~ Bush or 'Dwarf' FRENCH BEAN Seed ~
Bush beans are one of the easiest, quickest, and most reliable crops to grow. It's a great way to get early beans, and the best choice for more exposed sites or if you don't want to be bothered with making supports.!
For the earliest crop, sow bush beans. We sow some bush beans to start us off, then a big run of climbers to last us right through the summer.
If you only grow bush beans, then make two or three sowings at three week intervals to give a longer harvest.
You can sow your beans direct in the ground, but we get better results if we start them off in trays or pots, which lets us keep them away from mice, and also means that we can give them a bit of heat.
Sowing Information
Vittoria Early Bush Bean - GUEST VARIETY FOR TRIAL
A new variety we're introducing this year and have great hopes for; its an early bush bean that makes lots of long, medium green really straight pods. The dried seeds are a beautiful glossy black colour too!
The plants are quite large and vigorous, to about knee high, with dark green leaves. Overall, a very productive and healthy variety.
A guest variety for trial - do email in to say how you get on with it.
about 100 seed £
Sowing Information
They may make a couple of short tendrils especially if it's hot, but don't panic, they really are dwarf beans, and you can just leave them to get on with it.
Saxa Early Bush Bean - GUEST VARIETY FOR TRIAL
Another extremely-quick-cropping dwarf bean. It makes quite fat light green pods, that are gently curved. It's one of the earliest we have in the catalogue at the moment, making beans about a week quicker than normal.
The large vigorous plants are a pale green and grow to about knee high. This variety was reccomended to us twenty years ago for its resilience and early yields, but we only recently managed to source some seed for you to try out. Enjoy!
Fat tender pods. A guest variety for trial - do email in to say how you get on with it.
about 90 seed £
Slenderette Bush Bean - GUEST VARIETY FOR TRIAL
A mid-season or maincrop bean we've chosen as a gourmet option. It makes lots of gently curved green pods that are indeed slender - thin beans cook quicker and so retain more of their flavour!
The plants are a pale green colour and grow to about 1ft tall, so good for a medium or smaller plot.
A new guest variety - please let us know how it does for you. If people like it we will keep it in the catalogue.
about 100 seeds £
'Purple Queen' Bush Bean
This is stunningly productive - in our trials it was almost silly how the plants were laden with beans - the picture shows just one branch of one plant!
They are beautiful; with purple pods, flowers and stems, and the beans are easy to find when picking as they stand out against the foliage.
Very vigourous plants, make lots of delicious beans.
approx 80 seed, organic. £
'Maxidor' Yellow Bush Bean
An excellent yellow bush bean that makes really large numbers of fat yellow pods on compact plants.
A long-standing favourite and the one we plant every year for our own kitchen - large yields, they keep their yellow colour after cooking, and look really pretty on the plate or in a salad, with a particularly good flavour.
Excellent bush bean making lots of fat yellow pods.
approx 120 seed £
Golden Teepee - Yellow Bush Bean - GUEST VARIETY FOR TRIAL
A lovely bush bean, with plants bearing lots of large pale yellow pods. They have an excellent smooth buttery taste and are beautiful on the plate as well. The plants are short and don't take up much space but still produce loads of beans.
We're introducing this as a replacement for Maxidor, which is no longer available due to Brexit.
approx 100 seed £
Sowing Information
When you grow this, you might think there's been a mistake because they start out pale green, but do not panic! They genuinely do go yellow as they get to full size and it's actually a helpful indication that it's time to pick that particular pod.
'Dior' Yellow Filet Bush Bean
This addition to the catalogue is an early, yellow filet. The plants are small yet make a LOT of slender & tender pods, in an excellent bright yellow colour. As the beans are slim you only need to cook them very briefly, preserving the colour and flavour. A real treat!
Pick small as a filet or leave to get bigger (if you can resist eating them all straight away)
approximately 100 seed, organic. £
‘Marvel of Piemonte’ Stripey Bush Bean - HEAVY CROPPING
This bush bean from north Italy is chosen for its amazing appearance - the pale greeny-yellow pods have purple stripes!
Also early to crop and properly stringless. It has a really good buttery texture when cooked, and we have discovered it also holds well on the plant and doesn't go stringy or tough for ages, even if you miss some when picking.
Flat pods, streaked with purple, on a yellow background, great flavour.
about 80 seed £
‘Stregonta’ Stringless Bush Bean -DUAL USE!
An OUTSTANDING early bush borlotti bean from Italy, colourful pods with red stripes on a pale green background, ready in about 70 days from germination.
It is very quick to set, and the pods can be picked and the whole thing is stringless and delicious just like any french bean, a handful pictured here.
But then you can let them get bigger and use the seeds shelled out as fresh beans for cooking - when they have stong red spashes - just boil for 20 mins or so without soaking. Later the seeds dry to a darker tan colour for storage overwinter.
It's very unusual in that it is dual-purpose for fresh and drying/shelly use - excellent picked as a normal green bean , and then any that get bigger can be easten as seeds, which are delicious and so big that they go a bit square from being squeezed into the pods.
50 seed £
Sowing Information
This definitely is a bush bean, but does also make a few tendrils that try to climb. You can pinch them off or let them trail; either is OK. Also note the seeds start off cream and red but dry much darker, so don't think there's been a mistake when you open the packet.
~ Yard-Long Bean Seed ~
Yard-long Beans are an unusual bean species from the East that grows to a ridiculous length.
The pods are cooked and eaten just like French Beans.
Green Bush -A DWARF YARD LONG BEAN!
This could well be the silliest plant in our catalogue - a dwarf bush yard-long bean. So you get short bushes with silly 12" - 15" pods growing from it.
An early-maturing variety more suitable for the UK. Best grown in a polytunnel or greenhouse unless you're in a warmer part of the country as they're heat loving plants. Harvest when the beans are still slender. You can leave them to get huge but they then won't be so tender.
We have seen that occasionally, a few of the plants can try to be tall; if that happens and you don’t want it, then just pinch out their growing tips to make them bush out.
approx 50 seed £
~ Seed-SAVING - HOW TO SAVE your own Bean Seed ~
The physical seed-saving is easy, but the need for isolation (to keep the seed true to type) depends on the species:
- French Beans (this page) do cross, but not so easily, so you can grow more than one variety in different parts of your garden so long as you are careful about roguing out (getting rid of) any off types each year.
- Runner Beans DO cross very easily, so only grow one variety if you want to keep the seed.
- Broad Beans also cross A LOT and are harder to keep for seed as you need to isolate them from others with 1/2 a mile or so.
Also, be sure that you don't plant types with similar-coloured
seeds next to each other,
otherwise you'll not be sure which plant they come
from if they all grow tangled together.
More detailed seed-saving instructions are included with your seeds, so you
can do all this yourself at home.
