Which ones to choose, these are some of the ones I grew this year :)

District Nurse (pole)

Candy (bush)

Barry Island (pole)

Red Eye Fall (pole)

Hanna Hank (pole)

Aeron Purple Star ( purple podded runner)

Emilia's Italian (pole)

Lazy Wife (pole)

Mennonite Purple Stripe (pole)

Bird Egg #3 (pole) Shelly and dried seed

I also grew 'Brita's Foot Long', 'Blue Shackamaxon', 'Aunt Mary's Meat', 'Sicitalian Black Swamp', 'Barksdale', 'Steeves' Caseknife', 'The white seeded Cherokee Trail of Tears' and 'Witsa'. Also an Outcross for someone else and some Nuna beans. Not so many Varieties this year LOL. Our season was cool and wetter than usual, 'Sicitalian Black Swamp' took forever to start blooming but I managed to get a fair amount of seed from it, it was the last pole pulled just last week. All seed is sorted in baskets until good and dry and then the ones I won't be growing next year are going in the freezer.

Annette

You chose well, Annette. I have most of your pictured ones, too, and I know just how delicious they are. You grow quite a few varieties,... Which ones are your top 3 favorites?

Beautiful photos Adela and Annette!

What an awesome variety you have! Thanks for sharing. :)

Wow! Wonderful lookin beans! As a VERY newbie gardener, I wish I had all of those! I started out with golden wax. :)

You're off to a good start if you ask me, Ashley!!

The star of my late season beans is Zelma Zesta, they were also the first pole beans produced. I grew Turkey Craw for the first time this year, the brown speckled beans, throw in a few unknown pretty black and white beans that appeared when I grew some black seeded beans, the pods are green with a purple coloration. The mixture shows the large size of Jembo Polish comparable to runner beans, and right below them a similarly marked Ojo de Cabra.

@hemnancy, very nice - they look as if they're painted.

@aftermidnight, Annette, I really like the pic of the mixed bans from the farmers market n Ecuador. Did these grow for you in Canada, You mentioned you might not grow them again, if so might I ask about getting a few? Ii really liked the orangeish ones, please let me know, thanks Rick

trickster(7), message sent :).

Annette

Beautiful beans!

I always grow some Pink Half Runners for my husband, he's from Tennessee, and I grow some bush type green beans, whatever suits me from year to year.

Last year I grew Cherokee Trail of Tears, Mayacoba, Turkey Craw, Greasy Cutshort and the star as far as yield, Italian Horticultural, a yellow Pencilpod and Blue Lake, as well as the Pink Half Runners. When I cooked the Italians my husband told me that they were October Beans, but the package that I got on clearance said Italian Horticultural with no other designation. They were prolific, bush type, and look like this:

4 fifty foot rows gave me 38 quart bags of shelled beans in the freezer, the things were unstoppable! They are creamy and delicious, though, and we'll have no problems eat them all, I'm sure.

Here is my husband snapping and stringing the pink half runners, with some help from the two youngest granddaughters. Excuse the mess, the kids were visiting, LOL.

Annie

I wish I could get my husband to help shell beans! LOL

I got seriously into growing beans in about 2009. These are Blue (Black) Shackamaxon, Native Seeds Hopi Purple Stripe, and in the center is my unknown white climbing bean (maybe Turkey Craw.. not sure at all)

These were some Lina Sisco, Ireland Creek Annie, black eyed peas and small brown cowpeas (Piggott Family Heirloom, probably). The Kenearly Yellow Eye hadn't started to come in yet.

A lovely crop of Mayflower beans that I ate as shelly types.

West Tennessee

I don't grow beans for drying as I don't have a lot of room, but this tread is awesome for the BEAUTIFUL photos. The colors on these beans are breathtaking.

Melissa, neither do I, I don't have a big garden so as a rule I only grow pole beans, but there are exceptions, like Woods Mountain Crazy Beans and Blue Jay and I grew Candy for seed last year. Some of the varieties I grow were very hard to find like the little Comtesse de Chambord, when I went looking for that one I couldn't find it sold anywhere in North America. With the help of one of the GW members on this forum I found a source in France. I'm happy to say several places are selling it now. When I grow this one I grow it in containers, although it's used as a dry bean we eat it as a snap, really tender and has a sweet flavor.

My main interest is in growing heirlooms, helping in a small way keeping them in circulation. Sometimes we don't even get a taste, the seed collected is stored in a freezer until I or someone else would like to grow them.

I always grow one or two varieties just for eating, the rest we might, or might not, get a taste depending on how they produce. If I only have one or two seeds, it's hands off LOL but it's amazing the amount you can get off a single pole.

Growing as many varieties as I do I always bag a few flowers just in case of a cross but so far I've only had one cross/mutation from the beans I have grown from my own collected seed. The pictures I post are usually of the dried seed collected at the end of the season. The only bean I grow and use as a dry bean is the pole bean Gigandes, a Greek runner.

Annette

@Annette ~ Was Seneca Speckled Egg one of the beans you have had a chance to taste? That one caught my eye in your photo's, mini eggs.

Melissa, it was several years ago that I grew this one, don't remember even tasting it, probably not as I was laid up most of the summer, fall and into the next spring, chemo can really knock your socks off. Hubby collected the dried pods and brought them in. All I can remember it really produced a lot of pods from the 4 beans I planted around a pole.

Annette