How do you go about choosing a legume to grow in your garden? I sort legumes in several different ways; each type has its advantages and disadvantages, which are worth considering before you plant.
Season Length and Planting Time
Some legumes (peas, favas, chickpeas, lentils, grasspeas) don’t mind frost and grow well in cool weather. Others (beans, Limas, cowpeas, teparies, soys) are much more easily killed by cold, and may rot if you have a lot of cold, wet weather just after you plant them. Adzuki and runner beans are an intermediate category; they can survive cold, but will be damaged by frost. Generally the warm-weather legumes yield more, if you have the season length for them to reach maturity. Also, generally the longer-season varieties within a species will yield more than shorter-season varieties.
Trellising
Many legume species (peas, beans, Lima beans, runner beans and cowpeas) have both vine and bush varieties. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Building trellis is a bit of a bother, but so is crawling along the rows to pick your harvest. Pole varieties tend to be indeterminate; that is, they ripen gradually from the bottom to the top of the plant, while bush varieties tend to be more determinate, maturing all at once. Indeterminates must be picked repeatedly; we go over our dry beans every 2-3 days as they mature, to harvest as many beans as possible at just the right stage of dryness. With some determinate bush varieties of dry legumes, you can just cut the whole plant and thresh it later, saving considerable time; however, if you get a lot of rain in the wrong week you can lose your crop, which is much less likely with pole varieties (the trellising also holds the pods up where they get less splashing and can dry better after rain, decreasing mold). Pole varieties also tend to yield more per square metre.
Seed Size
There is a substantial amount of variation in seed size between different varieties of legumes. With beans, anyway (where I have the most experience), it seems to me that seed size does not have any effect on overall yield and is not connected to plant size; a variety’s number of days to maturity is much more important. This means that if you have two beans which take the same number of days to mature and yield similar quantities (in terms of cups or weight), the one with smaller seeds will have more pods, and the one with larger seeds will have fewer. Therefore, if you have a very small planting you may want a smaller-seeded variety so that you have to replant less of your crop next year (since it produces more seeds); but if you have a larger planting you may wish to grow a larger-seeded variety so that you have fewer pods to pick. Smaller-seeded varieties also tend to cook faster.
Yield
How much will dry legumes yield? I have frequently found it frustrating how rarely seed sellers discuss this question when offering varieties, since it can obviously be of considerable importance to the grower. I suspect the main reason most companies are unwilling to give estimates of yield is that we don’t want to disappoint customers; the care you give to your crop, the soil, climate and weather conditions will all have significant effects on how much you get. But here are my results this past year from my own growing. I don’t water my dry legumes at all. The yields below are estimates of how many cups of dry legumes I got from a 25’ x 3’ (7.6 x 1 m) bed in 2021. My data is, unfortunately, often incomplete or extrapolated from smaller plantings; we don’t actually grow that many beds of legumes!
| Variety | Days to maturity | Seeds per ¼ cup | Yield (cups/ 25’ bed) | Seeds harvested per seed planted | Notes |
| Amish Nuttle bean | 90-117 | 170 | 21 | 95 | *Asterisk in this column indicates yield is extrapolated from a smaller planting. |
| Arikara Yellow bush bean | 96-102 | 90 | 22 | 40 | * |
| Cherokee Trail of Tears bean | 100-125 | 183 | 41 | 271 | * |
| Dolloff bean | 86-115 | 87 | 16 | 38 | Small vines; could have planted more densely to raise yield |
| Jacob’s Cattle bush bean | 89-100 | 72 | 20 | 30 | * |
| Kahnawake Mohawk pole bean | 100-125 | 64 | 43 | 73 | |
| Macuzalito bush bean | 96-109 [two plantings] | 189 | 14 | 71 | Shaded by trees, no fair |
| Quincy Pinto bush bean | 90-103 | 98 | 27 | 53 | * |
| Steeves Caseknife bean | 86-93 | 82 | 33 | 110 | *Surprisingly high; don’t believe it, but can’t find the flaw in my math |
| Turkey Craw bean | 101-118 | 125 | 33 | 110 | * |
| Uganda Bantu bean | 103-128 | 130 | 25 | 137 | * |
| Vermont Cranberry bush bean | 100-125 | 85 | 18 | 42 | * |
| Scarlet runner bean | 114-140 | 38 | 36.5 | 56 | |
| Alaska pea | 96 | 205 | 13.5 | 18.5 | |
| Biskopens Gråært pea | 119 | 127 | 20 | 17 | |
| Capucijner pea | 112 | 136 | 20.5 | 18.5 | |
| Capujineer bush pea | 115 | 99 | 17 | 11 | |
| St. Hubert’s pea | 109 | 275 | 17 | 32 | |
| Martoc fava | 125 | 87 | 17 | 33 | |
| Ianto’s Return fava | 128 | 24 | 24 | 12.5 |
One bed means a planting of 600 peas in 4 rows; 200 bush beans in 2 rows; 150 pole beans in 4 rows; 75 runner beans in 2 rows; or 200 favas on an 8” grid.