Food-Gardening Lessons From A Wartime Victory Garden

Best Green Beans for Northern Gardeners

“What green bean variety would you recommend for Minnesota?” – Question from Van of Hendricks, Minnesota

Answer: Early, early, early varieties! With the short northern summers of Minnesota, you want to choose a top-performing bean that produces as quickly as possible. Choose bush beans or pole beans, depending on your garden’s size and your planting preference. When seeking good veggie varieties for northern growers, I tend to turn to northern seed vendors, like Pinetree Seeds or Johnny’s, which are both based in Maine.

For bush beans, I recommend the early, disease-resistant, green bush bean ‘Provider‘, which yields in just 50 days from seed and germinates in cool soil. The flavorful heirloom bush bean ‘Bountiful‘ is even earlier, bearing green beans in just 46 days.

For pole beans, I LOVE the early-to-produce ‘Fortex‘. It’s long, slender, delicious beans appear in just 60 days from seed and are high yielding. I’m also a big fan of Roma green beans, and ‘Northeaster‘ is a very fast Roma that’s stringless, very early (56 days), and delicious!

I hope that you have good luck with these exceptional green beans! Happy gardening, Jessie

I also recommend you watch this Black Gold video on successful bean growing!

About JESSIE KEITH

Plants are the lens Jessie views the world through because they’re all-sustaining. (“They feed, clothe, house and heal us. They produce the air we breathe and even make us smell pretty.”) She’s a garden writer and photographer with degrees in both horticulture and plant biology from Purdue and Michigan State Universities. Her degrees were bolstered by internships at Longwood Gardens and the American Horticultural Society. She has since worked for many horticultural institutions and companies and now manages communications for Sun Gro Horticulture, the parent company of Black Gold. Her joy is sharing all things green and lovely with her two daughters.

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