beans??

Hi John, you can use any bean you grow for drying. What kind of bean are you looking for, a certain colour or size? Black, brown...tell us more

I usually grow several types of beans and dry and use any one I fancy though my favourite is Cosse Violette for eating fresh, I also dry these and use in chillies, casseroles etc. here's a good thread here with recipes for dry beans - often given you the variety of the bean.
http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...ans_26962.html

There's loads of beans to try in the VSP, why not swap something and try a few varieties?

A very good climbing variety from Mr Fothergill is Coco Blanc a Rames. It's a real French French bean that makes lots of nice chunky white beans for drying, but can also be used as shelly beans, and has delicious stringless flat pods that you can eat as green beans. When I grew it I let the earlier pods ripen and dry, and ate the later pods that wouldn't ripen in time as green beans.

I do the opposite. I find if you leave the early pods to ripen, the plants slow right down and stops producing very early in the season. So I plant them very close together, eating the early beans as fresh greens then let the later ones dry for shelling.

I know that's what people say, Scarlet, but those didn't seem to slow down. I wanted them mainly for seed saving anyway so I didn't harvest any early as pods, but there were plenty of new green pods higher up that weren't going to ripen before the frost, so I ate them.

Any of the Borlotto varieties are great for drying. They make very pretty beans with maroon streaks on a light background. Mr F has a climbing Borlotto and a dwarf one, plus a climbing bean called Jimenez that looks like a Borlotto and is recommended for fresh use and drying. Suttons has a dwarf Borlotto. Thompson and Morgan have a climbing Borlotto type called Firetongue, and in their Italian Seeds collection is a dwarf one called Splendido.

Blue Lake is said to be very good for white haricot beans. It's the first climbing French bean I ever grew, many years ago when I had a garden in Lancashire, but I only used it for green beans, which were good. Mr F has Climbing Blue Lake and so does Suttons. There is also a dwarf version of Blue Lake that's stocked by Thompson and Morgan.

Another dwarf Italian drying variety In the T&M catalogue is Impero Bianco, which is described as a cannellini bean.

The two dwarf varieties of flageolet beans from Mr F, called Flagrano and Flambeau, are meant specially for shelly beans, but can be dried as haricots too. T&M have one called Flajoly.

Suttons also has dwarf bean called Yin Yang which is great for drying and has spectacular looking black and white seeds. Canadian Wonder is supposed to be the best variety for traditional red kidney beans, but I don't know who supplies it in the UK.

Butter beans can be Lima beans, which really need a hotter climate than the UK, or large white-seeded runner beans. You can actually dry and eat the seeds from any runner bean varieties, but most modern UK ones are bred for long fleshy pods with slow maturing seeds, so it's better to get one specially bred for the purpose.

Mr F and Suttons don't seem to have any of those, but D T Brown has two varieties, Czar and Spagna Bianco. If you're happy to eat coloured butter beans, like they do here in Slovakia, the old variety Painted Lady is said to be good for drying, but I don't know who stocks it. A heritage variety called Jescott's Longun makes very big and pretty dry beans, but it's not available commercially.

I'm guessing you are looking at Fothergills or Suttons as part of a larger order, but if you want some unusual varieties this is a really lovely site: Beans and Herbs

I grow Cherokee Trail of Tears for both fresh French beans and drying beans. They taste wonderful as both, plus they are black so interesting in stews/chillies etc. Thanks to the VSP I have a big bag of white-seeded Lazy Housewife, which have large fat round beans that will be perfect for winter use - though I didn't like the fresh beans, they were a bit tough compared with others.

I discovered Canadian Wonder, which I said were good for red kidney beans, in the Organic Catalogue. They have a few other kinds of drying beans too.