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Gifted by Henry Harrington, Southland, from Henry’s Grandmother (refer #238: Grandparent’s Takamatua Black). Good as a dried bean as well as young green beans. From J L Hopkins, Ohera, 2017; Alan Nilsen, 2016; Ross Lill, 2016.
Volume per packet:
mL
$3.00
Expected viability:
yrs
Gifted by Henry Harrington, Southland, from Henry’s Grandmother (refer #238: Grandparent’s Takamatua Black). Good as a dried bean as well as young green beans. From J L Hopkins, Ohera, 2017; Alan Nilsen, 2016; Ross Lill, 2016.
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Copyright © Southern Seed Exchange, 2021
Ross Lill –
This is a white-flowered runner bean with white seeds. The immature beans work ok as a green vegetable but seem a bit coarser than our family line of scarlet runner. The mature dried beans are an excellent culinary bean.
I grow a small patch with a temporary netting fence for support, and as soon as the pods dry, I pick them and finish drying in a shed. The maturing pods aren’t comfortable in our damp climate and tend to attract fungal infections. Extracting the seeds? I open the pods by hand. I have tried them through my chain thresher but too many of the beans were split in half, so every now and then I just spend a quiet quarter hour shucking beans. They come out nice and clean so need no more work than maybe discarding the small and spotty ones, which can be quickly done by hand.
We cook the bean by pouring boiling water over them, standing them for an hour or so, then about 20 minutes in the pressure cooker. After they’re cool, they go in the freezer, free-flow so that it’s easy to grab a couple of handfuls for soups, casseroles, stews or stir-fries. They bulk out the dish, enabling us to reduce the quantity of meat, which is a good thing for several reasons.
It is interesting that a crop that has relatively few large seeds that are grown to be eaten intensifies the competition between the kitchen and the seed store. You definitely need to squirrel away the seed stocks before the kitchen nabs them all.