Hello all,

We planted some scarlet emperor runner beans in our Seattle garden, and were happy to see them grow like a maddog and produce large but reasonably tender beans for the last few weeks. The only problem is, they taste a little bland.

So in continuing our quest to find a bean that resembles the ones my wife used to eat in Northeast China (long, flat, with green and purple coloration- someone else asked about those in the Asian veg forum back in 2005, but no one knew anything about them), I searched around on the web and found these bean varieties:

(reference to a certain online store that is banned from mention on this site removed :)

...

I also found these two (with Chinese names), which sound promising (see the page linked to below):

http://www.agrohaitai.com/beanpea/polebean/bean.htm

If anyone has grown these before, let me know. If no one has grown them, I'll let you know how they turn out (about a year from now). If you can suggest other varieties, I would love to hear from you as well.

We'd love to grow asparagus beans of course, but the climate here (with short growing season and cool nights in the summer) doesn't seem to suit them well- the last ones we grew failed miserably without producing anything. We like pole/runner beans because we are gardening in an urban plot, and growing stuff vertically lets us save precious ground real estate.

Thanks for your help!

Dave