Beans and seeds at your front door

By Marianne C. Ophardt, Special to the Herald

Last week, we discussed mail-order catalogs from purveyors of tomato and pepper seeds.

It was no surprise to find catalogs that focus on the top crops of home veggie growers, but there are some specialty companies that are more unusual. One of these is a company that specializes in beans.

The Vermont Bean Seed Company sells 109 different varieties of beans in twelve different categories. Beans!

Belying their name, the Vermont Bean Seed Company is located in Randolph, Wis. Their beans include a wide range of beans from the predictable green bush and pole beans to French filet beans, soy beans, broad beans, lima beans, flat podded beans, dry shell beans, cowpeas, and dry beans. These include yellow and purple podded varieties.

Intriguing to me are the unique and unusual bean varieties. One bean that gardeners rave about is the "yard-long bean." Vermont Bean Seed Company (VBSC) offers Liana, a yard-long bean "valued in the Orient for its sweet, succulent tender pods." The beans are one-quarter inch in diameter and up to 36 inches long. It's a vining bean plant that can grow over 10 feet tall, so a trellis is needed.

The VBSC dry bean offerings are very impressive with a number of heirloom beans of different colors and patterns. One of these is Peregion, an Oregon heirloom with beautifully colored beans in varying shades and swirling patterns of brown. These beans are very productive and have great flavor.

If ornamentals are your preference, VBSC also carries several different types of scarlet runner beans that are often grown more for their pretty flowers than for their edible beans. The Painted Lady has pretty red and white flowers that are attractive to hummingbirds and Sunset Runner produces uniquely colored salmon-pink flowers. The runner beans can be trained to a trellis or a fence for creating an attractive temporary screening.

Along with extensive bean offerings, VBSC also sells other vegetable seed and "supplies that are sure to make your gardening experience easier and more enjoyable." You can find them at VermontBean.com.

One of my favorite specialty vegetable catalogs is Irish Eyes Garden Seeds, who specialize in organically grown garlic and seed potatoes. Last summer, I had the chance to visit this company tucked away in the Kittitas Valley near Ellensburg. Garlic gardeners will be delighted to find that they offer an amazing number of garlic varieties, including both hardneck and softneck types.

One of their best selling garlics is Spanish Roja, a rocambole hardneck touted as "a gourmet garlic famous for flavor." It produces purple streaked bulbs with seven to 13 easy-to-peel cloves. According to Irish Eyes, it came to the Northwest before 1900 and is often called Greek Lilac by this region's gardeners.

Another best seller is Early Italian Purple, an artichoke softneck that's well-adapted to summer heat, producing large white and purple striped bulbs with lots of small cloves.

If you like your garlic hot like me, you might want to try Lorz Italian. another artichoke softneck with very strong hot flavor.

Irish Eyes also offers a good number of organic seed potatoes along with organic early season vegetable seed. They do sell out of some types of seed and potatoes each year, so they recommend ordering early so you can get what you want. You won't be able to order garlic at this time of year, so get on the mailing list for their fall catalog. They can be found at www.irish-eyes.com.

Ronniger Potato Farm is another specialty vegetable mail-order company. As you can imagine from the name, potatoes are their main game. They divide their potato offerings into four main groups: early season, mid-season, late season and fingerlings.

My personal favorites are the red-skinned varieties. I recommend Sangre, a very dark red-skinned variety developed at the University of Colorado. It produces plentiful small red tubers. If you're like me, you might also enjoy Viking Red with a bright red skin and good flavor for baking or boiling, plus it grows great in hot climates. Ronniger notes that it sizes rapidly, going from "golfball to baseball size overnight."

Ronniger also sells soft neck and hard neck garlic, onion seed and Jerusalem artichoke tubers. This is another company that you should check out and order from early, because they sell out of their popular varieties very early. Ronniger Potato Farm is located in Austin, Colo., and can be reached online at www.ronnigers.com.

* Marianne C. Ophardt is a horticulturist for the Washington State University Extension Office in Benton County. Read more of Ophardt's Garden Tips columns at www.tricity herald.com/ophardt.

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Saturday, Jan. 03, 2009

Beans and seeds at your front door

By Marianne C. Ophardt, Special to the Herald