I'm more of a Blue Lake kinda guy, but keep doing more side by side comparisons of KW with other varieties to see which one performs better in your garden. Some to consider: Rattlesnake, Kentucky Blue. If you want to go more old-school, try cut short varieties.

Alisande, what type of KW did you grow, the brown-seeded or white seeded? I've had good luck here with the white-seeded version.

I like the Romano type beans such as "Garafal Oro" & "Bosnian Pole" for their sweetness. For canning, I prefer the firmness of the filet type beans, such as "Fortex" and "Emerite" (I've frozen about 60 pints of "Emerite" this year).

But for good old fashioned "beany" flavor, I still love KW, and grow them every 3-4 years. The yield can be phenomenal.

I would also second the recommendation for "Rattlesnake", it rated pretty high for flavor when I grew it, and performed fairly well in a bad year.

I planted KW back in May next to the Black Jungle butterbeans. The KWs were puny all summer - produced lots of leaves, lots of flowers, few beans. They appear to be exceptionally tasty to the Leaf Bean Beetles. They are finally producing some beans, but they are not great quality. I'm wondering if it is just too hot for them here. My best producers have been Hilda Romano and Rattlesnake. The flavor of the KWs haven't been that good and they seem to go from a baby bean to bumpy seedy tough pods in three days. Small pods as well.