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~ FRENCH BEAN Seed: POLE BEANS~ We eat a lot of french beans, so this section is one we work hard on. We've managed to add several new beans to the Collection this year, and we had fun trying to find a whole range of different colours. Incidentally, we found that these make a great decorative feature if grown all together, and its a fun project for younger members of the family. As always, here are the most productive & tastiest beans we have been able to find. We hope you will enjoy them too! When to sow beans? For the earliest production, sow bush varieties. Climbing varieties take a little longer to start producing, but will then carry on over a much longer season, giving a higher yield overall. We always sow a row of bush beans to start us off, then a big bed of climbers to last us right through the summer. If you prefer to only grow bush beans, then we would recommend making two or three sowings at three week intervals. 'Cherokee Trail of Tears' Pole Bean Simply the best bean there is. This bean was originally from the North American Cherokee Indians who took it with them when they were driven out of their homelands on their 'Trail of Tears'. We can see why the Cherokees wanted to keep it! It is incredibly prolific, cropping over a long season. We plant lots each year for our own use & feedback from all of you is always positive. Early Pole Snap/Dry. Tall, purple flowers, rounded green/ red pods. Black seed. Order BnCT - 70 seeds £1.75 Feedback: "I have just started to harvest these, grown for the first time this season. I have been allotmenting for twenty-five years and have never been so delighted with a variety new to me. They are delicious and tender at any size from 2 inches to 7.(Sorry, I can't do metric automatically.)Some of them do need stringing, not predictably always the largest, but since you can tell as soon as you top & tail them, where's the problem? I've been handing them out to eat raw like sweets to my neighbours, all of whom have expressed interest in growing them next year. Thank you for introducing me to them. Please carry on the good work." Morene Griggs 'Cosse Violette' Purple Pole Bean This is a new bean we are offering as our preferred purple climber. The tender purple pods are rather long & some are patched with green among the purple. It is also particularly tasty, and nice to eat raw even when large. Other than that it is very early and productive, being completely covered with long crunchy purple pods! (NB the purple colour turns to green on cooking.) Purple pods. Early Pole Snap. Tall, purple flowers, rounded purple pods. Order BnVI - 80 Seeds £1.65 'Coco Sophie' Flat-Podded Pole Bean This is a really great bean, which was by far the best in our trials of new beans last year. Its a tall climbing bean - with very flat pods. No, it's not a runner bean - it really is a French Bean (which we much prefer, and find easier to grow) that is just very wide and flat. The reason that it is really great though, is not the shape of the pods, or the fact that they're stringless, but because the pods have a unique & wonderful buttery texture when cooked. All gone! No more now until 2009, sorry. 'Monastic Coco' Pole Bean - WEB SPECIAL A climbing french bean strain traditionally grown in Abbey gardens in the UK. There is a long tradition of the abbeys growing a lot of their own food, and exchanging seeds between each other. This bean has been grown at several abbeys for many years, and this strain was originally from West Malling Abbey in Kent. The seed we are offering here was kindly grown for us at the Abbey of St Cecilia in the Isle of Wight - we'll leave the description to Sister Anslema: "One of the star attractions is that it never seems to go stringy even towards the end of the season, even under drought conditions. In fact we have found that when watering had totally stopped - thinking it was the end of the season( beginning of October), then beans still kept being produced. The taste is most agreeable; they make a chubby 5” or more bean. Thickish but flat. Wonderful for seeds and cooking. " We swapped the beans for all sorts of other seeds to grow in the abbey gardens. Just 60 packets available this year. Order BnMC - small pack of 30 very rare seeds £1.80 ~ BUSH BEAN Seed~ We have added a few new ones - chosen from our trials this summer . As always, we try out lots, but offer only the best! 'Minidor' Yellow Bush Bean This is a nice productive bush wax bean. It bears from early to midseason, and makes large numbers of medium-sized bright yellow pods. When cooked they have a smooth buttery taste . We particularly like this one cooked, rather than raw. (If you want a bean that is particularly good raw, then try the Cupidon.) Bush Snap with straight round yellow pods. (i.e. a normal wax-podded type) Order BnMI - 200 seeds £1.59 . 'Cupidon' Filet Bush Bean This was one of our best discoveries last year. It's a wonderful bush bean that produces a huge number of tender dark green pods all summer, starting early, and continuing cropping well after the others have finished. It has a particularly good flavour used raw in salads. This is actually a dual-purpose bean -the pods are a filet type so if you like it can be picked very small and eaten that way. (Filet beans are the ones with long straight slender pods that are very pointy at the end, traditionally a gourmet dish: picked young, lightly steamed and served with butter.) But the beans also stay completely stringless as it gets to full size and it makes a fantastic normal French bean. This one's flavour is particularly good! Green pods. Early/Maincrop Bush , long cropping. Order BnCU - 150 seeds £1.69   ~ Saving Bean Seed ~ The physical seed-saving is easy, but the need for isolation (to keep the seed true to type) depends on the species: French Beans don't usually cross with each other, so you can save seed from several varieties without worry. Runner Beans DO cross very easily, so only grow one type if you want to keep the seed. Broad Beans also cross A LOT and are hard to keep for seed as you need to isolate them from others with 1/2 a mile or so. Also, be sure that you don't plant types with similar-coloured seeds next to each other, otherwise you'll not be sure which plant they come from! More detailed seed-saving instructions are included with your seeds, so you can do all this yourself at home.