Bean craving sprouts new vegetable plot

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Spring is south, winter north.

My house sits in the middle.

Last weekend, for the first time since last year, I walked around my front lawn without stepping on snow and clipped and raked for most of the afternoon. Actually, I spent more time gazing at the sky and contemplating crocus blooms, but who could blame me, when just a few steps into much of the back yard I was wading through snow to my knees.

Yet I had hope for the first time that I would find myself in the vegetable garden one day soon, a box filled with seed packets in my arms. As I’ve waited these long, white weeks for such a day, one odd thing has been on my mind.

Beans.

I can just taste them.

OK, so I still have quite a few jars from last summer’s canning sessions, but nothing beats the smell of a big pot filled with snap beans bubbling on the stove.

Is this torture or what?

As I made my way through the seed catalogs, I lingered over the pole, the bush, the lima and even the dry. I wondered if I would have room to try soybeans again, or maybe the moth bean one more time. Should I consider a shell bean variety? Or should I stick with what I know?

I lament the size of the vegetable garden, although the reasonable part of my brain says I can barely keep up with what I have without adding a few more rows. But a girl can dream, even of beans.

The practical me made a beeline for the Pinetree Garden Seeds catalog and the source of my favorite pole bean, Rattlesnake.

It describes Rattlesnake as having been popular in the West for some time; what took it so long to come East is a question for the ages. The vines are vigorous and the beans are green splashed with purple spots and stripes, making them easy to spot on the trellis.

It’s not just those qualities that make Rattlesnake attractive. The flavor is fabulous, strings are nonexistent on young pods, and the true wonder is that Rattlesnake produces all summer long. Week after week, these pole beans keep giving, long after other varieties have trickled to a spotty few. The only thing that seems to slow production is lack of rain, which halts everything anyway.

I have long preferred pole beans for ease of picking, but nothing can compare to the sheer quantity to be had from bush beans.

I hit pay dirt with Provider. This bush bean is available in most seed catalogs and with good reason. It’s a robust plant that offers bountiful harvests in about 50 days. Provider has a strong resistance to disease, and Johnny’s Selected Seeds touts them for their ability to germinate in cool soil. I remember last year’s nonspring and how cold the ground stayed. My rows of Provider were the only ones to germinate almost 100 percent; all of the others had to be replanted.

Wax, or yellow, beans are also a favorite, but I’ve had an even tougher time finding a strong variety. Yellow pole beans have been a disappointment, and the bush ones didn’t have much to recommend them.

In my continuing search for the perfect yellow bean, I came across a mouth-watering photo of Indy Gold, a bush variety, in the Veseys Seeds catalog. When I read that it “amazed trials staff with its ability to set an exceptionally heavy crop,” I was hooked. It can’t hurt to try them, can it?

For the hummingbirds, I’ll be planting scarlet runner beans. The showy flowers do turn into edible pods with a strong flavor. For eating, they are not my favorite, but for show – theirs and that of the birds they attract – I would always have space for them.

Amazing plants, these beans. Plentiful yields and beautiful blooms aren’t all they do. For the soil, they fix nitrogen, a necessary building block for healthy plants. For humans, they are a good source of protein in their mature phase, and in their immature phase, they make people like me very happy come August.

Beans are woven into thousands of years of history as a dietary staple. Most of us know their importance in the New World, along with corn and squash. We’ve read the stories about the native cultures from North to South America who built civilizations on these foods.

I found even more when I did an Internet search on beans. There was an interesting Web site about the history of gardening in Canada that described the Hurons as “adept farmers” and detailed the strategy of their planting corn, bean and squash seeds in one hill, all aiding the other in their growth. The corn was the “stake” for the bean, while the squash covered the ground, cutting down on the weeds.

Then there was the site for the Agricultural Research Center for the Ministry of Agriculture of Egypt. After singing the praises of the Nile, it went on to mention that one of the crops cultivated for thousands of years in the river basin was that of legumes, including the fava bean, lentils and chickpeas. Those sound a bit more exotic to a Maine gardener and that got me thinking.

Maybe I should try something a little different this year. I could order a packet of, say, fava beans. I don’t know fava beans, but they sound easy. They tolerate a frost and when they mature, you shell and cook them like peas.

Then, in an effort to ease my space concerns, I could plant them in a little corner of corn I’ve planned.

Two cultures, one garden.

Fava beans, here I come.

Sources for seeds

Pinetree Garden Seeds, Box 300, New Gloucester 04260; telephone 207-926-3400; www.superseeds.com.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds, 1 Foss Hill Road, Albion 04910-9731; telephone 207-437-4301; www.johnnyseeds.com.

Veseys Seeds, P.O. Box 9000, Calais 04619-6102; telephone 1-800-363-7333; www.veseys.com.

Ecology Action, 5798 Ridgewood Road, Willits, Calif. 95490, telephone 707-459-6410, www.bountifulgardens.org.

Janine Pineo is a NEWS copy editor. Her e-mail address is jpineo@bangordailynews.net.