Beans: Versatile vegetables come in a multitude of varieties

As the season for planting tender vegetables approaches, it's time to think about beans. Few garden plants come in as many types and variations as beans, so you're certain to find some that suit your fancy. The National Garden Bureau designated 2003 as "The Year of the Bean," so read on to find out more about these vegetables.

Beans belong to the legume family (Leguminocae), as do peas and soybeans. Legumes fix nitrogen in the soil, making them a soil-improving crop. Most edible beans are in the genus Phaseolus, and snap beans are P. vulgaris. The genus name is Latin for kidney bean; the species name translates simply as common.

Garden beans come in four types; snap beans, broad beans, green shelling beans and dry shelling beans. Snap beans are by far the most popular in this country as garden vegetables. The name comes from the sound they make when the pods are broken. If they are fresh, they make a nice "snap" when you bend them until they break.

Eat snap beans fresh or cooked.

Green shelling beans include the popular lima beans. We eat the young, green seeds inside the pods. Broad beans are flat beans that are popular in Europe but are less common as a vegetable in this country.

Dry shell, or dry beans, include many popular types such as pinto, navy and kidney. We grow these for the mature seeds, which dry in the pods on the vine before being shelled. Most home gardeners don't grow these because of space constraints, but farmers in Southeastern Utah near Monticello grow many pinto beans.

Snap beans are a variable lot. While most are green, yellow wax beans, purple beans and even other colors show up. In addition to the color variations, they are variable in how they grow and produce. Bush beans grow on compact stems while pole beans climb trellises or other devices.

French beans are bush-type beans that produce narrow, sometimes pencil-thin, pods. Romano beans, a favorite from Italy, are thicker and flatter than other snap beans. Wax beans have yellow pods that look rather waxy, but they don't taste like wax.

Before breeders developed stringless varieties, beans had fibrous strings along the seam of the pod and were aptly known as string beans. After picking, you needed to remove the strings and cook the beans for a long time to soften the pods. This was time-consuming and made the beans bland and tasteless. Because of this drawback, before the late 1800s, most beans were raised as shelled, dried beans and not fresh green beans.