About Snap Beans (a.k.a bush beans, string beans, green beans)
What Makes a Great Snap Bean?
Snap beans have lots of everyday names; bush, string and green beans are three of the most common. When it comes to choosing beans to grow and eat, one quality matters most to us, and that is flavor. Beans are food, so how they eat is what counts.
Flavor Over Fiber: The Case for the Crooked Bean
Browse our Bush Beans
Eating quality in beans comes down to two things: flavor and fiber. More flavor is better, and less fiber is better.
Beans grown for processing are chopped before canning or freezing, so pod straightness hardly matters, and breeders of processing beans can concentrate on flavor and low fiber.
Bean Beauty Tip: Drink Plenty of Water
Drought stress strongly affects pod shape and quality. For good-looking beans, water steadily through flowering, pod set and pod development so plants never go short.
Fresh-market beans, the kind sold in supermarket produce bins, are usually bred to be straight, because straight pods look neater and are easier to pack, ship, stack and store. Keeping pods straight takes much more fiber in the tissue than processing beans have, so they are noticeably less tender.
Beans chosen for flavor may be a bit less straight than store-bought ones, but they are far more enjoyable to eat.
Other Important Traits in Snap Beans
A few other traits worth looking for in snap beans, and in other beans too:
- Seed color. Dark-seeded beans come up better in cool, damp soil than white-seeded ones. Most modern commercial beans have white seeds only because they look better after processing; dark seeds turn the product grayish.
- Upright growth. Look for plants that stand sturdy and upright. Upright plants keep pods off the soil, which means less disease and fewer rotted pods, and they're easier to weed and harvest.
- Yield. Keep picking! Regular harvesting is the key to high yield because it keeps plants producing. For standard bush beans that means every 5–7 days; for filet beans, every other day.
Snap Bean Varieties to Consider Growing
Organic 'Trilogy'
A blend chosen for a long, steady picking season of attractive, tasty organic snap beans.
Some snap beans worth growing for a harvest that lasts all season:
- Begin early with 'Provider,' a dark-seeded variety that comes up well in cool soil. Follow it with the reliable 'Jade' , a heavy producer with deep green pods.
- Picking beans can wear you out, and 'Affirmed' helps: it stands upright and sets its pods over a short window, so it suits both hand and machine harvest.
- Cooks will enjoy 'Tavera.' , whose very slender pods can be served whole.
- Add color to the stand or the plate with purple and yellow beans such as 'Amethyst' and 'Rocdor.' Purple pods turn green when cooked; yellow (wax) beans keep their color.
- For three colors from a single sowing, try 'Trilogy' , a good fit for small plots, backyard beds and city gardens.
- To compare bushy, mounding snap bean varieties, see our Bush Bean Comparison Chart.
Snap Beans vs. Green Beans
Some snap beans worth growing for a harvest that lasts all season:
- Begin early with 'Provider,' a dark-seeded variety that comes up well in cool soil. Follow it with the reliable 'Jade' , a heavy producer with deep green pods.
- Picking beans can wear you out, and 'Affirmed' helps: it stands upright and sets its pods over a short window, so it suits both hand and machine harvest.
- Cooks will enjoy 'Tavera.' , whose very slender pods can be served whole.
- Add color to the stand or the plate with purple and yellow beans such as 'Amethyst' and 'Rocdor.' Purple pods turn green when cooked; yellow (wax) beans keep their color.
- For three colors from a single sowing, try 'Trilogy' , a good fit for small plots, backyard beds and city gardens.
- To compare bushy, mounding snap bean varieties, see our Bush Bean Comparison Chart.
Snap beans and green beans are the same thing: beans eaten fresh, pod and all, while the seeds are still immature and the pod breaks with a crisp "snap." They're also called string beans, although many modern varieties have been bred with little or no string. Some people call them bush beans, but snap beans come in both bush and pole forms.
