I must say... I'm surprised by some of the problems I see listed for "Fortex". It has shown excellent cool-soil germination here, and proven to be nearly immune to rust; it is generally my main crop because of its reliability & great flavor. I agree that it is not the strongest climber, it needs a little training at first... but once started, the vines easily cover a 6 & 1/2 foot trellis. My first impression of "Fortex" was that it was low yielding, compared to "KW White #191" (still one of my favorites) which has massive flushes. The daily pickings are lower, but sustained over a very long period. Because of the thinner vines, I plant them more closely than most pole beans, thinning to 2 @ 12". This partially overcomes the lower yield. Keep in mind, with pods 10-11" long (and still stringless!) you don't need as many. I don't have a problem with yield now, was picking a couple 5-gallon pails every other day from a 60-foot row last year. I'm surprised that no one has mentioned "Rattlesnake" pole beans yet, since many in the South have reported excellent results with it. It is another great-tasting bean, and good for freezing. I tried it once & enjoyed it, but other varieties do better in my Northern climate. There is a current thread about it on the Bean Forum. Some of the Romano-type pole beans seem to be more heat-tolerant than others. Several years back, during an especially hot spell (OK, that's only in the 90's here) an heirloom Romano, "Champagne", was the only pole bean still setting pods. "Kentucky Wonder" should do well, but you might have better luck with the white-seeded "Kentucky Wonder 191" that I mentioned above. It has a rich "beany" flavor, freezes well, and can have astonishing yields. As a big fan of pole beans, I can make a few recommendations that might increase the chances of success. Mulch is especially important for pole beans, since they don't cover the ground. The mulch preserves moisture, keeps the roots cool during hot days, and prevents mud from splashing on the leaves (this reduces the chance of disease). While many have reported planting pole beans closely, they have done best for me when given plenty of room. I plant in rows, and thin to 12" between plants for most pole beans. Pole beans do best when protected from wind - especially "Fortex", due to its long pods. If you have experienced curled or deformed beans w/hard brown spots, wind bruising is the likely culprit. If possible, plant them down-wind of another tall crop, or in a sheltered location. Many on GW have commented this year about bean germination problems, most of them probably due to the exceptionally cool, wet start of Summer & the correspondingly lower soil temperatures. For those that planted by the calendar, this led to rotting & germination problems. Don't know if the cool weather we've had up here has been a problem in central Texas. It sounds like the beans were planted at the right time, so unless the rain (or irrigation) was excessive, there should have been no problem. Marlingardener, do you plant your beans in one of two seasons, Spring or Fall, due to the heat of mid-Summer? If so, there are two bean alternatives that might make it through the heat. I'll second Ppod's recommendation for yardlong beans; "Chinese Red Noodle" is probably the best, a heat lover w/purple pods & great flavor. Baker Creek & several others sell it. You might also want to try the purple-podded Hyacinth Bean, although I am not sure when it would bloom for you.

Yes, they will get in. I have started greenbeans inside a greenhouse and transplanted them outside, to give them a snowball's chance to get large enough the rabbits didn't mow them down, however. They germinate very quickly and are up in a matter of days of planting, so you don't want to start them any sooner than when you would expect to have started them to grow on to produce.

I'm in Richmond, Virginia; am growing Kwintus beans this year for the first time. They're fabulous. It has been very, very hot here since early May. The Kwintus beans bore up in the heat, even though they pretty quite young when the weather got steamy. I began harvesting at about 52 days. Unlike others, I haven't found them to ever get tough the way bush beans do. They have been tender and yummy no matter the size (though I haven't let them get an inch wide, a few have gotten 8 or 9 inches long, and yet stayed tender). I'm totally sold on them - will never be without them in my garden. They are THAT good in flavor and in terms of being easy to grow.

Bon, The world of beans and southern peas is incredibly diverse and many of them are multipurpose and can be eaten as snap beans/peas, shelly beans/peas or dried beans/peas. An old southern method of drying them in the pods gives you "leather britches" to store and cook later. Some varieties make better leather britches than others. You'll have a ball exploring the world of legumes. We almost always only eat our home-grown beans and southern peas in the green stage, whether frozen or fresh. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of us sitting on the porch, snapping beans or shelling peas, with glasses of lemonade or kool-aid sitting beside us, while big luna moths flailed around, beating their wings against the screen door beneath the porch light. Now...that is a great childhood memory! Forget Disneyland or Carlsbad Caverns, which were fun in their own way. I treasure simpler memories a lot more. I normally do not dry the beans I raise. Dried beans are as cheap as can be at the store, especially black-eyed peas (although the commercial varieties sold usually are inferior to the pinkeye purple hulls) and pinto beans. I'd rather use the ones we raise as snaps or shellies, which are a lot more expensive at the store than dry beans. A couple of weeks ago we were at Central Market in Southlake and they had shelled fresh pink eye purplehull peas in a container that might have had 10-12 oz. in it and cost either $5 or $6. I tried to imagine what it would cost to buy all the peas I raise annually, and couldn't even imagine it. I grow tons of beans and tons of southern peas. I like diversity so plant many varieties of each. Just in the southern pea category, you have pinkeye purple hulls, crowders, black-eyed peas, zipper peas, lady peas and cream peas, with many named varieties of each. One thing to remember is that heat has the same effect on bean (but not southern pea) blooms that it has on tomato blossoms, so you have to plant them at the right time in spring (April) for a summer harvest, and keep your fingers crossed that the weather won't heat up too early. If you plant late, most varieties won't produce well because they'll be blooming when temperatures are over 90 degrees and a lot of the blossoms will drop without forming beans. You can, however, plant beans again in the mid-summer for a fall harvest. We call those October beans here, with October not being a variety, but rather being the main time you're generally harvesting them. With southern peas, there's tons of varieties and I'm not happy unless I plant at least six kinds every year, but it is okay with me if most of those six varieties are some form of pink eye purplehull. So far I have planted the following southern peas: CT Pinkeye Purple Hull, Pinkeye Purple Hull BVR, Big Boy Pinkeye Purple Hull, Quick Pick Pinkeye Purple Hull, Red Ripper and Mackey (said to be a family selection of PEPH from Louisiana). Still waiting for a spot in the garden? Whippoorwill and Tohono O'odham, The latter is a southern pea from the native people of the southwestern part of the USA. This bean has the black and white markings like a holstein cow and is very drought-tolerant and heat-tolerant. To see a great selection of plants from the Native peoples of this county, check out Native Seed/SEARCH at the link below. With green beans, we eat most of them as snap beans but every now and then I'll grow a variety or two to use as shelly beans. Of course, Lima Beans always are shelled for cooking. I grow 6 to 10 varieties of snap beans every year, but mostly in the fall if the cold weather hangs on deeply into late spring like it did this year. The late cold is too often followed by a quick warm-up that makes bean blossoms fall. We were in the upper 90s today, so with that sort of weather already arriving, I do not have high hopes for my FM1K pole beans that I have growing on the garden fence. They might be able to hang on all summer and produce in the fall though. Regardless, I can plant more in July for a fall harvest if these look too tired from fighting the heat, pests and diseases by then. Your general fall planting dates for legumes here are: Southern peas and Pole Snap Peas July 15-30, Bush Snap Beans and Lima Beans August 10-20. If you plant later than that, you run the risk of losing the peas and beans to frost before they mature. If you plant earlier (and sometimes I risk it in a rainy and cooler-than-average summer), your plants will be subjected to the stress of a lot of extra heat and pests but won't produce earlier unless the weather cools down early (sure, like that is ever gonna happen). You just have to experiment with both beans and southern peas and figure out what types of each your family likes to eat. Experimenting with the different tastes and textures is as much fun as growing them. My family likes to eat the broad/wide Romano-type snap beans, which are a good, meaty bean with a strong beany flavor. A more colorful diet is a more healthy diet, so I grow beans in a huge variety of colors. For this fall I have Tanya's Pink Pod (pink, obviously), and Puriat (purple), Capitano (yellow), as well as Garrafal d'oro (green), and also Purple Dove (purple). Then, in the haricot verts category, I'm growing Slenderette (green), Purple Queen (purple) and Golden Roc d'Or (yellow). I've got Contender and Provider for plain old green snap beans, and Purple Velour for tasty and tender purple snaps for fresh eating only. (They don't freeze well). I've also got Tenderstar for fall, and some Insuk's Wang Kong. Some years I grow some cutshorts and some greasy beans, and I may plant some odds and ends I have left over from previous years for fall, if it manages to rain between now and planting time in July. Pole beans are beautiful and very productive and you don't have to bend or stoop over to pick them, and there's tons of good ones. I usually grow some of the following most years: Rattlesnake, Louisiana Purple Pole, Blue Coco, Jeminez, Cherokee Greasy, Cherokee Cornfield, Garrafal d'Or, Musica, Red-Striped Greasy and sometimes McCaslan or Potomac or other cutshort or greasy bean varieties. Scarlet Runner Beans do not produce well in heat, so are better for fall harvest than summer harvest, and Insuk's Wang Kong is the one I've grown for several years now. I never get a great many beans from them, but usually plant them to climb my 12-foot-tall ornamental windmill and the hummingbirds love their blossoms. Don't forget Lima Beans. There is so much more to Lima Beans than just plain old green ones. I like to grow all kinds of butterbeans, include Violet's Multicolored Beans, Worcester Indian Red, Henderson Bush Bean and Christmas. While most snap beans are either bush form or vining form, there's some that are somewhere in between and they usually are called half-runners. Some half-runners I've grown get taller than bush beans but not quite as tall as pole beans if they have nothing to climb. Give them something to climb, though, and some of the half-runners climb almost as tall as traditional pole beans. In this category I usually grow State Half-Runner or Mountaineer Half-Runner. We haven't even discussed yardlong (asparagus) beans (which are more like southern peas than traditional beans), or dried beans. I usually grow the red asparagus beans. With dried beans, I like to grow Borlotto Tongue of Fire or Signora della Campagna. And we haven't touched on moth beans, tepary beans, fava beans or Edamame (soybeans). All the talk of pinkeye purplehull jelly makes me smile and brings back fond memories. As with tomatoes, there's thousands of bean varieties and at least a few dozen varieties of southern peas, so you can explore them forever and never run out of new varieties to try. John Withee collected and save just under 1,200 bean varieties. I cannot even imagine all the work it took to raise them and save the seeds and keep all those varieties pure. Oh, and there's rice beans too. The bean world is endlessly fascinating, and my favorite bean varieties change constantly depending on which ones had the best flavor and productivity in any given year. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: NativeSeeds/SEARCH