What a month it has been! I’ve been traveling all over Eastern Kentucky visiting the beautiful gardens of our Grow Appalachia participants. If there is one thing I’ve learned this month, it’s that the people of Eastern Kentucky are serious when it comes to their beans.
Varieties
Growing up, I thought all green beans were the same. At the Knott County Farmers Market, customers not only ask what types of beans are being sold, but don’t buy any if it’s not their favorite type. White half-runners and greasy beans are two crowd favorites. White half-runners are white and crisp, whereas greasy beans are brown and have a fuller flavor. My new favorite is the rattlesnake bean: a long, purple-striped bean with a deep, meaty flavor.
Rattlesnake bean.
Shucky Beans
Many of our gardeners preserve beans for the winter by drying them. To do this, they string and break the beans, spread them out into a single layer, and dry them in the sun for several days. After this, the beans are ready to be stored in sealed plastic bags in the pantry for months. Any beans prepared this way are called “shucky” beans. Shucky beans are a regional specialty beloved for their place on the winter table. A more common name for them is pinto beans, but you won’t hear that phrase around here.
Shucky beans drying in the sun.
Garden Problems
One seasoned gardener is growing heirloom beans passed down in his family for several generations. These bean plants were the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, except for one tiny detail. Not one of them had any flowers or beans. Both of us were puzzled over why such beautiful plants weren’t producing any seeds. I returned home to research what might have gone wrong. It turns out that the soil was too fertile for the bean plants to reproduce. Bean plants need to be slightly stressed in order to produce seeds, which is why many novice gardeners are adept at growing them. I recommended that he not fertilize the plot any more this year. As of now, the plants have sprouted a few flowers, so hopefully the heirloom beans will survive to be planted another year.
Bean plants with no beans.
Very interesting
I’m from Eastern KY and was raised in the 70s when ppl still farmed and preserved food through the winter. We call Shucky beans “Shucked Beans” or “Leather Britches.” My observation however is that Shucky or Shucked, it’s always a variety of Green Beans that are used and dried. Pinto as a Species while is the very backbone of every Appalachians diet; Ala “Soup Beans” they are not indigenous or native to our area. It’s my understanding a new start-up has begun growing and selling Pinto beans proper in Eastern Ky. Thus proving they cannot only survive but thrive in our region. But as a child (like all locals) who grew up eating Soup Beans up to 4 days a week if not more. I always wondered why our main source of food wasn’t just grown by us? I guess their cheapness n availability (as well as there nutrional value) made it easier to purchase while heirloom crops were grown to supplement our tables through the winter with some much needed variety. Either way, I’m no botanist and my upbringing isn’t a qualification. Just saying, I’m fairly certain Shucked Beans are in fact Green Beans; with Pinto being an import and only recently introduced as a crop to the area.