Cool. Thanks for the response. See this is why i wanted to ask because i knew i would get unexpected responses. I will keep in mind the stringless trait in peas. From what i know about the sin2 gene in peas (most commonly found in snap peas) is that it does indeed produce string-less pods, but ONLY in hot weather ironically and is hard to breed with as it does not segregate with normal Mendelian genetic ratios. So that may be part of why you were not impressed and why it is so rare. There is an older form of stringless peas out there called "sin" but it apparently has been lost. But it or other forms of stringless mutants could be out there, so i will keep it in mind.

I tried the 'Wando' variety of pea once as it is widely touted as "heat tolerant" but i found it to be lousy for me and never grew it again. But often i think the most common request for peas i see more and more is heat tolerance. I have several in my collection that i think may have very good heat tolerance, but they are all pretty much starchy peas right now. One is very late season too but grows well right though July heat. That particular variety i have made some crosses but i am not sure if it truly has heat tolerance or is just surviving because it has not made seeds/pods by the time the summer heat hits. Still, heat tolerance is high on my radar.

Generally most people just want easy or predictable. Always baffles me why many people seem to value lazy, easy, and ignorance. Why do or learn anything then? And people value the same old same old and anything different is stupid. I suppose you have to market to manipulate these traits.

Now I want something different to grow or buy, something different than what I can buy from the store and to try something new. If you look at the major seed company racks at retail, they tend to show little diversity with beans and many items, I assume because they do not sell well. People want easy and the same old.

My two favorites so far Rocdor http://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/beans/bush-beans/rocdor-organic-bean-seed-26G.html?cgid=bush-beans#sz=18&start=1

And Royal Burgundy http://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/beans/bush-beans/royal-burgundy-organic-bean-seed-2944G.html?cgid=bush-beans#start=1

I let them get huge and they were stringless. Tasted very good, will definitely grow many more times.

A bit of tounge-in-cheek but I'd love someone to develop an English pea variety that produces enough to be worth all the space it takes to grow them. Their space required to production ratio is way out of whack IMO. So we grow lots of southern (aka field) peas instead. They have a great space to production ratio.

And like Signy said uniform length string beans would sure come in handy at canning time.

Dave

Interesting. I grow both English peas and southern peas and get about the same production from each. Varies greatly between varieties in each case, But overall it averages out. Plus they have different growing times so they can share the same plot of ground if necessary. English peas are harvested before Southern peas are planted. Averages about 8- 10 gallons of green shelled peas per lb of seed.

In my estimation Contender and Derby are the best green beans to grow. I've planted a lot of beans in my 80 years of gardening.