French Beans!

[digitS']

I'm baaack!

Maybe the British TEG gardeners will comment but don't the British call all the beans Americans call snap or green, "French?"

Doesn't it take cutting the bean before it's a "filet?" And, don't the British put the quotation mark to the left of the "question mark"? Oh. Never mind ...

I got most of the beans picked including Burpee's French Filet (link). Those things are phenomenal!

Sometimes, the spider mites move in on the bush beans so bad that there is no chance for a 2nd crop. There's only a little of that this year. The French Filet bush beans have been going strong all season. There's no 2nd or 3rd crops, they never stopped!

The seed is tiny. Even though the plants are not large and can be crowded a little, a half pound of seed goes along way. Pick 'em when they are small, too. You'll have to be out there nearly every day.

Caveat (that might be French ), if you like lots of "beany" flavor to your beans, you might be disappointed. If you are someone like DW who think green beans should be pretty, super productive French Filet may be for you.

Steve
who has tried some filet pole beans and wasn't very happy with them.

 

[journey11]

One of the African bean varieties I grew out for Russ this year was a filet bean. The only filet bean I've ever tried. It wasn't really among my favorites for flavor either.

 

[Hal]

I'm baaack!

Maybe the British TEG gardeners will comment but don't the British call all the beans Americans call snap or green, "French?"

Doesn't it take cutting the bean before it's a "filet?" And, don't the British put the quotation mark to the left of the "question mark"? Oh. Never mind ...

I got most of the beans picked including Burpee's French Filet (link). Those things are phenomenal!

Sometimes, the spider mites move in on the bush beans so bad that there is no chance for a 2nd crop. There's only a little of that this year. The French Filet bush beans have been going strong all season. There's no 2nd or 3rd crops, they never stopped!

The seed is tiny. Even though the plants are not large and can be crowded a little, a half pound of seed goes along way. Pick 'em when they are small, too. You'll have to be out there nearly every day.

Caveat (that might be French ), if you like lots of "beany" flavor to your beans, you might be disappointed. If you are someone like DW who think green beans should be pretty, super productive French Filet may be for you.

Steve
who has tried some filet pole beans and wasn't very happy with them.

DigitS, France has a wealth of snap beans and they have so many old and new cultivars it would boggle your mind and this is how in part they picked up the name French beans as England did import many cultivars hence the origin got woven into the name. (They also did steal some cultivars from the French, good old rivalry I guess)

Filet beans are amazing, they tend to have long thin seeds to match the long thin round pods as you have noticed and it always makes planting them interesting.
I'm glad to hear they are doing well for you, can't have too many. Try Deuil Fin Precoce or any of the older ones from France if you can find them.

 

[digitS']

I see that Prairie Garden has the Deuil Fin Precoce. I've looked at that website a number of times and think I can order from that Canadian outfit .

I liked having Burpee's other filet bean, forget the name. I'm now out of seed for both and DW may be insistent about having some .

Fortunately, I can have a tasty pole bean and fortunately also, this is good bean country. Still, I notice that green beans often win online polls as the "easiest" for gardeners everywhere to grow.

You know, I only sampled one of Russ' beans. Ate one raw in the garden before panicking over not getting sufficient seed. Ha! That was ridiculous for the half-runner he sent me to trial, especially. Those vines were loaded with nice pods a few weeks ago.

Steve

 

[Hal]

I see that Prairie Garden has the Deuil Fin Precoce. I've looked at that website a number of times and think I can order from that Canadian outfit .

I liked having Burpee's other filet bean, forget the name. I'm now out of seed for both and DW may be insistent about having some .

Fortunately, I can have a tasty pole bean and fortunately also, this is good bean country. Still, I notice that green beans often win online polls as the "easiest" for gardeners everywhere to grow.

You know, I only sampled one of Russ' beans. Ate one raw in the garden before panicking over not getting sufficient seed. Ha! That was ridiculous for the half-runner he sent me to trial, especially. Those vines were loaded with nice pods a few weeks ago.

Steve

Prairie Garden seeds are worthy of your money
Triumph de Farcy, Fin de Bagnols and Comtesse de Chambord are also listed and good.
Do you normally save bean seed or just buy it each season?

 

[digitS']

Ha! I was once again pointing out to DW just yesterday, that any of our beans could be saved for seed.

@Hal , long story short - only a few pole bean seeds.

I didn't grow dry beans for something like 25 years. Then, I wanted to try soy. My first experience with having edamame, I became determined to NOT be faced with making tofu, eeever again!

Somewhere in this process, @marshallsmyth convinced me that I was missing out on dry bean varieties. I'm glad he did . I now grow a few.

Steve

 

[Hal]

Ha! I was once again pointing out to DW just yesterday, that any of our beans could be saved for seed.

@Hal , long story short - only a few pole bean seeds.

I didn't grow dry beans for something like 25 years. Then, I wanted to try soy. My first experience with having edamame, I became determined to NOT be faced with making tofu, eeever again!

Somewhere in this process, @marshallsmyth convinced me that I was missing out on dry bean varieties. I'm glad he did . I now grow a few.

Steve

Good, then all is well

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Grew a french filet bean called Maxibel this year. The large bushy plants constantly churned out loads of pods. The downside to that is that they became inedible and stringy fast after they reached the size of a shoestring - too much picking to be done too often for tiny pods.

But... I might still grow them for the sake of biodiversity.

 

[897tgigvib]

Hay Digit, I'll be sending you a few more dry bean seeds sometime this winter. I have some varieties that are super pretty, and I'm thinking Mrs. Digit will really like them.

Some are so doggoned purty she'll probably want to use them in a 3 bean salad recipe so they can be eaten still looking all purty-like!

2 of your northwest adapted soldier bean plants are working on doing a second crop.

@TheSeedObsesser I did find a few small pods in the cannelinni runner beans, so i did just better than break even. Summer was just too hot for them.
But the sunset runners did better, and there are more pods working on ripening. They seem a bit more heat tolerant.

The Bei Soy did pretty good! Even though the plants got overwhelmed by nearby bush beans, Each plant had bunches and bunches of small pods, each with 2 seeds, and they harvested all at once as the plants finished.

The Red Adzuki grew as bush, and struggled right along, never giving up. They produced some, and I think in a normal summer they will do well. I got around 10 seeds per plant, and all 3 are still trying to make more pods.

 

[digitS']

@marshallsmyth , I have been impressed by the Lemon Boy de-hybrid, as you know. I have begun to refer to it as the General Mischief tomato.

The plants are easily in the top 3 of the open-pollinated varieties. There are about 25 of those. It's been a difficult year for all the plants, depending partly on whether they were on the windward or leeward of the tomato patch.

If I use 6sqft/plant next year, I can have seed from 1,000 General Mischief plants at your doorstep by October for the worldwide debut of the variety in 2016!

Steve