I haven't grown pole beans since the great Japanese Beetle invasion of 2015 but before that my favorite was Rattlesnake. The JBs really seemed to like them too.

I'd like to try Emerite because it seems to get great reviews and I love thin/round filet beans for fresh eating and making dilly beans.

The JB population has been minimal in my garden this year and last. Not sure if it is because I treated my garden and the perimeter with Milky Spore in 2016 or not. I might have to risk it next season and try to grow some Emerite on one of my trellises instead of pickling cukes.

Fortex is also a good pole bean if you want some really long beans.

Depends if you want a bean like a traditional canned green bean. There is a lot of variety to choose from, but few choices from the common seed racks, so you have to get them mailed.

Flat Romano "Italian" pole beans are different and seems like most people love them, and most seem to produce early for a pole bean. Give one a try.

Rattlesnake is a great choice that is available a lot of places, green and purple striped pods, simply good.

Fortex is also great, long stringless round pods. Kinda finicky to produce is the only negative.

Trionfo Violetto is a purple bean, and there a few similar types, eat just like green ones.

Then there are so-called "Half Runner Beans" that branch out more but most are grown just like full pole beans, the pods are like typical green beans. Non Tough Half Runner Beans are a great example.

Hello bean lovers,

I have grown N T half runner beans for the past 3 years and they are my current favorite. here are some we picked and tasted the other night. They were not quite full beans but nice and lumpy. We also harvest these beans smaller and round for pickling.

Next photo is Lazy wife great bean which I thought was not as good but dw and our daughter liked better.

Sunday we we going to try a side but side blind (sort of) taste test for the 4 Kings of heirloom beans we are growing this year.

in the past we also grew rattlesnake, blue lake, and a few hybrids, but we love beans with lots of flesh and flavor.

My two favorites are Fortex and Kentucky Blue - a cross between the Blue Lake and Kentucky Wonder beans.

Lots of choices for next year! What I don't like about the Kentucky Wonder is that they turn "poddy" (is that a word) and stringy if not picked quickly enough. I don't recall that happening nearly as quickly with Blue Lake - it seems I could leave them a bit longer on the vine.

We are experimenting with several varieties of heirloom pole beans and planning a taste test tomorrow. All of these are eaten "lumpy" which is the historical way that people in the Appalachians ate them for protein. We harvest the half runners early for conventional green beans that we cook, freeze, and pickle. But if we leave them to become full beans there is lot's more to bite into and the flesh does not become stringy (although they do have to be strung) The other 3 varieties grow lumpy right away; the Lazy Wife Greasy Beans were not tough when we tried them yesterday. They are in limited supply because their vines are getting shaded by other beans. Will report on taste and texture after tomorrow.

Here are some Pink Tip Greasy pole beans, maybe a couple Greasy Back beans in there, picked this morning. Nice plump pods.

Need to have strings pulled out, and they are tender and tend to fall apart when cooked. You can cook these old string beans a long time and they are still good, not mush. Probably not what you want if you want common grocery snap bean types.

Nice beans Noki!

Thanks Len and Noki!

I grow Rattlesnake pole beans every year...they are prolific if you keep picking them. They are a bit more tender than green bean varieties (like Jade) so you don't want to overcook them.

Official bean cook off results:

All 5 samples were boiled with salted water until tender which varied a bit between different varieties. No bacon or pork rind was added although we probably would if cooking up for a meal, but we did add butter to all samples.

1. All 5 tasters agreed that the full beans were superior to the "green" NT half runner beans picked before they swelled up, and that all 5 samples were far superior to anything in the supermarket.
2. We also agreed that the Tobacco Worm Bean has a distinct earthy flavor that would be better if we did have bacon in them...they were least favorite. Note this bean has to be stringed.
3. NT Half Runners that had been allowed to swell up were tied for top choice. Tasters enjoyed the meaty texture and good mild flavor of these beans. Note this bean has to be stringed. They also are heavy producers on the vine.
4. Red Eyed Fall Bean tied with Half Runners. This bean becomes lumpy right away so not a candidate for DW dilly beans that have to be smooth. Both flavor and texture were applauded and true to fall bean character these beans do not have to be stringed.
5. Lazy Wife Greasy Bean was a close second to the top 2 and may have lost out because 3 of the tasters are female and could be swayed by aversion to the name. Also this was a smaller sample since these beans suffer from some shade on the trellis. Interestingly the Lazy Wife Beans need to be stringed.

Unless further tasting throughout the summer changes our view, DW and I agree that next year we will again grow the NT Half Runner and add the Red Eye Fall Bean to the regular line up. We had already decided no more purple podded pole beans and/or dragon tongue beans. We do enjoy an early batch of Provider bush beans and will continue to grow those next year.

Now to decide what new beans to try...wish we could find a yard long bean that would perform in our climate.

I truly love flat green beans over the round podded ones. I am a big fan of 'Jumbo', 'Romano' ect. My biggest gripe on Roma or Romano in bush or pole bean form is yield. Definitely for me they are lower yielding than some round podded varieties I grow. Jumbo bush bean was high yielding but no longer seems available.

This year I was given some "italian" pole bean seeds by a friend who runs a community garden area for a local municipality. She claimed the seed originally brought into this area by italian immigrants. Her favorite bean for flavor and yield.

I planted them on a 5' fence. They grew very strange as after the second set of leaved they grew a vine 5' tall with just a few small leaves on it. i was not impressed. Then as the season went on the vines filled out with many leaves and a magnificent yield. Flavor and size of the bean is exceptional.

I have froze and already consumed fresh so many that I am getting tired of them. I will definitely be saving seed off them to plant next year.

This photo is a sample from some of what I picked that evening.

I vote for Fortex and don't find them finicky. I use a sheet of concrete reinforcing panel held in place with steel posts as a trellis.

defrost........that's how I grow my pole beans. I make a structure out of galvanized electrical conduit, then line it with concrete reinforcing wire. You can make it as wide as you want by adding a horizontal section of the conduit on top. It's held up for many years and is a great way to grow pole beans.

defrost and catherine - Could one of you please post a photo of your concrete reinforced panel?

I can't find my favorite pic of them, but this will do. As you can also see, I use my kids old swingset lined with concrete reinforcing wire for winter squash. It has 4"x4" openings, so you can easily reach through it. I have since gone mostly to raised stock tank gardening, but still use this set-up for pole beans and squash. For my cucumbers, I made a cattle panel into an arch and covered it with concrete reinforcing wire and they love it! I guess I'm a big fan of concrete reinforcing

wire! :) I might also add that they aren't too stable if you just push the galvanized electrical conduit into the ground. So I use something like 3' metal green stakes to drive into the ground on each side right next to the conduit and bungee the trellis to those. It's pretty stable that way.

So here is an interesting twist on growing "full beans". I took bags of beans to office for all to enjoy early this week and two couples became very ill after eating the beans. It turns out that they :"like" blanching beans for a couple of minutes and then eating them "crunchy" This is not a good recipe for "full beans" which are chemically protected from preditors and need to be cooked for 10 minutes plus in boiling water. Just saying...

With modern green beans that tend to have tough hulls and little actually beans inside, many people like them to be "crunchy" because they have little taste and texture when cooked longer. I find a lot of these pole beans, full beans and flat pod beans, cooking longer brings out flavor.