Our green beans have done really well this year and we are thrilled! We eat a lot of green beans. As Matt says they are tasty and they go with anything.
There are many different varieties of green beans. We’ve grown different ones over the years. Pap and Granny always grew white half runners. After Pap died Granny started planting cornfield beans.
We love greasy beans which are named for the light shine on their pods. They really do look like someone rubbed a little grease on them.
For the last several years we planted rattlesnake beans. We loved how much they put out and the taste too, but last year they didn’t do as good and Matt wanted to go back to what we used to plant this year.
We have one row of greasy beans and one row of a bean someone sent us. They called it grammy bean because their grandmother grew it. We’ve grown it for the last several years and really like it. It is similar to a white half runner only bigger.
In one short row we have mother stallard beans growing and in an even shorter row we have Ed’s beans growing.
The beans we grow are pole beans or climbing beans. They need to be strung before eating. We call working up green beans to eat or can breaking beans. In the last few years a few people have told me they call it snapping beans.
When I was a girl I had to help granny break beans and she was so particular about them. She got on to me if I left any piece of a string or a brown spot.
Katie, Corie, and my niece April helped her when they were little too. One day I came in the house and they were all breaking beans. The girls were being really silly and I noticed right away they were leaving plenty of strings and spots. When I pointed that out to Granny and asked her why she wasn’t making them be as particular as she did me Granny said “Oh I’ll just make sure to give those jars to you or Steve and Kim.” 🙂
Last night’s video: The Family History and Stories of Opal Corn Myers 27.
Tipper
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Yep, I have heard that Randy!
That little bit at the end where Granny said she’d just give those jars to you and Steve was so cute. She’s got a good sense of humor! ❤️
It’s interesting that our family “snapped” beans, yet all the rest of you “broke ” them . I love language.
We do the breaking, the beans do the snapping. If we break them and there is no snap we say, “Woah, wait a minute here! Sumpthin’s wrong!” “This bears closer inspection.”
One of my favorite parts of summer when I was a kid was sitting under the shade trees with family and breaking beans. Pappaw wouldn’t let us in the kitchen when they were canning because of the pressure cooker. Great memories! Pappaw passed away 24 years ago and it’s been 36 years since Mammaw passed, but I still miss them every day.
Somehow, someway I took a notion against Blue Lake and Kentucky Wonder beans. Don’t know why. I prefer pole beans for production and for keeping beans off the ground. But I never do a good enough job of having tall enough and strong enough poles. Same this year, planted Rattlesnake beans but my poles were only about 7 feet high and small to boot. So naturally when they ran off the poles they grabbed on to each other and knotted up. Result – too much shade, fewer bloom, lower pollination, shorter pods. I picked beans this morning early, just got enough for the table. And I’m like Randy. I have more and more and more troubles of one kind or another. So far nobody has given me ten cents to quit. Guess I hope they don’t tempt me. I’ve had my time in those marathon sessions of bean stringing and breaking. Glad I did, down at Grandma’s “old place”.
Kentucky Wonder was my mother and grandmother’s choice. We called it SNAPPING beans. I hated that and stringginh them. Now I am careful to plant stringless varieties.
We are also a green bean family. I grow bush beans and have grown purple beans since I started gardening as an adult because my dad discovered them and always praised their flavor and meatiness. I completely agree. They turn green when cooked and my kids always called them “Magic beans” when they were small.
My parents always grew bush green beans, not climbing. I’m not sure of the variety but we always called them string beans. When my husband and I had a large garden we grew Blue Lake bush beans. Almost no strings as someone else mentioned. I’ve always said snapping beans. Granny had a good sense of humor about the girls stringing beans!
Isnt it amazing with what people let their grandkids get away with compared to their own. I’ve remarked to my parents before about how much more tolerant and patient they got once the grandkids came along. My youngins got away with things with my parents that we would have never gotten away with.
Doug the reason for letting our grandchildren get away with things we wouldn’t let our children do is because we can send our grandchildren back home to their parents and let them deal with it! You do know, grandchildren are our reward for not killing our children!
Yep, I have heard that Randy!
Your mama is so funny! I love the joke about giving the beans the girls broke to you or Steve or Paul. My mama was super particular about the spots and strings too. I remember long days of breaking beans and cleaning jars. My Dad had made some sort of thing to build a wood fire in. I don’t remember what it was made out of but it was kind of shaped smaller and round on top and got larger at the base. He was good at inventing things from something he found or no one else wanted. Dad would build a fire in it out in the back yard near the river bank, sit the big canner on top, and fill it with water. They worked hard all day doing it. That’s how they always did it because canning indoors made the house too hot. It took both of them to lift it off and let it cool a bit before removing the many jars of beautiful, ‘spot-free’ beans it held. Thanks for sharing the funny little things about your mama—brought back memories and made my day!
Love Granny’s solution :)! That’s hillarious ! Love to you all !
I loved Granny’s response best of all! She is a corker!
The memories of families sitting together breaking beans, shelling butter beans or peas or maybe doing other things, often times on the porch is one of the many things that made the older days so much better in my way of thinking. If a neighbor happened to come by, they would pitch in and help. For many years in my wife’s family, the married adult children along with the grandchildren would help their parents or grandparents, my wife and children would be right in there with them, all of us being together made it seem more like a party than work. One of the blessings of not moving away and living close to your family.
Don’t have enough room for growing green beans. I buy white half runners from my local produce and rattlesnake beans from a fellow up the road!
We always called it breaking beans and my Granny was the same way very particular about the strings and the blemishes, don’t get me started on how particular she was about peeling potatoes, tomatoes or peaches
I’m going to be breaking beans before long if them little yellow Mexican demons don’t destroy all the leaves first. I bought myself an early birthday gift a few days ago, a single burner propane stove so I can can them outside. Wish me luck!
Ed, my mother and farther in law would cook and can large pots of green beans. They bought and used what is sometimes called a turkey cooker and would put it on their back porch to keep from heating up their house.
I’ve had a 23 quart pressure canner for many years. I bought something that it just would fit on. I don’t have the strength in my arms and back to handle anything any bigger. They say “lift with your legs”. Well, I have neuropathy in my feet and legs that makes me unsteady. I’ve got to keep trying or I will just wither and die.
PS: I don’t can green beans except in a pressure canner.
I grew up eating White Half Runner and Greasy Beans and helped to break up a truckload while sitting on the front porch. When I started planting a garden on my own, I planted the same kind of beans my parents planted. My friend told me I should try planting Blue Lake, as they were just as tasty and didn’t have the strings to deal with. I planted two rows this year, and the groundhogs loved them-blooms and all! The fence keeps the deer out, but not the groundhogs and coons. I’m about ready to give up working like a dog just to feed the critters.
Gotta love that Granny! My mom just called it stringing beans. I have fond memories of when I was little sitting on the couch beside her helping string beans. She’d snap the ends off and remove the strings from a bunch then hand them to me to break up. That would keep me busy while she did the rest. lol
We’re growing 3 types of beans this year- Good Mother Stallard, because of you, is growing on our arched cattle panel. Jack’s Magic Beans are on the vertical cattle panel and French bush beans are planted in front of them. We tried the Good Mother Stallard beans eaten as fresh green beans and don’t really care for them that way so they will dry on the vine and we’ll shell them. I like dried beans better than green, myself. The others have produced really well and have almost no strings! We’ve had several messes of green beans for supper and I have pickled a few jars of green beans with carrot sticks added. They’re just refrigerator pickles, but I found a recipe with a brine we like very much.
Today is our 50th wedding anniversary! Wow!! We aren’t doing anything special , more at my request than my husband’s. I just don’t like a lot of fuss. However , I am planning to fix a good meal later and green beans will be part of it if can scavenge some from the garden . The first planting is about through.
Grew up on half white runner beans and always liked them. For a few years recently, they haven’t been as good….cooking up tough even though I picked them young and cooked them immediately. I decided last year to try something new . On several recommendations I planted Blue Lake beans. They have been delicious with a deep flavor and best of all , almost NO strings. They can wonderfully as well. The man at the feed and seed store suggested that I try Kentucky Wonder as well. I have some planted for a fall harvest. I am excited to try them…..after all…you never know unless you try. We have finally received rain in Rutherfordton….Thank you Lord.
Everyone have a safe and happy weekend.
Freida, congratulations and happy anniversary 🙂
Happy anniversary to you both! God bless you!
Congratulations on your 50th wedding anniversary. I had been looking forward to our 50th anniversary, it would have been last year on October 26. Like you, we never made a fuss out of our anniversaries. I wanted to do something special for my wife, when we married in 1974, I was 20 and she was 19 and had no money for a honeymoon. We spent most of the next day after our wedding at Chimney Rock, NC but couldn’t buy the tickets to actually go into the park. She died during heart surgery in 2021. We started “going together” when we were 17 and 16 years old and still in high school, so I consider us being together for 50 years. She was my one and only, there will never be anyone else. Sorry about writing this, but now there is never a day that goes by without me missing and thinking of her.
Congratulations, Freida on your 50th wedding anniversary. God bless you and your family.
Happy 50th Anniversary Freida!
Freida- Happy Anniversary. Hope your dinner together is wonderful!!
Great post. When I had my “big” garden up in NH I had a lot of luck growing green beans. My three sons hated eating the beans because we had them almost every other night. Today all three boys and their families are vegetarian.
I dearly love to eat green beans that have bean cooked in a pot along with chunk of country ham or a piece of fatback in with them. I also like to add fresh potatoes to the pot of beans. I will hurt myself eating a meal of green beans cooked like this, unsweetened cornbread and slightly sweetened ice tea. My mother and mother in law would can many jars ( hundreds) of green beans each year, they were a staple of our home grown food supply. I mentioned a few days ago of them adding vinegar to their beans, it would only be enough to taste a “hint” of vinegar. In my area, Blue Lake bush beans or Kentucky Wonder pole beans often planted along with field corn were the favorites. Nowadays it is hard to be able to grow a garden of beans , or anything else because of the deer and change in the weather. For the last years every summer will turn off very hot and dry.