Heirloom Thursday: Purple Podded Pole Beans

For this post, I'm going back almost all the way to the beginning of the blog; my second food post was on snap beans.  Similarly, I'm going back a month or so in my mind, to the height of the bounty of the Brookline Farmer's Market, which is quickly winding down (today is the second to last market of the year).  At that time, we came across piles of snap beans, including a pile of purple beans unlike any I'd ever seen.  Of course I had to try them!


History: Isn't the name great?  These purple green beans (purple haricots verts? No, just as bad.) were discovered in the 1930's, which qualifies them as an heirloom in most people's books.  The discoverer was one Henry Field, who found them in a garden in the Ozarks.  Presumably this was also the founder of the Henry Field's Seed & Nursery Company.

Adapted from the original post (September 11, 2008):


What's Edible: the pod and the seed (bean). Sometimes the leaves and the straw (for fodder).

Growing: Beans mostly just need water. Beans are usually fertilized once, several weeks after planting. They should not require pesticides, but pests include anthracnose, bean mosaic virus, bean rust, Mexican bean beetles, and Japanese beetles.

Harvesting: Pole beans, unlike bush beans, must be harvested by hand.  One plant will usually yield about five pickings, three to five days apart.  This is a labor intensive process, estimated to take about 300 hours per acre.  That's a busy workweek (60 hours) for a gang of five, for example. 

Processing: Beans are minimally processed, most of the time.  Canned green beans are definitely on the way out, although pickled and home-canned green beans have been gaining popularity recently.  Besides direct transport in fresh form, green beans are often frozen.

Health Information: Snap beans perhaps don't contain the same large amount of fiber as shelling beans, but they still provide 15% of your daily fiber in one cup. At only 34 Calories, they are very filling by serving size.  They also contain some surprising vitamins: A (15% of RDA), C (30% of RDA), and K (20% of RDA).  Purple beans, by the way, will lose their brilliant color and look like regular old green beans after cooking, sorry!

Sustainability: Beans help remediate soil, because they fix nitrogen like all legumes.  The plants, once the harvest is over, can be used for straw.  The biggest environmental issue surrounding snap beans is their transport to cold climates during winter.  However, it is not so simple, as Fred Pearce points out in Confessions of an Eco-Sinner.  He travels to Kenya and finds small-holder farmers earning a decent living, supporting their families, and enjoying one of the unimaginable luxuries of Western society: a television.  These farmers are still living quite sustainably, and Mr. Pearce calculates that even when you add the environmental footprint of their beans flying to far off places, they still consume less energy than a typical Westerner.

Bottom Line: One of the healthiest foods you can find, with minimal byproducts and packaging needs.

References:
1. Wikipedia
2. "2003: Year of the Bean"
3. Nutrition Facts for Green Beans
4. Image of purple beans mixed with green by storebukkebruse, via Creative Commons