Secret Beans
Not that kind. Better.
I own an experimental farm. I’ve even written a book about it.
Why don’t more people grow dry beans? Maybe it’s because dry beans in the store are dirt cheap. But there is a big world out there beyond the old standards of pinto, navy, and black beans. Those three are on the shelf because they are easily planted and harvested by big machines. They are not the most nutritious or delicious of the bean varieties. Not even close.
I tested more than 30 types of dry beans so you don’t have to. And I have come up with some favorites. For the record, I planted the following varieties.
Appaloosa, Black Coco, Calypso, Hungarian Rice, Hutterite Soup, Irish Creek Annie, Iroquois Cornbread, Jacob’s Gold, Jacob’s Cattle, Koronis Purple, Lina Cisco, Marfax, Money, Nez Perce, Orca, Painted Pony, Peregion, Rockwell, Saturday Night Special, Silver Cloud Cannellini, Soldier, Swedish Brown, Tiger's Eye, Vermont Cranberry, Verna Bush, White Marrowfat, Yellow Indian Woman.
Orca beans. Plant them and grow whales!
Just their names make the beans more interesting. Tiger’s Eye has big beautiful swirls of maroon and yellow, imitating the look of an actual tiger’s eye. Admittedly I have not been close-up to a live tiger, and if I ever was I probably wouldn’t do an eye vs. bean comparison. Still, the beans are quite pretty. Appaloosa beans do have the coloring of an appaloosa horse. And Orca beans have black and white patterns much like an orca whale. Despite their resemblance, if you plant them, they will not grow into little whales or horses. But I am sure you could trick a three-year-old into believing in that possibility.
I should note that “Saturday Night Special” beans do not look like little guns. Rather, they got that name because people who eat them will eventually put out sounds resembling the rat-a-tat of a small handgun.
My favorite thing about dry beans is they are shelf-stable. So when the power goes out and the next pandemic hits, you can live off your store of dry beans. They are good for years. So much garden produce is highly perishable (tomatoes!) or requires a lot of processing to preserve. But dry beans are easy. Just let them dry on the vine until they are hard. You’ll know they are dry enough if you can’t dent them with your fingernail. Then just pop them out of the pods and put them in a container. That’s it.
So which varieties are best to grow? Any of the varieties on the list are going to taste better than pinto, navy, and black. So you can’t go wrong with any of the types on my list.
In my experience, Tiger’s Eye beans are the biggest, most colorful, and grow the fastest. My second choice is Orca beans, since they look so unusual. I also like Lina Cisco because they are roundish and look like little birds’ eggs.
The only variety I would not grow again is Hungarian Rice beans. They are small (bigger than actual rice, but still small) and thus cook quickly. But they are difficult to get out of the pods and require way too much work for the amount of food they produce.
Some varieties are easier than others to find from seed suppliers, but the treasure hunt of finding obscure varieties is all part of the fun.