean seeds. For many years the seeds were of fairly high quality, and many gardeners stopped saving their own half-runner seeds, assuming that the commercial seed beans would continue to be of high quality.
However, as seed production became more centralized with fewer growers growing seeds for fewer companies, half-runners were contaminated by the tough gene that had been introduced into commercial bush beans so that they would not break during mechanical harvest. As a result, gardeners are having to discard more than half of their beans because the beans are too tough to be edible. I have been told by several farmers’ market customers that they stopped buying half-runner beans when they had to throw away more than half of them.
Fortunately, there are still several heirloom half-runner varieties in isolated locations, and many gardeners have sought them out and have started saving their seeds once again. I was given some half-runner seeds by a friend a few years ago. As is true of many heirloom varieties, this bean was a three-in-one bean, having three distinct half-runner variants. I have spent the past ten years stabilizing one of the variants, which I call the NT Half-Runner (NT standing for “non-tough”). I still have the other two variants to go but hope to stabilize them as well.
One of my friends has refused to give up on the commercial half-runner and patiently removes each of the tough beans when they first come up. He says that the tough beans have a slightly different leaf structure and can be pulled up easily soon after they emerge from the soil. I hope he starts saving seeds from the beans he does not pull up; he might bring that particular half-runner back to its original form.
Greasy Beans
Greasy beans are usually thought of as being the best of Appalachian heirloom beans. The fact that they command prices far higher than commercially grown beans attests to their popularity: indeed, they bring up to seven times as much per pound as commercial bush beans, which are typically picked at a very immature stage by machine. Such commercial beans, if allowed to form even very small seeds, are usually too tough to eat.
Greasy beans, as mentioned earlier, are so named because they have slick hulls that look as if they have a thin coat of grease on them, and they are exceptionally tender and tasty. Even when they are fully mature and have turned yellow, they can be strung and broken easily. They are excellent when eaten fresh and are in high demand when made into shuck beans.
Greasy beans are not a variety of bean but a type. The many varieties of greasy beans come in many colors and many lengths: there are those only two to three inches long and others six to eight inches long. Most of the shorter ones seem to be cut-shorts, while the longer ones have wider spaces between the beans without the beans even touching. All greasy bean hulls are so thin that when held up to the sun, the beans inside are quite visible.
Cut-Shorts
When Appalachian heirloom beans are discussed, the term cut-short often causes confusion, leading many people to call them “short-cuts” instead. Others think that cut-shorts and greasy beans are one and the same, but the term cut-short simply describes what has happened in the hull as the bean grows: the beans grow large in proportion to the hull and tend to square off on the ends.
As cut-shorts dry on the vine prior to being saved for seed, another interesting thing sometimes occurs. After becoming partially dry on the vines, if a sprinkle of rain comes (or even just a heavy dew), the beans can swell up and break the hull open. Because of this, some traditional growers call cut-short beans “bust-out” beans instead. Whenever someone asks me if I know about bust-out beans, I know they are talking about cut-shorts.
Fall Beans or October Beans
The terms fall beans and October beans are typically used interchangeably. I will use fall beans in this discussion.
To ensure a full complement of beans for eating fresh and for preserving for later use, many, if not most, traditional gardeners plant a row or two of fall beans in addition to their other cornfield beans. Fall beans are typically larger in the hulls than other beans are, and the beans are often stringless (most other heirloom cornfield beans are not stringless). Fall beans also lag some two weeks or even longer behind most other beans in maturing: this late maturity is how they came to be known as fall beans.
While the hulls of fall beans are somewhat tougher than other cornfield beans, most are usually tender enough to be eaten with the mature bean seeds just as one would eat green beans. However, if they are to be eaten fresh, most people shell them out at the “shelly” stage (before they have dried) and prepare them as soup beans. Since the advent of refrigeration, many people also freeze them and put them in airtight containers for eating later.
Other fall bean enthusiasts allow their beans to dry on the vine and then shell them out as dry beans to be eaten in much the same way as one would eat pinto beans, cranberry beans, or commercial horticultural beans. Of course, it is best to rehydrate them by soaking them in water for several hours before cooking them. The advantage of eating or freezing them at the shelly stage is that then they do not have to be rehydrated. In addition, most growers
