French beans

[Dynamo]

I've just sorted out my french Beans at my allotment and I was wondering if anyone here could help me with this query. In this first picture, this is how I usually crop them and cook them.



However, sometimes the pods get gnarled like in this next photo.



But when I open the pods the beans are like this.



I'd like to know if these beans are edible and if so could I cook them much like Kidney beans in a chilli etc.

[fishpond]

Do you know the variety as my been seeds are white?

[Snadger]

I am hoping that all runner/French beans are edible. I have harvested and froze enough of the green,purple and yellow beans to last me for a year. The rest I have left on the plants to ripen and intend using them as cooked beans, without the pods of course.

[Zelenina]

Yes, they are edible, Dynamo, and you can cook them. The way you use them depends on how ripe and dry they are. The shiny black ones look fully ripe. If they have already become dry and hard you will need to soak them before cooking. Or you could finish drying them indoors and then store them for eating later or planting. The paler coloured ones, and maybe some of the black ones, don't look fully ripe and should be soft enough to be cooked without soaking. At that stage they are often called shelly beans.

Bean seeds can be all sorts of colours when ripe, fishpond. Many varieties have white seeds. They usually start off green but gradually change to their mature colour as they ripen.

Snadger, people in Slovakia don't grow runner beans to eat green but only for dry beans to put in soups. They are very good to eat that way. In fact the varieties here usually have very tough, course, short pods because they haven't been selected to be nice as green beans. All French beans should be edible dried as well, though I expect some varieties will be better than others.

[Dynamo]

Thanks for that Zelenia. Looks like I'll be having them in my chilli's etc in future.

[Dynamo]

Here's all the beans in trays to be dried

[Jimmy]

I grow Cobra climbing beans.
The last picking of the crop round about now always has a percentage of curly pods.
They also seem to have brown marks like they have been rubbing against the stem.
They cook OK and I am still here !
Jimmy

[Jeremy424]

The brown spots look a little like the chocolate spot fungus that thrives on broad beans. So rather than 'rubbing' I would say it's a fungus. I get the same thing on my french beans when the weather has been humid or now that the plants are coming to the end of their lives (they are like older people who can't fight off infections/diseases as easily as the young and healthy).

[Scarlet]

Here's a couple of threads you may be interested in if you fancy growing more bean varieties next year for eating shelled, dried etc...

http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...ans_26962.html

http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...ies_87168.html

[Mark_Riga]

They look a good crop seeing as most were used green.
If they are not an F1 variety and you are going to grow them again next year, I would keep some of the biggest and best to save a bit of money - I've not bought a french bean or pea seed now for a good 10 years.
If you have a pressure cooker, you can cook them in a few minutes after soaking in hot water for about 1 hour.

[ecudc]

Don't forget if you are not sure what your beans are make sure that you boil them hard for at least 10 minutes and then cook till tender. This destroys the toxins you might find. Don't put them in a slow cooker unless you have done this.

[Snadger]

These are my three varieties of black,yellow and green climbing French Bean just now.



I have collected all the beans I require and put them in the freezer. The rest I will use as shelled beans.

Do i just leave them on the plant until the foliage dies down?

[Zelenina]

Do you want them as dry beans, Snadger? If so, you can leave them until a frost is forecast, if they are not dry before then. Ideally the pods would be dry and crunchy with hard beans inside. But if there's wet weather when they've partially dried they can get mouldy. So you can pick them after the pods have gone thin and leathery and finish drying them (in their pods is best) indoors. Or you can pick them sooner as fresh shelly beans, after the beans have swollen up inside the pods, and cook immediately or freeze them.

[Jay-ell]

With the damp weather we've had recently I've taken down all the climbing beans. They had started to die back the other week and were drying off but some were starting to go mouldy.

Shelled them to stop the mould on thr pods spreading and laid them out on racks to air and dry.

I could have hung the entire plants indoors but didn't want to risk them rotting - plus didn't have enough space.

They were really easy to take down from the gallows - snip at the bottom, snip at the top and the entire bine draped over the arm and stuffed into a bag to depod at home. The twine was easy to pull out from the bines (7' lengths - I can reuse them) so that it didn't snag the shredder.

Still got the runners to do, not so easy as they're growing through wire mesh over a greenhouse frame - I'll have to pull the pods off individually. That'll be a job for later on as they aren't quite ready yet.