Jack and the Heirloom Beanstalk

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Every year I grow at least one new thing in the garden.  I try to make it something I’ve never seen in a grocery store.  This year it was a dried bean called Akahana Mame from Kitazawa Seed.  Are they not gorgeous?  The photo on the Kitazawa site shows them as red and black, but mine are lavender and black. 

From Kitazawa:

This rare and beautiful Japanese bean is also called “flower bean.” Grown as a pole bean, this variety produces gorgeous red flowers and pods up to 8” long. The striking 1” beans are a deep red color dappled with purple and black. Best if wrinkled beans are soaked before boiling. After cooking, rinse beans, and then add sugar and salt. Dissolve sugar by heating again. Toss with a large spoon so as to not break the beans.

The vines really do produce a very pretty red flower.  I was almost sorry to see them make way for the beans pods, which sort of look like lima beans a little.

As with all garden experiments, I had no idea what to expect from Akahana Mame beans.  You just never know how any vegetable will do in your particular soil, in your particular climate.  The beans did fantastically!  The vines got huge and is producing vigorously.  I haven’t tasted the beans yet.  But providing the beans are a good tasting variety, I will definitely be adding Akahana Mame as a permanent part of my garden...and planting a lot more of them.

I’ve grown dried beans before - cranberry, cannellini...you know, normal varieties.  For some, the space they take up in the garden isn’t really worth the yield.  And locally grown dried beans are readily available via Margerum’s (Clark Park and Headhouse Square markets).  But I do think dried beans are worth growing yourself IF you seed out more unusual varieties. 

For next year’s garden, I’m considering a few more varieties of dried beans.  Victory Seeds sells a nice variety of both bush and pole type dried beans, as does Salt Springs Seeds.  I also saw these great-looking orange Tiger’s Eye dried beans at Seeds of Change.