Dried Beans
Ready For Easy Picking

My Pole Beans assisted my never ending search for ways to be a lazy gardener.

The garden was greatly neglected in 2008 for a wonderful variety of family reasons and that neglect is what showed me another lazy tip. All of the beans I grow are Pole Bean types. I’m too lazy to bend over and pick bush beans and the Pole Beans produce an amazing crop in a very small space. They are one of my favourite vertical vegetables. My various bean vines produced far more than we were able to eat this summer. As a result, when I was cleaning up the dying vines in the autumn, I discovered a large number of dried pods. Each pod provided a nice quantity of clean dried beans that were easy to collect.

Home Garden Delight! I have grown beans specifically for use as dried beans, many times. You have to bend over to pick them and they are often more rotted than dried because of their close proximity to the cool damp soil. These wonderful pole beans are hanging up in the cool clean air and have dried to perfection. These will remain a home gardener’s delight. It would be difficult, not to mention expensive, to commercially harvest dried pole beans. We gardeners know that at our usual 25¢ per hour rate of pay we can produce some wonderful taste treats that just aren`t commercially available. That`s why we do it! My big dilemma now is whether to sort my pail of dried beans into the various types that I was growing or to cook them as a blend. Might be interesting to see how much difference there is in the flavour and texture of the various varieties.




How Do I Grow Them? There is my whole page on growing polebeans that can provide you with the all the information you need to choose and grow varieties of pole beans for green bean use. When you get tired of picking them or you just can’t eat any more then let them grow on and produce lots of pods that you can shell for dried beans.

Easy Storage! Dried beans store very well and have another added feature. They can be quite decorative. They like to store at room temperature in tightly closed glass jars. The beans are really quite attractive and you can make an interesting kitchen decoration with fancy jars filled with these tasty delights. Because pole beans remain in the realm of home gardeners they are often easier to find on heritage seed sites and they have wonderful names such as Grandma Walters or Aunt Jeans. There are as many recipes for using dried beans as there are beans. You can also join the great, soak / no soak debate.


A warning. I’ve taken to growing Morning Glories mixed in with my Pole Beans to make a more interesting bean trellis. In my youth Morning Glory seeds were known as a cheap hallucinogenic, not that I can personally attest to that, so I need to be careful when collecting seeds from these trellises. New discoveries in gardening is enough excitement for me.

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