Green Beans
About Green Beans/Snapbeans/Wax Beans
Snapbeans are beans that come from various varieties of bean plants which are harvested when they are immature. The pods of beans that have reached full maturity are too fibrous to eat. When beans are allowed to fully mature, they are called shelled beans, as they have to be shucked from their shells to be dried, canned, or cooked.
Snapbeans and wax beans can come in a variety of colors including speckled. Green beans are a green snapbean/wax bean.
Snapbeans can have two plant types: bush and vine. Bush beans grow low to the ground. They produce vigorously for a period of about two weeks. To maintain a continuous harvest from bush bean species, plantings are staggered to insure ongoing production.
Pole beans are a vine and need to be trellised or staked. Once pole beans begin to produce, they are harvested. As they are harvested, they will continue to produce flowers and fruit throughout the growing season.
Bean plants are also nitrogen fixers taking nitrogen from the air and storing it in their roots, stalks, and leaves. To carry out this process, bean plants form a symbiotic relationship with bacteria. When harvested, plant remains can be composted or tilled back into the soil. The symbiotic partnership and composting/tilling allows nitrogen to be "fixed" into the soil.
Pole beans must be picked by hand which requires much more labor to harvest. Large scale bush bean farms harvest their beans using specially made bean combines allowing for larger scale production with less labor.
Fun Facts
- New York is the second largest producer of snapbeans in the United States.
- There is one variety of snapbean, "Red Noodle" that grows a pod that is up to twenty inches long and has red seeds.