In My Garden: Italian Roma Bush Beans!

Sep 14

I planted what I thought were edamame beans in my garden. I must have forgotten to put on my glasses because when the plants came up, they were a somewhat different-looking bean. I went back to my seed files and realized I had planted Italian Roma Bush Beans. We were looking forward to having a few meals with edamame beans but that wasn't going to happen. Oh well.

The plants don't grow very high, probably 12" max. So no real need to trellis. I just put a few stakes in so the plants could have something to stand upright against.

When the beans started to mature, we thought we would try them. They are a stringless bean, 4" to 5" long, and somewhat flat like an edamame, but bigger. Laura steamed them for five minutes and we ate them completely plain - no salt or Earth Balance (our favorite non-dairy butter). Talk about melt-in-your-mouth goodness!

This was one of those times when a gardening mistake turned into a pleasant surprise. See more pictures below.