Beans – Phaseolus vulgaris & Broadbeans – Vicia Faba

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaseolus_vulgaris

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicia_faba

I’m growing a wide variety but these are my favourites

Green Beans

• Runner – string
  • Scarlet runner
• French – Stringless and snap
  • Blue lake
  • Painted Lady
  • Purple king
  • Lazy (House)wife
  • Cherokee Wax

Shelling beans or dry beans

• Black Beans – commonly used in mexican burritos etc
  Growing Black Turtle bean

  ‘Quote’
  It is also common to keep the boiled water of these beans (which acquires a black coloring) and consume it as a soup with other ingredients for seasoning (known as sopa negra, black soup), as a broth (caldo de frijol, bean broth) or to season or color other dishes (aforementioned gallo pinto, for example).

• Borlotti or Roman beans
• Kidney beans – commonly used in chilli con carne
  

  ‘Quote’
  Raw kidney beans, and some other beans, contain the toxin phytohaemagglutinin, which is destroyed by boiling for at least ten minutes. Dry beans must be boiled prior to slow cooking to avoid poisoning. Even a few beans can be toxic, and beans can be as much as five times more toxic if cooked at 175°F (80°C) than if eaten raw, so adequate preboiling is vital.

• Flageolot beans
• Pinto beans – used commonly for refried beans

Broad beans – Vicia Faba – sometimes called fava
Growing

• Black & white Egyptian (small pods & green bean)
• Magenta/scarlet red flowered varieties  (green bean)
• Chocolate flowered  (green bean)
• White Grano (white bean)
• Violetta (purple bean)
• Red Epicure (red bean)
• Statissa (green bean)
• Scarlet Cambridge  (red bean)
• Long Pod (green bean)
• Aquadulce (green bean)
• Robin Hood  (green bean)
• Coles dwarf & prolific  (green bean)

These are the Small pod Egyptian beans on 3 November with lots of pods

Chickpea – Cicer arietinum
Only has about 2-3 peas per pod
– Small dark variey grown in India, mexico, Ethiopia, Iran
– Larger white variety grown in chile, northern africa, southern europe

Mung beans – were previously classified as Phaseolus but are now a different genus.