The produced long purple beans but tended to be a touch on the tough side, not real tender. Not foam-at-the-mouth watering. Snap beans are pleasant to eat right out of the garden. They break crisp and are fashionably good right then and there to the point where they can be eaten like popcorn or the French fries at McDonald's, the ones covered with heroin. The big purple suckers were just a touch weak.
Still, we put them in because they used little space and canned up (well cooked first) were still good fair and not covered with ghastly chemicals form Dow.
This year a cleaver agriculture stunt was in order and we planted maybe 12 seeds right on the edge of the garden, and right up next to the Cedar hedge, the 20 foot hedge. I figured start the climbing out with a well placed fence of large mesh and then they would move up the Cedars.
Damned if they didn't. Initially, they couldn't get their act together because of the drought. There were vines and all, but the local, cold, chlorinated tap water just wouldn't kick them in the ass. They climbed but were void of flowers, thus the idea of getting bean pods for canning was looking slim. Maybe the vines could be used to feed rabbits or a hog---none of which we have yet.
We did get one rain in mid August but not enough to excite the damn beans. So we left town to go babysit for two weeks and on our return the climbing beans had been inspired by 2 good rains and some reasonable weather. Bingo, there on the trees was a profusion of giant beans, some too giant, but enough dandy purple jewels to fill six fat quarts for winter fixings.
Only problem was had they been any higher, say 15 ft, then I would have had to have climbing ropes, pitons, an ascender and most importantly courage as the act of picking was much like rock climbing. Still not a bad deal for 12 plants and not much horizontal garden space. Wish they tasted better.
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