Legumes
Dwarf bean
Phaseolus vulgaris var. nanus
Timings for your region
Suggested: Moderate · Explained in the glossary
Sow outdoorsmid May – early July
Harvestearly July – early October
Practical tip
Sow a fresh row every three weeks and you harvest from July until the frosts instead of all at once.
Origin & history
The common bean comes from Central and South America, where it was domesticated twice independently — in Mexico and in the Andes. After 1500 it displaced Europe’s older pulses so thoroughly that the word “Bohne”, which until then meant the broad bean, transferred to it. Stringless varieties, which we take for granted, only appeared in the late 19th century; before that every pod had to have its string pulled off.
Varieties
The distinction is in the pod: filet and fine beans stay slim and tender, while snap types grow fleshier and crop more heavily. Besides green there are yellow wax beans and purple-podded varieties that turn green on cooking — both are far easier to spot among the foliage when picking than green ones. Dwarf beans are self-pollinating and nearly all open-pollinated: let a few pods ripen and next year’s seed is taken care of.
Care
Beans supply their own nitrogen through root nodule bacteria — feed them and you get plenty of leaf and few pods. Once the plants are a hand high, earth them up lightly; that steadies them and gives extra roots. From flowering on water evenly and always at the base, never over the foliage, and stay out of the rows while the plants are wet.
What can go wrong
Wet foliage is the real problem: anthracnose and halo blight spread from plant to plant as you walk the rows, so pick only once the crop has dried off, keep the rows wide and never save seed from affected plants. If whole stretches of the row stay empty, the soil was too cold and wet at sowing — below 10 °C the seed simply rots. Slugs clear fresh seedlings overnight; collect them in the evening or raise the first sowings in pots and plant them out larger.
Harvest, storage & kitchen
Go through every two or three days — pods left to ripen slow down new set, and one overlooked row ends the harvest early. The moment is right when the pod snaps cleanly and the seeds are not yet showing through. Beans are never eaten raw: the phasin they contain is only destroyed by at least ten minutes of boiling; for the freezer, blanch them briefly and plunge them into cold water.
All timings are guide values for the given climate, not a guarantee. Weather, aspect and variety all have a say.