When Green Beans arent Green - or are they?

I am a lover of all things that will grow in my spaces here at Wicked Raven Farm.  I have to bring in a lot of my soil as we have such poor soil here due to the Millers Reach Fire of 1996.  You can read about it here.  It makes it really hard to grow anything and so I use a variety of systems to do my growing.  It also makes it hard to rotate crops well but I do my best.  This year I wanted to grow a lot of green beans - I love green beans.  They are my favorite vegetable I think - close race with potatoes, but you get the point.  They are good!  I usually grow them in the greenhouse with the tomatoes, but that really is a limited space and doesn't allow for growing bushels of beans.

So this year I grew them in the cold frame.  The squash went into raised mobile containers so I could move them in and out of the greenhouse - because of the wonky, cold spring we had this year it required a warmer nighttime area for the squash to keep them alive and they had been in the cold frame for two years already.  Time for a change.

This year I grew three different kinds of beans but I have fallen in love with one in particular and I will grow it every year from now on!  The types I grew were Blue Lake Bush bean, Hidatsa Shield beans, and Royal Burgundy Bush beans.  The ones I fell in love with are the Royal Burgundy.

Not withstanding that all of the seeds from this variety came up , they are beautiful!  The plants are bright green with purple blossoms, and they produce a ton of beans on each plant.  We have 16 feet of growing space that is about 2 feet deep in the cold frame and we have already had three meals from these beautiful beans and there are more on.  Don't get me wrong, the others are tasty too but these are divine!  And they are so easy care.  Forgot to water?   Burgundy Beans don't care!  Rain for days?  Burgundy Beans don't care!  They just want to grow!

Look at those beauties!  Dark purple, almost black to start with and they are delicious raw or cooked!  Raw, they have a wonderful nutty bean flavor, and are crisp but not stringy.  When you cook them.......

THEY TURN GREEN!  Once the heat hits them they turn green!  They cook up wonderfully, you have to really over cook these for them to become limp and slimy - nobody likes that - and they are flavorful too.  

They cook into a bright green that is the same color as the bean plants.  Its like a cool edible science project!  I have no idea why they do that - Ill research it but... we have done these up with bacon in the pan (above photo, just fry some diced bacon, and when its almost crispy throw those beans in and cook them to your preferred doneness), we have cooked them lightly and put in pasta dish, and we have pickled them with some of the old dill pickle juice.  So far those have stayed purple.  This particular packet came from Ed Hume seeds and are available at my local grocery, but you can get them here at the Ed Hume site.   I give these two thumbs up and I highly recommend that you put these on your "must grow" list for next season!  Happy Harvesting and eating!