Seed source: FM05.

Very prolific pole bean. Young pods are so sweet they're great eating raw or in salads. Pods are fairly dark green splotched with purple; the purple markings sometimes fade on some plants as they age. Fully mature pods are up to 15cm long, approx. 1 - 1.5cm diam. Mature beans thresh easily and dry well; flavour of the dried beans is outstanding -- this is an excellent bean for baked-beans.

The plants will grow as long as you can give them support for! Mine top out at over 2.5m tall and I have to stretch to harvest from them. They produce prolifically and continuously as long as you harvest. Pick them over for teenage-sized pods every 3 or 4 days.

I direct-sow them in clusters of 4, each cluster on the edge of a bed, 1m apart. Opposite bed-edges are staggered so that I can arrange tripods to support the plants. Plants are quite attractive to a number of pests: slugs & snails love the leaves and young pods. Rats seem to like eating the plant stems, which can represent quite a problem, as it means the loss of an entire stem and all that's on it. The plants do resprout new shoots, but it sets back the time to harvest quite badly.

Flowers are a very attractive purple. Pods are set in pairs on trusses of 4 to 6 pods.

Disease-resistance seems reasonably good. The first time I've had any problem was SummerSeason09 which was a very humid, low-light Spring and early-Summer. The RattlesnakeBeans caught some form of rust disease, but eventually seemed to outgrow it and still managed to produce well. Later plantings seem to have avoided this disease.

16-Feb-09

Planted 2 tripods, GardenBed7, north end.