Kem Ormond’s vegetable garden: Heritage beans are versatile and easy to grow

The King of the Blues variety is a great-tasting runner bean. Photo / Heritage Food Crops Research Trust

Kem Ormond is a features writer for The Country. She’s also a keen gardener. This week, she’s writing about the versatility of heritage beans.

Whether dried beans, runner beans, plump green dwarf beans, broad beans, or butter beans, they’re all delicious, either steamed, boiled, bottled, pickled or tossed through a salad.

Beans are among the easiest and most rewarding crops to grow, and now is the right time to get them in the ground.

At the Heritage Food Crops Research Trust in Whanganui, they maintain a collection of 108 bean varieties.

Incredibly, if you send them a stamped, self-addressed envelope, they’ll send you a selection of heritage bean seeds for free.

Tell me, when can you get anything for free these days?

One of the best things about beans is how versatile they are to grow.

Even if you’re short on garden space, you can grow them in tubs, pots or troughs, or train them up trellises.

I’ve decided it’s time to include more beans in my diet.

If I grow them this season, I’ll have a stash ready to use over winter in hearty casseroles and stews.

They’re rich in fibre, protein and essential nutrients; no wonder they’re a staple in many healthy diets.

Visit any food market in Spain and you’ll be dazzled by the colourful array of dried beans.

In fact, beans are integral to the Spanish diet, and it’s easy to see why.

Beans are also rich in history.

They originated in Central and South America and were being cultivated in Mexico over 2000 years ago.

According to the trust’s website, there are over 4000 different types of beans today in North America.

Originally, all beans were climbing varieties, but over centuries, lower-growing (dwarf) types were bred for convenience.

Nowadays, almost all commercially grown beans are dwarf varieties because they’re easier to harvest mechanically.

The Heritage Food Crops Research Trust, however, focuses on climbing varieties, which tend to be more productive.

They do grow a few dwarf types, too, but the stars are the climbers.

Here are just a few you might like to try:

• Cherokee Cornfield Bean – Excellent as a green snap or dry bean. A drought-tolerant variety.
• Good Mother Stallard – Great in soups and chillies. Just cook with onion, garlic and olive oil for a superb, simple meal.
• Borlotti ‘Brears’ – Popular in Italy and Portugal for casseroles, soups, or cooled and served in salads.
• White Butterfly – A lovely dry bean ideal for stews, brothy soups or salads.
• Cranberry Bean – Once dried, shelled and cooked, these have a mild, nut-like flavour.

And that’s just scratching the surface.

Check out the trust’s website for more information on various varieties: heritagefoodcrops.org.nz.

Dried and stored in jars, heritage beans can become instant kitchen art; some of them are absolutely stunning to look at.

Planting

The purple-coloured pods of the French Royal Burgundy variety. Photo / Heritage Food Crops Research Trust

To plant beans, the soil needs to be warm, and all danger of frost must have passed.

Turn the soil over, adding some well-rotted compost at the same time or some blood and bone.

You will need to space your dwarf beans about 15cm apart and climbing beans 25cm apart, and plant about 25mm deep.

A trellis or bamboo tripod will be needed for any climbing varieties.

Apply your choice of fertiliser once flowering begins to ensure a good harvest and make sure you keep the ground moist.

Beans take about 8-9 weeks until they are ready to harvest.

Dried beans can and should be picked as soon as the shell is papery and you can feel the beans rattling inside.

If you are going to pick and eat your beans, don’t let them get too large –and cook or preserve them in your preferred method.

If drying for winter use, pick as they dry off and store in a brown paper bag until ready to shuck them.

They will need a little more drying before you can put them into your sealed containers.

They do need to be completely dry before storing, then store them in glass jars.

The general rule for cooking dried beans is that you should allow at least two hours of cook time.

The more you read up about heritage beans, the more you experiment and try growing different types, the more you will appreciate them.