plantslayer,

It is catch as catch can whether a variety will perform in your climate. Most of the mountain heirlooms are adapted to a moderately warm long summer. They are not adapted to the high temps and humidity that affect most of the deep south.

As an example, Tobacco Worm is an excellent flavored bean and performs very well in my North Alabama climate. Barnes Mountain is another excellent flavored bean but in this years hot humid conditions, it has been less than stellar in production.

The best suggestion is to get seed of each variety you want to try and plant a few hills of each to see how they work in your climate.

DarJones

Tennessee Cutshort was carried from somewhere in Tennessee to Salem, Illinois in the 50s. I received seed from my wife's great aunt in 1982. It was grown for about 30 years in Salem, which has very hot, dry summers. One never knows what a given variety will do in a new environment until trying.

George

George,

Here in the Seattle area we had the coldest and wettest spring I can remember and our first 75F day was weeks later than ever before recorded. Everything is weeks behind. Bulb growers are looking for other jobs so they buy bulbs to replace the thousands that drowned.

Tennessee Cutshort plants looked better than most of the others with their feet wet week after week and with cold temperatures for most of June. The plants are now loaded with snaps but I am eating Emerite and Fortex while waiting for the TC pods to plump up.

No snaps on Tobacco Worm yet even though they were started in peat pots in mid May.

Plantslayer, I live in Graham which has a bit shorter season and cooler nights than Seattle. I am trialing Greasy Cutshort which is just now making blossoms. Pink Tip Greasy does not even have blossoms yet. North Carolina Long Speckled Greasy Cutshort has a few 4" shiny snaps. First time I have ever seen a greasy bean. I do not know if they are best as small snap beans or if they would be better plumped up. - Dick

Same here on Vancouver Island, I can't remember a worse spring. I was really surprised the way the Tennessee Cutshorts hung in and then took off once it warmed up.

The last bean to start flowering outside the Chinese Red Noodles and Pretzels in the greenhouse which I may add are being very stubborn, are the Barksdales which are in a more shaded position then the others, this I will remedy next year.

All in all the beans on the whole are doing really well considering the start they had. If all goes well we won't have a frost for another couple of months but who knows, the weather has been so unpredictable the last few years.

Annette

I'm glad I decided to grow only bush beans this year. Dragon Tongues gave beans starting a few weeks ago, and are petering out now. I guess they're OK, but nothing special. They look pretty, which is probably why the fru fru restaurants like them so much. :)

Next year (if the ice age hasn't arrived by then) I will go back to pole beans if I can find a way to fit them in my tiny garden.

We had another feed of Tennessee Cutshorts tonight, I let them fill the pods before I picked them this time. What can I say other than these are my favorite beans so far this year. They were absolutely delicious, so tender and quite a nice flavor at this stage. I wish I had planted more but wanted to save a few seeds for next year. I'll be bagging the rest of the flowers as they form. Next Year these will be my main crop if you can call it that, compared to most of you my main crop is just a drop in a bucket. Who would of thunk they would do so well up here :). I call them my gentle introduction to shellies, sooooooo good.

Annette

I'm glad to hear how you are enjoying this bean. There are so many good varieties out there. I'm having to come to grips with my limitations and not try many. Due to cross pollination issues I've decided to plant fewer varieties per year. Yet, I will plant a larger planting of Tennessee Cutshort, as it's the only bean my family insists I grow.

George

Of the two dozen varieties I grew this year, Tennessee Cutshort is looking the best and are filling out. I have two 14 foot rows.

Tobacco Worm has only a few very small snaps so far. - Dick

Unlike other parts of North America, this has been the shortest and most difficult summer ever recorded.

Tennessee Cutshort is the one of the few beans so far to produce mature seed. Some of the pods are turning yellow.

Last night I steamed up a mess of the fat pods. What a treat! - Dick

We had the same kind of summer as drloyd, we were lucky to get a dozen tomatoes off 10 plants, last year the plants were loaded. The Tennessee Cutshorts are finished now I've already picked and have drying my seed for next year. The lousy growing season we had didn't faze them at all. I sure hope next year isn't a repeat of this one.

Annette

What was the West Coast summer like? Too hot, too cold? Bad winds, storms? Did the bad weather extend to Southern California?

Last year was my worst year due to a killer hailstorm in midsummer. This year has been the best, not too hot, not too cold, the first year without a tornado somewhere close by knocking the corn flat.

It appears that Tennessee Cutshorts are affected a lot by temperature and/or day length. Last year we had a very early and warm and long summer. The Tennessee Cutshorts were about 5 inches long and round and about 1/2 inch or more in diameter at maturity. The pods swelled with obvious bumps as they matured.

This year, the plants that I started in mid May in peat pots look just like that. The plants that I direct seeded May 30 that survived also look like that. Those that I replanted later to fill in the spaces did not really get their start until after the days were starting to get shorter. They are closer to 9 inches long and are more flat rather than round. The pods tend to get fibrous.

We are still eating Tennessee Cutshorts and had another mess of them last night. There are a lot left. They are still great even when the pods start to soften with mature seed.

I am still puzzled by the 9 inch flat pods on the ones planted in mid June. They do not fill out and get bumpy like the normal short round ones.

Drloyd do you think the weather might have been a factor? This didn't happen to my Tennessee Cutshorts but I had quite a few pods of Uncle Steve's and my italians that looked normal but when I shelled the dried pods the beans hadn't formed. In past years I've had a few pods on beans where maybe one or two beans hadn't formed but not the whole pod. I'm thinking it's a could be a weather related pollination problem.

Annette

Annette I am convinced that it is a weather issue. The normal Tennessee Cutshorts were sizable vines before the warm weather but the others were not. I made a note to not plant a late trellis of these next year. The other thing is that the days were getting shorter by the time the odd ones began to get grow much.

I do not know about pollination. The normal ones did not have any bees out when they blossomed. That does not seem to affect common beans as much as it does runners beans. - Dick

Dick, save seed only from the normal vines. I would suspect that you have a cross. I can't duplicate your growing conditions and have no experience with them. So can't say that it isn't weather related. But I suspect you have a cross.

I came up with a Tennessee Cutshort/ Ma Williams cross this year. The pods were a lot longer, but they lacked the flavor which I expect. I had to abandon that whole tripod's seed.

George

George I was hoping that you would comment on this even though your growing conditions are so different. A cross with Ma Williams is certainly possible. One plant even had what looked like Ma Williams Pods.

All the normal plants were started early in peat pots and all the strange ones were direct planted later. And all of them were from the same batch of seed. That is what makes me wonder about weather. Could a cross this year affect this year's crop or would it only affect crops grown from this year's seed? - Dick

A cross this year would only affect seed produced this year, not the pods on this year's plants. But, I have found that just one off type plant can wind through a lot of other vines and make it appear that there are more off type plants than there actually are.

I like to produce quantities of seed, of each variety I grow. In light of the increase in crossing, I've observed, I'm going to have to plant fewer varieties per year and increase my isolation distance.

George

George, you make good points. We know that Ma Williams crosses easily and you once said that Tennessee Cutshort had a major cross with some greasy beans. Maybe both those beans need special treatment. Some beans do not seem to cross at all. Dick

I went for many years with no crossing of Tennessee Cutshort. It does seem probable that some varieties are more prone to crossing than others. Also, I tend to think that there has been a change in conditions. I suspect that we have more pollinators (wasps, solitary bees, etc.) than before.

George

I am glad that there is interest in Tennessee Cutshort. It is a very fine bean and does well here in the PNW making mature seed in the shortest of summers. I plan to grow two 14 foot trellises again next year but want to start more of them in peat pots in case the current cooling cycle continues here.

There are two similar beans that did well this summer. North Carolina Speckled Long Cutshort Greasy is a fine greasy that is a bit smaller than TC. It also did best when started in peat pots. Some of the pods have been yellow for weeks but are not softening yet. It is not clear if I have viable seed yet.

Tobacco Worm was all started in peat pots this year and I have dry seed. This was Gardenlad's favorite. It is very similar to Tennessee Cutshort but the pods are not as plump.

George, I do not recall if you have ever written about freezing Tennessee Cutshort. Dick

I haven't mentioned it. But they do freeze well. It's just my wife doesn't care to use the freezer space for them.

This summer I trialed Frank Barnett, a cutshort from Sustainable Mountain Agriculture. That's another winner. I got it in late, which meant it collided with our horrible growing conditions. But it survived and is now producing very delicious string beans, on pair with Tennessee Cutshort, only smaller. I may not grow it again, simply because I'm going to focus more. But, for only one grow out, I can recommend it.

George

I was thinking about ordering the tennessee cutshorts from
sandhill when I order my tomatoes in December, but reading
this post, it sounds like they do not do well in hot, humid
summers. I guess I will have to pass on them. Too bad, they
sounded pretty good.

Roper,

I too am looking forward to trying Tennessee Cutshort next growing season. This particular thread discussed the exceptional performance of this strain in an unusually cold and brief PNW summer, but that does not mean that this bean needs to have cool conditions in order to do well. If you look up some older threads that mention Tennessee Cutshort, it appears to be well adapted to many growing conditions.

That said, I don't think any Phaseolus vulgaris varieties are really happy with long periods of 95 degrees F and above. Maybe others can weigh in more on this matter.

Tennessee Cutshort does pretty well in heat and in humidity. This year, here in NE Oklahoma, we had the worst conditions I've ever seen, for beans and tomatoes. Some of my varieties of beans almost didn't set any pods at all, and those few, too late for seed. Tennessee Cutshort did okay, not great, but we did eat beans. The novelty of Aftermidnight's experience is that they did so well in a cool damp environment, when in fact, they have been grown more in the Midwest, with it's hot drier summers.

I've had experienced no difficulty at all with this one, when temps are in the 90s. It's when it goes to triple digits for weeks on end, that I've seen production slow down considerably.

George

Tennesee Cutshorts did well in our short and cool 2010 summer here in the PNW but they liked our much longer and much warmer 2009 summer with a week of 100 F even better.

Dick

Maybe I will give them a try. Could also try to grow them
as a fall crop, if it doesn't like our humid summers. Yes,
I think I will go ahead and order some.

Thanks

A quick question about the Tennessee Cutshorts: how vigorous are they? Are these rampant, heavily branching pole beans, or more modest growers with minimal branching? Just wondering so I will be able to space them adequately.

Well, I don't rate them as rampant. But with sufficient moisture they can easily climb higher than a person can reach. I space mine at about 6" on a cattle panel trellis. On a pole, I plant 3-4 seeds. But I have to say, when I lose a plant or two, the remaining plants pick up the slack just fine.

The first year I grew these, back around 1985, we had a very hot dry summer. They only grew about 7' tall, produced a heavy crop, and dried down within a couple of weeks. I thought this was their growth habit. But I've never seen this again. On a 5.5' trellis they normally grow to the top and loop over, falling back down about 2 1/2 feet before making a "bunch" at the top.

Hope this helps.

George

George,

Do you only space your seeds six inches directly underneath the cattle panel or could you plant them six inches apart on both sides (out 3 or 4 inches). I know I get greedy sometimes.

I just space them at 6" apart on one side of the panel.

George

Thanks George. I need to remember sometimes less is better.

I plant 6 inches apart on both sides with usually less than a foot between the sides. I do that with all pole beans. Never tried just one side to see if I got more beans or not. Might be an interesting experiment.

Just wanted to give an update on my 'Tennessee Cutshort' beans. I am so happy to be growing this unique variety.

My plants are setting a good number of pods now. At first, I was surprised at how short the pods were. But I noticed that they tend to balloon out, fill up and stretch out almost overnight. The first pods now look like fat caterpillars, swelling with bulging seeds.

This variety seems somewhat prone to foliar disease in my conditions this year. Some leaves will get black and/or brown spots, then the rest of the leaf will turn yellow and it will fall off. This has happened to about 25% of foliage so far. But it really hasn't seemed to affect the plant vigor at all. Still plenty of blossoms and leaves to go around.

I should probably be able to harvest my first 'Tennessee Cutshort' beans next weekend. I will report back on the flavor.

Tennessee Cutshort is a very fine bean. They are great even when the pods are turning yellow.

Mmmmm...just had my first mess of 'Tennessee Cutshort'. Mature pods were thick and fat and meaty and bulging with developing seeds. Zipper strings on either side of the pods just ripped right out and the rest of the pods were as tender and delicious as could ever be imagined. Flavor is some of the best I have ever tried. The developing seeds inside were just as delicious as the pods themselves. They are so good!!!

Vines are still setting pods fairly well in the 90+ degree weather we have been having in the Chicago area for the past several weeks. Some foliage still turning yellow and spotty and then dropping off, but overall plant vigor does not seem to be affected.

I will definitely want to grow these again next year. What a wonderful snap/shelly bean!

Aren't they a great tasting bean, we get to have them for supper tonight.

Annette

Tennessee Cutshort is producing nice snaps and they were the earliest of any pole bean this year. I am saving them until they plump up unless my wife hears about them! - Dick

Is there any chance I can trade 25-30 seeds of Tennessee Cutshorts with anyone? I can send you a list of what I have if you email me (rosetalleo@gmail.com).

Cabrita, I wish I could help you. But I'm almost out of seed and may not get a crop this year. It's been a horrendous gardening year which followed 2010, which was merely a horrible gardening year here in Oklahoma. Hopefully someone here can help you out. If all else fails, I know that Sandhill Preservation carries this bean.

George

Ack! I picked some of my drying pods today to collect seed, but much to my dismay and horror, at least 95% of seeds were sprouting inside the pods. Is this normal for this variety, or am I doing something wrong, or is something wrong with my growing conditions?

We have had a very wet, humid, and warm summer. Could that cause beans to sprout in the pod? As far as I know, none of the pods got wet as they were drying down. My only other variety to produce dry beans so far--'Soissons Vert'--has not had a single sprouted seed.

Any suggestions of steps I can take to save viable seed of this variety for next year?

Cabrita, send me your list, I have extra Tennessee Cutshorts. George, if you want more too I will send you some with the Barksdale later this year.

Ispahan, I have picked pods when they looked full and were just beginning to dry, and strung the pods on a thread and dried indoors in front of a fan. This might help. If the pods look dry already, definitely pick them before a rainstorm. If you have a screen you can scatter them on that, or cut many notches in the sides of a cardboard box and hang each bean in there so they are held apart from each other, and put under a fan till the pods dry, then shell into a wire basket and keep under a fan till very dry. If beans are touching so that moisture is held there, they can rot.

Ispahan I have not run into this with Tennessee Cutshorts.

The seeds are fully viable when the pods start to change color so they can be shelled then for drying or the pods can be put in a dry place at that point. I often have to do one of the above here. - Dick

Thank you, Drloyd and Happyday! This evening I will harvest any pods that are starting to change color. It must be the strange growing conditions this year that has caused the sprouting problem. Thank you again for your help. I would hate to lose this wonderful bean. Now that the temperatures have dropped, my vines are setting pods quite heavily again.

I've never observed this problem with this particular variety, though I've seen the problem before. I concur with what was already suggested.

Andy, thank you for the offer. I should be able to plant next spring; just won't have seed to share until next summer (Lord willing).

Today our heat and drought broke. We received at least 1 1/2" of slow rain and it has stayed in the 80s. Oklahoma recently broke the record for the continental U.S.A. For the hottest month on record.

George

A semi newbie in growing beans. Thank you all in the forum, now I have been growing pole beans for 2 years. Last year I was introduced to Fortex and have been extremely happy with it. This year I found a new love in Tenesse Cutshort. The flavor and production are very very impressive. In my Southern Calif garden, I took a bold move to start Fortex in Feb. 1, and result was great. I didn't start Tenesse Cutshort until April. But, you can bet on my early start next year.
One question about freezing: I plan to freeze them on a tray before packing in FoodSaver, do you cut and blanch first?

That's what I have done when I've frozen them.

George

Thank you.

I just have to say that we have now enjoyed several good meals of mature, meaty pods from 'Tennessee Cutshort' and what can I say other than they are one of the most delicious and satisfying beans I have ever grown or tasted. They will be my main (and possibly only) snap crop next season since they were such a big hit in my household. Compared to the other pole snaps I grew this season (Bosnian Pole and Withner's White Cornfield), the Tennessee Cutshort beans are the requested snaps of choice that everyone wants to eat.

They seemed to produce nicely during our intense July heat wave, but now that temperatures have been 80-85 for several weeks the plants are bearing more heavily than ever and the pods are longer, thicker and fuller than they were a few weeks ago.

The pods mature very quickly and I imagine they could easily produce dry seed even in shorter season climates. I love unzipping the mature pods, especially since the pods and seeds that remain after the strings are removed are amazingly tender, flavorful and almost delicate yet robust. Truly a gourmet bean.

I also love the fact that I do not need to rush to harvest the pods. I can just leave them on the vines as long as I want or need to and they will still be tender as long as the strings are (easily) removed. They are a great "resilience gardening" bean since you could probably leave them for days or weeks at a time and still get a good, delicious harvest.

I have enough seed saved for my garden for next year and I hope that after next year's grow-out I will have enough to list through SSE. In the meantime, my vines continue to flower and produce and we plan on eating them all!

They ARE a great bean, mine are finished now, we had several good feeds and the seed from this years crop is in.
I have enough seed now for a couple of years plus enough to send someone I promised them to, just waiting for them to be completely dry before I pop them in the mail. Next year we're going to eat every last one of those tasty little suckers :).

Annette