Types of Beans: A Complete Guide to Bush, Pole, Snap & Shell Varieties

Beans are one of the most rewarding crops you can grow from seed: they sprout in days, forgive beginner mistakes, and crop heavily in a small footprint. As legumes they even pull nitrogen from the air and feed it back into the soil through their roots, so they leave a bed richer than they found it. But "beans" is a huge family, and a seed catalog full of them can look bewildering — snap, shell, wax, runner, bush, pole, dry. The good news is that every type of bean sorts along just two lines: how the plant grows (bush or pole) and how you harvest and eat it (snap, shell, or dry). Learn those two ideas and the whole catalog suddenly makes sense.

Bush vs. pole: how the plant grows

Bush beans grow as compact, self-supporting plants about one to two feet tall. They need no trellis, mature fast — usually 50 to 60 days — and set most of their pods in one concentrated wave over a week or two. That makes them ideal for a quick crop, a tidy raised bed, or a single big pick to can and freeze. Dependable heirloom bush beans include Contender, Provider, Tendergreen, and the purple Royal Burgundy. Pole beans are climbing vines that reach six to ten feet and need a trellis, teepee, or fence to run up. They take a couple of weeks longer to get going (around 60 to 70 days), but then keep flowering and podding for two months or more, giving far more beans per square foot of ground. Kentucky Wonder, Blue Lake, Rattlesnake, and the flat Italian Romano are classic pole varieties. For a small garden or a steady all-summer supply, pole beans win; for speed and simplicity, bush beans do.

Snap, shell, or dry: how you eat them

This is the axis that trips people up, because it is about when you harvest, not a different kind of plant.

Snap beans — also called green beans or string beans — are picked young, while the pods are crisp and the seeds inside are still tiny, and eaten whole, pod and all. Despite the "green" nickname they also come in yellow, which growers call wax beans (Golden Wax, Cherokee Wax), and in purple. Steam, sauté, or blanch them. Shell beans are left on the plant a step longer, until the seeds swell and fill the pod; you then shell the seeds out and cook them fresh, discarding the now-tough pod. Tongue of Fire (an Italian borlotti), Dragon Tongue, and Cannellini are prized shell beans, wonderful in soups and succotash. Dry beans go all the way: the pods are left to mature and dry right on the plant, then the hard seeds are threshed out and stored. Pinto, Black Turtle, Navy, kidney, Cranberry, and the striking Cherokee Trail of Tears are all dry beans — the cheapest, most storable protein you can grow, and the base of every chili and pot of baked beans.

Two more are worth knowing: lima beans (butter beans, such as Henderson and Fordhook) are shelled and eaten fresh or dried, and runner beans like Scarlet Runner give edible young pods, plump shell beans, and showy red flowers all at once.

Types of beans at a glance

Growing beans from seed

Whatever type you choose, beans are direct-sown crops — they resent transplanting, so skip the indoor start and sow the seeds right where they will grow. Wait until your last frost has passed and the soil has warmed to at least 60°F, because cold, wet ground rots the seed before it sprouts. Plant one inch deep in full sun, spacing bush beans two to four inches apart and pole beans four to six inches apart at the base of their support. Because beans are legumes, they need little added nitrogen; an inch of water a week and decent drainage is most of the job. Water at the soil line to keep the leaves dry and discourage disease.

Harvest and storage

The reward stage differs by type. Pick snap beans young and often — when the pods are firm and slender, before the seeds bulge — and check every two or three days, because frequent picking is the single best way to keep a plant producing instead of quitting. Refrigerate them for a few days, or blanch and freeze for winter. Harvest shell beans when the pods look full and lumpy but the seeds are still tender. For dry beans, leave the pods on the plant until they turn papery and rattle; if frost threatens first, pull the whole plants and hang them somewhere dry to finish. Thresh out the seeds, let them dry until a bean dents your teeth rather than the reverse, then store them airtight — properly dried beans keep for years.

Which type of bean should you grow?

For a fast, foolproof first crop, start with a bush snap bean such as Contender or Provider — direct-sow the seed after your last frost, keep it watered, and you will be picking in under two months with no staking at all. Want a long harvest, or short on ground space? Send a pole snap like Kentucky Wonder up a trellis. If your goal is beans to store for winter soups and chili, give a dry bean a full, warm season to ripen on the plant. And because every variety here is open-pollinated and non-GMO, you can save seed from your best plants and grow the same beans free next year.

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