Hi and welcome - don't know of any reason why you couldn't use them. No problems with the clouding as we often used cut-to-fit the jars beans.

My only personal experience with the yard long variety was I found them to be a bit softer, less firm than standard pole beans or bush beans and for Dilly Beans you want to use the firmest ones you can sort from among them for best results.

Save the softer ones for blanching and freezing. Let us know how they turn out.

Dave

I froze my red noodle beans two years ago. If the beans have a color skin like purple, the pickle brine tends to remove that color which settles to the bottom of the jars.

Here is a link that might be useful: Search info in freezing beans

This year the farm that runs my CSA had green beans so long I canned them in quart jars as extra-fancy cocktail stirrers. The dilly beans recipes only specify pints, but since pickles are pretty low risk I felt ok about canning them in quarts and processing for 15 minutes instead of 10. So if you want to make extra-long ones, you could try that if you feel it's an acceptable risk, even though officially dilly beans are supposed to be canned in pints.

Melissa

If they tend to be softer, you may want to get some calcium chloride and add to the jars. You may not have time this year to order it and get it, but it really does help to keep vegetables more firm in the jars. It is the same ingredient the commercial industry uses. It was sold as Pickle Crisp by Ball, but now I only know to order it online. I get mine from Bulk foods.

Thanks so much for all your help!

Sorry I never reported back on this, but I was doing a search for freezing yard long beans and found this post. I made the pickles last year and they were a huge success! I didn't get to use Pickle Crisp, but no one seemed to care that the beans were a bit soft (and I never told anyone that they were supposed to be). I gave them as gifts in what I called 'cocktail gift baskets', idea similar to melva02 but I still used pints. They've been my number one request with the pickled okra second in line. The beans have been slow this year and are just starting to produce. We still have at least another month of warm weather so I hope I get enough to pickle and freeze. Fingers crossed!

Thanks for the update! Mine almost died from the extremely hot summer but seem to be making a comeback so I'm hoping to can some beans soon as well.

Regarding the comment from kelgalon: Can you please provide the recipe you used. I really like to use the tried and true recipes rather than experimenting on my own. The results of my experiments have resulted in mold and not penicillin!!!!

Pickled beans recipe:

http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_06/dilled_beans.html

My favorite thing I did with beans last year was ferment them. They turned out really, really good, are crisp and crunchy, nice addition to salads or eating alone, made them with a few hot peppers, lots of garlic, and dill flower heads. I actually had a few in a spring greens salad today - awesome.

drmbear, can you share your recipe? Lori