One of the pleasures of having your own backyard growing space is trying new things to grow. A few years ago I decided to give green beans a chance, and they are now a regular on my annual growing roster. In particular, I am extremely fond of french ‘filet’ style beans, which are green beans that are much smaller, slimmer, and more tender than your average bean. I’m such a fan of these diminutive green beans that I grow one variety in particular over and over again each year.
Masai bush beans, my french green bean of choice, produce flavourful and oh so tender beans that grow without much fuss. The plants are easily started indoors from seed in the spring, then transplanted after their first seed leaves appear. Once fully grown this particular variety is a mere 12” or so high, so these petite bush style plants are an easy fit for raised bed or container growing, an excellent choice for urban growing situations. Requiring little more than good soil, sun, and regular watering, these easy to grow plants are productive and satisfying for both growers and eaters alike!
As the plants get ready to produce their beans, lovely sets of white blossoms appear, and throughout their lifespan these amazingly productive plants produce multiple harvests of green beans until the season ends; as soon as one set of beans is picked, another one immediately starts to grow. When ready to eat, the slender beans hang down from the crown of the plants, and picking them is a little bit like a game of hide and seek, for once I have completed a picking, thinking I have taken all the beans that are ready, I look again from a different angle and find handfuls that I hadn’t seen!
I usually plant a mere 6 square feet of green beans, and each picking yields me ½ pound or more, meaning my little patch of bush beans yields me numerous pounds each season! I have recently taken to leaving the last of the beans of the season on their plants, to fatten and turn brown in their pods, which I can collect and save for next year’s plantings. I have successfully grown new crops from these saved seeds and the process of seed saving is so easy to do, that once you invest a few dollars in a package of beans, you may never have to buy seeds for them again!
While little advice is needed on how to eat fresh green beans, apart from the usual steaming or boiling, they make a delicious addition to composed salads like my Potato, Corn, and Green Bean Salad with Feta Cream and Herbs.
While french filet style green beans are becoming more common in some supermarkets, there is truly nothing tastier or more tender than home grown green beans, so if you have a little patch of growing space of your own, either in raised beds or containers, I highly recommend these productive beauties. Read more about how to grow green beans.
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