My Dragon Tongue beans, which I'm growing for the first time this year, actually do have a slight buttery taste when cooked! I hadn't noticed that with other wax beans. For the most part, I'd say wax beans are somewhat milder in flavor, but, like the Dragon Tongues, can have subtle nuances in flavor which can be completely buried by strong spices or herbs. For beans cooked with Indian spices like cumin, coriander, hot pepper, etc., I find that green beans are better. Away from strong spices and herbs, though, green and wax can be used interchangeably. I like to have both.

My own preferences are much the same as Hemnancy's; I prefer pole beans for their size, flavor, and yield... and for the enormous variation available in heirloom varieties. They require more space, but that is not an issue for me. Bush beans, however, have their advantages too... so sometimes (preferences aside) it's a question of which type is most suitable for the location & the intended purpose. It's also worth noting that beans should be considered for more than just snaps. Bush beans Advantages: - Easy to plant, require no support. - They mature more quickly. This makes them better suited for short-season areas, for late planting, and when they will be grown early or late as part of a succession planting. - Generally bear all-at-once, so good if grown for canning in large batches, especially with limited space. - Low profile, so better suited for high-wind areas. - Most popular dry beans are bush varieties. - More wax bean varieties available commercially as bush than as pole. Disadvantages: - Less suitable for kitchen gardens, where a prolonged harvest is preferable. Succession planting every few weeks can overcome this, if space is available to do so. - More vulnerable to damage by slugs and rodents. - Lower yield.* - Generally smaller pod size. - Fewer cultivars available for use as shellies. - Harvest can be uncomfortable, due to constant bending. Pole beans Advantages: - Higher yield*, sometimes enormous. - Generally larger pods as snaps, so less cutting involved for canning. - More varieties available for shellies, including most of the larger-seeded. - Prolonged harvest, good for fresh eating over a long period. Some varieties, though, will have large flushes in a relatively short period of time. - Pods are higher, making them easy to see & pick, with minimal bending. - Less damage from rodents, snails, & crawling insects. Disadvantages: - Require erecting a pole/trellis. Not too tough for a 20-foot row, but 500 feet of trellis can be a chore. - Take longer to bear, making them less suitable for short season areas. (There are, however, fast-maturing varieties like "Goldmarie" and "Early Riser"). - Except for very long-season areas, they occupy the ground for the entire season, so not suitable for succession planting. - Not good for high-wind areas, where poles & vines may be snapped. - While the over-all yield is very high, the yield-per-plant for a given period may be relatively low, so smaller daily pickings. This is only an issue where space is limited. - Few varieties commercially available for dry beans (but many heirlooms). I have also observed that many bean diseases are either caused or aggravated by soil being splashed on the leaves; bush beans seem to be more vulnerable to this. I used the (*) for yield, because with different planting strategies, either bush or pole can be high-yielding: - Pole varieties have a higher yield per plant, and often the highest yield per row foot... but much of this advantage is lost with multiple rows, because of the greater row spacing required due to shading. They are at their best if planted in a single row, at the North side of the garden. My largest yield per row by far was from a row of "Pole 191" snap beans. - Bush varieties, while yielding less per plant, can be spaced more closely... and since shade is not an issue, the rows can be closer together as well. Succession planting can also help overcome the yield gap, since it allows bush beans to time-share a given space with another crop. I think that the best bean strategy is a single row of pole beans on the North side - with a row or two of bush beans directly adjacent on the South side - so as to form one wide row. This gives the best of both worlds, in a relatively small space. Those pole beans, by the way, can include limas or yardlong beans. As for strings, I think there is little difference; there are both pole beans & bush beans, with- and without strings. However, since most breeding going on now is for bush beans, there will eventually be more stringless varieties available as bush. I don't necessarily see "stringlessness" as an advantage, since many varieties that develop strings are stringless when picked young, and have outstanding flavor. "Kentucky Wonder" is a great example of this. Most of the new bush varieties, while stringless, are of the petite style now popular in Europe... takes a lot of picking to get a basket full. No thank you. Give me the 11" pods of "Fortex", or the long pods of "Goldmarie" or "Garafal Oro", any day.

Fran Berner Landfrauen is definitely a very good bean, extremely tasty. However it has one disadvantage and that is its lateness. So I urge you to grow at least one other. For example Kwintus, which will go right through the season and produce early and late. Another you might like to try is Kentucky Wonder. A yellow wax bean, Neckargold, also produces early. You can never grow too many different tall growing beans. I usually grow over 20 varieties every year. Do they taste better? Not necessarily, but there are many more tall varieties than bush varieties, so you have much wider choice. Often bush varieties are agri-business varieties because they can be machine harvested. High yielding and ripening all pods evenly on the same day. Not so good for gardeners who want to harvest over a long period. I cannot promise that the tall varieties I grow and love will taste equally good at your location, because weather and soil and cultivation influences flavour, but I can promise that you will find a huge choice of tasty beans amongst the tall varieties. They may need trellising, but it is so much easier to pick standing upright, than having to bend and stoop. Good luck

Just for anyone's information: the first year I grew this bean, I grew it on Mesquakie Indian corn, which has strong stalks. I might have started it on corn that was almost ready to silk, which is late. Anyway, by the time the bean started producing, the corn broke in half, leaving only about 4' of support. But Cherokee Cornfield still produced a nice large crop. Since then, I have only grown it on strong poles. In 2008 I had Cherokee Striped Cornfield pollen get on a flower of Fowler Bush Bean (which has dark coffee shaped seed). I grew one of these crossed seed in a bed of Fowler Beans, in 2009. That one plant got nicknamed the "Skyscraper bean." It was HUGE and vigorous. The pods were stringless, like Fowler, though not as tender. The resulting F2 seed was dark coffee colored, but easier to shell than Fowler. I sent some of this seed to a GW member who grew it out and reported three variations in the F2 generation. One had kind of dark purple seed. Another had the dark coffee colored seed. The least prevalent variation looked like the seed of Cherokee Striped Cornfield. I have not grown any of these out. It just stays on my wish list. Another bean, which I grow out every so many years, is Tarahumara Pink Green Bean, which is a VERY vigorous pole bean at this latitude. When I grew it at the 20th parallel, it was like a regular pole bean, But this far North it only flowers around the first week of September. Fortunately, then entire plant bursts into clouds of pink flowers, and it has always matured seed for me, even in NJ. But the vines! Oh my! I've had ONE PLANT snap a regular pole. I then leaned the broken pole into a new, stronger pole, tying loosely to keep it in place. The vine engulfed both poles and then leaped over to grab onto 5' tomato cage, jumping from that cage onto three more cages and completely smothering four tomato plants. That one vine produced 2 quarts of nice large, pink, kidney shaped beans. It would be a good one for shellies. The snaps are only usable as such for a few days. But they are SWEET. I always think this one would be great to serve as raw snaps with a dip. This year I'm growing Tarahumara Pink Green Bean on 1) a pole attached to a telephone pole, 2) a fence & 3) a 15' elm tree in the front yard. Am greatly looking forward to the flower show in the fall. George