Vegetable Gardening (44 page)

French filet

The French filet bean (
Haricot Vert
) is a classic bean from France that has really caught on in the United States. This bean has been bred to be tender and stringless. Compact bush plants produce an abundance of these thin, textured, "melt-in-your-mouth" beans when harvested young. Pick them when they're less than 1/4-inch-thick, or they'll have started to mature, leaving the pods tough and stringy.

You can choose from a number of varieties of French filet beans. Some of the best include the following: ‘Maxibel' (high yields of 7-inch-long, round beans); ‘Nickel' (heat and cold tolerant plants produce 4-inch-long beans); ‘Tavera' (very slender, 4- to 5-inch-long beans); and ‘Soleil' (a unique 4-inch-long, yellow-podded variety). All filet beans mature between 50 and 60 days from seeding.

Lima bean

Once you've eaten a fresh lima bean (
Phaseolus lunatus,
or Butter bean), you'll never settle for the canned version again. Lima beans come in bush and pole varieties and love a long, warm growing season. Fat pods, which are 4 to 8 inches long, produce 4 to 6 beans each that you harvest at the shell stage.

One of the best bush varieties is ‘Fordhook 242', which matures in 75 days. It produces 3 to 5 white seeds per pod and is tolerant of both heat and cold. Another is ‘Jackson Wonder'. This "baby" lima produces 3 to 4 beans per pod and matures in 75 days, which makes it good for cooler climates. A good pole variety is ‘King of the Garden', which matures 88 days from seeding. It yields 4 to 6 large, cream-colored seeds per pod. ‘Florida Speckled Butter', another pole bean, matures in 85 days. Each pod produces 3 to 5 light-brown seeds speckled with maroon. The plant is heat- and drought-tolerant, making it a good Southern variety.

Southern pea

Although it's called a pea, the southern pea (
Vigna unguiculata,
or Cowpea) actually is more like a bean in growth and usage. Like limas, southern peas grow best in warm climates. The plants are either bush or semi-vining, and you harvest the pods about 60 days from seeding at the shell or dried stage. Some of the more famous types are Black-Eyed peas such as ‘Pink-Eyed Purple Hull', which is named for the black speck on the seed; Crowders such as ‘Mississippi Silver', named for the way the seeds grow jammed in the pod; and Cream peas such as ‘Lady', named for their smooth pod.

More Peas, Please!

One vegetable that's truly a treat to grow yourself is the pea, which is
Pisum sativum
botanically. In grocery stores, peas are available for only a short time, and their flavor isn't as sweet and tender as freshly picked pea pods. Some varieties grow to be huge and bushy, needing extra support to stand tall. Others are short and bushy and don't require fencing or support. Viny pea plants produce a grabbing shoot called a
tendril
that holds onto whatever it comes in contact with. Some novel types don't even bother growing leaves. In the following sections, I divide peas into three groups: English, snap, and snow. Mind your peas and take a look at some excellent varieties.

A pea is described by the type of pods it has. Here are the categories:

An
English,
or garden, pea has a tough pod with tender peas inside.

A
snap
pea has tender peas inside but also an edible, sweet pod.

A
snow
pea is harvested flat (that is, harvested before the pea seeds inside the pod form) mainly for its tender pea pod.

English peas: The reliable standby

Sometimes called the garden pea, the English pea is the pea that gardeners are most familiar with and that's most widely grown. In the following list, the days to maturity represent the time from seeding to harvest. Here are some of the most reliable varieties of English peas:

‘Alderman' (Tall Telephone):
This old heirloom matures in about 74 days. Six-foot-tall vines produce a large number of 4- to 5-inch pods with 6 to 8 peas per pod.

‘Blondie':
This new variety features 3-inch-long pods with 8 peas per pod. The yellow leaves and pale green pods and peas make this an eye-catching variety in the garden. It matures in 65 days and needs trellising (which I discuss in the later section "Spacing properly and providing support").

‘Feisty':
This 30-inch-tall vine has few leaves and many tendrils, which makes the medium-sized pea pods with 6 to 8 peas per pod easier to harvest. The plant matures in 61 days.

‘Little Marvel':
Even though it's a dwarf plant that grows only 18 to 20 inches tall, this pea plant produces heavy yields of 3-inch pods with 6 to 8 peas per pod. The plant matures in 62 days.