Hi Leasag, I like Blue Lake pole bean (white seed) as a good basic green bean (although I like other varieties much more now). I bought mine from Territorial Seed. I've included the link below. I tried Blue Lake Black Seeded pole from Franchi last year and it is the only green bean that I actually disliked. Something about the taste did not make me happy. Bellatrix Here is a link that might be useful: Blue Lake Pole Bean from Territorial Seed

I hope you'll keep us posted on the germination percentages you get and how quickly those beans germinate. Are you familiar with Tom Clothier's Seed Germination Database? In case you aren't, I'll link it below. I've learned so much from his database on exactly what soil temperatures give you the highest percentage of seeds germinating in the shortest number of days. It has helped me learn some important things....like how it is best to not sow bean seeds too early in spring or they'll germinate poorly....or why beet seeds take so long to germinate when we plant them at what we are told is the "right" time. Because of what I've learned from this database over the last 10 or 12 years, I plant when the soil temps and air temps are in the right temperature range and not when a calendar says I should be planting. I've grown many Three Sisters gardens, and sometimes Four Sisters gardens with the fourth sister being sunflowers, and the beans can overwhelm modern-day hybrid cornstalks by outgrowing them, burying the corn ears underneath the crazy bean foliar growth, etc. I have to use a really tall sturdy corn like Texas Honey June or one of the field, flour or dent corns that produce larger, stronger stalks than most hybrid sweet corns OR use half-runner beans (which despite their name still can climb 6-8' some years). Otherwise, I end up with happy bean plants weighing down corn plants and sometime bending or breaking the stalks. I like raising the Three Sisters together, but it takes a while to find the right combination of beans and corn that grow well together without the bean plants overwhelming the corn. My pumpkin, though, always is Seminole because it runs wildly through the corn field and happily exists on whatever water it gets. Some years I use southern peas instead of beans in the rows of corn too. That can work out even better because the corn usually is fairly tall before I sow the southern peas (since corn likes cooler temperatures but southern peas need warmer ones for good germination). It is pretty easy to mature a corn crop and harvest it before the southern pea plants climb to the tops of the corn stalks and beyond. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: TC's Seed Germination Data Base

Actually I just learned a short while ago that it was the 274s that did not germinate. When I moved my hand through the soil I couldn't find a single seed. So either I am losing it (which is definitely possible but not likely in this case) or they were pillaged (birds?) I would have probably noticed the soil being disturbed though yet I did not and I check on my garden pretty much daily. I had two packages of 274s and two packages of Rocdors when I started. When I checked in my seed box today I only had one package of each which adds up. When I opened the Rocdor package I noticed the mottled purple seed color matched that of the seed remnants in the garden (when I was thinning them out today) so that's how I knew it was the white 274s that "vanished".

Beans can germinate quickly, given that you have healthy seed & warm soil with just the right amount of moisture. Cowpeas & yardlong beans can germinate even faster, in as little as 3 days.