ABOUT SHELL BEANS

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If legumes are heavily fertilized, they produce lush leaves but few beans.

Young fava beans, pod and all, are sometimes cooked like green beans, and the beans themselves can be cooked fresh from the pods like peas. Usually, though, mature beans are shelled from pods dried on the vine and are cooked like lima beans.

Great northern white beans, though usually dried for baked dishes, can, in short-season areas, be harvested as a green shell bean in only 65 days. The bush-type plants are very high-yielding.

Horticultural beans (also called shell, wren's egg, bird egg, speckled cranberry, or October beans) come in both pole and dwarf varieties and can produce big harvests in small gardens. The colorful, mottled pods can be eaten like snap beans when young, but most people prefer to use the rich, nutty, red-speckled seeds, which mature in 65 to 70 days, as fresh shell beans and for canning and freezing. Some Southerners claim horticultural beans are best after the pods begin to turn slightly dry or "shucky."

Lima beans (known as butter beans or butter peas in the South) probably originated in Guatemala but were first shipped to Europe from Lima, Peru, and take their name from that port. These warm-weather plants are highly sensitive to chilly weather, so they must be sown well after the last frost date. Bush varieties take two to two and a half months to mature; pole types generally require three months to produce a crop, but the vines grow quickly, sometimes to as long as 30 feet! You can choose among varieties that produce thick or flat or large or small limas, all packed with vitamins A and C. Though these legumes are typically green in color, there are also speckled types.

Mung beans, which can be grown in any area that has 90 days of frost-free temperatures, produce bushy plants up to three feet tall, sporting long, thin, hairy pods, which when young can be cooked and eaten. Each pod contains nine to 15 small yellow seeds. These can be used fresh or dried. In their native India, mung beans are cooked and pureed as a part of the daily diet. In most other parts of the world, the dried seeds are used to produce crispy, nutritious bean sprouts.

Pinto beans, best known for their use in Mexican cuisine, are a close kin to the red kidney bean. Their strong vines take up more space than bush-type beans, so they are usually grown like pole beans but are allowed to dry on the vine. A three- to four-month growing season is required.

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