Runner Bean

Runner beans are one of the most forgiving climbers you can grow, but they reward a bit of prep work handsomely. Don't rush them into cold soil — wait until the ground hits at least 55°F and all frost danger has passed, because a chilled seed will rot before it sprouts. Get your trellis, teepee, or cattle panel in place before sowing, since these plants put on serious height fast and you don't want to be wrestling supports around established roots. Dig a generous amount of compost into a deep bed the season before; the classic old-timer trick is to bury kitchen scraps or fill a trench with rotted manure over winter so the bed is loaded with moisture-holding richness by planting time. The single biggest mistake I see is letting the soil dry out once flowering starts — runner beans simply will not set pods on parched roots, and you'll get a wall of pretty blooms and nothing to eat. Pick pods young and keep picking; the moment you let beans mature on the vine, the plant decides its job is done and slows production to a crawl.

These were grown ornamentally in Europe long before anyone trusted them on the dinner plate, but the kitchen is exactly where they earn their keep now. Harvest the pods young and tender — six to eight inches — and they're stringless and sweet, lovely steamed or thrown into a stir-fry; let them go too long and they turn fibrous and need slicing. The mature seeds, those big handsome speckled beans, dry beautifully for winter storage and cook up creamy in stews and soups, much like a fat lima. A word of caution worth passing along: like most beans in this family, the raw seeds contain lectins and should always be cooked thoroughly before eating, never nibbled fresh. Traditionally the roots were dug and overwintered like dahlia tubers in colder regions to get a head start the following year, and in their native Central American highlands they've been a perennial staple food crop for thousands of years. There's no serious medicinal tradition here — this is firmly a food plant — but a well-grown stand will feed you for months and the tubers will come back to do it again.