How to Grow Fine, Tender Filet Beans

comments (1) June 3rd, 2009     

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by Melissa Bateman
June 2001
from issue #33

One day at the farmer’s market, a customer took one look at my filet beans and inquired whether I had grown the ones she had eaten the previous night at a local restaurant. I had. She proceeded to rave about how incredible the beans had been. To her, they were the most memorable part of the meal. Fancy that, green beans being the best part of a delicious meal at a fine restaurant. She bought a pound of beans and went home happy.

What is the allure of filet beans, also known as haricots verts? To me, it’s their tender, fresh sweetness, that essential green bean flavor condensed into one small package—green bean perfection. The chefs we sell to love them, because filet beans really add elegance to a dinner plate. And they are our favorite crop to grow.

Small-seeded varieties are more tender
We live and farm four miles north of  Taos, New Mexico, at an elevation of 7,600 feet. Our average yearly rainfall is 12 inches. We have a four-month growing season and heavy winds in May and June. How can we grow good filet beans in such an extreme climate? The secret of our success lies in our choice of varieties. We have trialed numerous varieties of filet beans here at the farm. Our all-time favorite is ‘Finaud’. It is always the most tender and sweetest bean in our garden, and it bears bigger crops. When ‘Finaud’ was commercially unavailable for a couple of years, we replaced it with ‘Tavera’ and ‘Nickel’. Luckily, ‘Finaud’ is going to be back on the market this year. All three of these varieties are very small-seeded, and the smaller the seed, the more tender the bean.

The small white seeds in the photo at left are those of the author's preferred varieties: 'Finaud', her favoriate, and 'Nickel', and 'Tavera', which are shown at right. All are tender, flavorful, and productive.

There is another type or class of filet bean that has large seeds. I have trialed a number of these: ‘Vernandon’, ‘Fin des Bagnols’, ‘Triomphe de Farcy’, and ‘Emerite’, a pole-bean type that requires trellising or some kind of support. None has been satisfactory despite the glowing catalog descriptions. In our garden, they produce relatively few beans, which are usually large and tough, even when picked daily. I can’t recommend them, although I have wondered occasionally if these varieties would do better in a different climate.

Fertile soil and regular moisture are critical

	Sources for bean seeds Most vegetable catalogs offer filet bean seed. The following sell varieties  recommended by the author. The Cooks Garden PO Box C5030 Warminster, PA 18974 800-457-9703 http://www.cooksgarden.com Johnny's Selected Seeds 955 Benton Avenue Winslow, Maine 04901 877-564-6697 http://www.johnnyseeds.com

As organic farmers, we invest a lot of effort on soil preparation. We add compost and minerals to our soil and grow cover crops. We have a heavy clay-loam soil, high in organic matter, with a neutral pH. For the home gardener, some well-cared-for soil with a light treatment of compost should provide filet beans with nearly all the nutrients they need.
We irrigate all our crops with drip tape, which we lay right beside each row of beans. During the growing season, we run daily cycles of water. The filet beans get 30 to 45 minutes per day, either in the evening or early morning. This keeps the soil moist but not soggy. You will need to adjust watering to suit your climate conditions.

A filet bean timetable
I wait for the weather to settle to plant filet beans. When the soil is warm enough to plant corn, 60°F, it’s also safe for beans. In cooler soils, filet beans germinate erratically, and the plantings lack vigor. They end up bearing about the same time as later plantings. But you don’t need a soil thermometer to know when to plant; when it feels safe to set out tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers, you can plant beans, too. I can usually sow a first crop by June 5.  It will begin to yield about 50 days later, around July 25. I do a series of succession plantings, allowing 10 days to two weeks between plantings. Yields vary with weather conditions, but typically the first week of harvest is scanty, the second week is heavy, and the yield tapers off again the third week. After that we tear out the beans and plant a cover crop.

Delicious ways to prepare filet beans: • Versatile Green Bean Salad • Salade Niçoise • Filet Beans in Spicy Yogurt Dressing Green bean recipes from FineCooking.com: • Haricots Verts with Toasted Walnuts and Chèvre • Niçoise Salad with Grilled Tuna & Potatoes • Green Beans with Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette & Parmesan Breadcrumbs

Filet beans tolerate no frost at all and tend to brown like basil at about 38°F. Keep this in mind when choosing dates for succession plantings. I recommend making your last planting 80 days before your last frost-free date. If you live where summers get very hot, consider planting filet beans in the spring or fall. You need 70 to 80 days of moderate temperatures—nights not below 40°F and daytime temperatures of 70° to 90°F. These are normal summertime temperatures here at our farm. Filet beans lose tenderness in hotter weather. Another commercial grower, 40 minutes to the south of us and in a hotter climate, finds she must pick her beans smaller to maintain tenderness.

How many beans should you plant at a time? One plant will yield about 1⁄2 pound of beans total. If I were planting just for our family of four, I would plan on having 5 to 10 plants per planting. To the first planting I would add three extra plants for seed saving, and in a second or third succession, I would sow a larger planting of 20 plants to make our favorite dill beans for wintertime snacking. Keep in mind that when they’re in season, we eat filet beans daily, so adjust your planting accordingly. I can only imagine how thrilled a neighbor or co-worker would be to receive any excess beans you might grow.

Inoculate for a better, healthier crop
Prior to planting, we inoculate bean seeds with nitrogen-fixing bacteria powder. This step allows the beans to produce nitrogen. When we pull up inoculated plants, either to clean up for a cover crop or to thin, we see nitrogen nodules on the roots. Now don’t get too excited about this, because the beans use about the same amount of nitrogen they produce. We don’t get a bean crop and a cover crop out of the filet bean. But I do see a hardier plant, and I think it’s worth the time to inoculate. All you need is a clean tin can holding all the beans you plan to plant in the next half hour, a sprinkle of inoculant, and a splash of water to make the inoculant stick to the beans. Give the can a shake and you’re ready to plant. If you don’t sow all the seeds you inoculate, let them dry out and store them for another planting.

Inoculating bean seed with nitrogen-fixing bacteria enables the plant to convert nitrogen in the air to a form usable by plants. It takes only a little inoculant powder and a splash of water in a clean can to treat the bean seeds (left). The white nodules on the roots of inoculated plants are where the nitrogen conversion takes place (right).

I plant beans in shallow furrows cut open with the edge of a hoe. I space the seed 2 inches apart, then rake soil over the seeds, burying them 1⁄2 inch. The rows of beans are spaced 18 inches apart. The last step is to turn on the drip system and soak the soil thoroughly.

Fill in any holes in your planting by sowing more seed. These seedlings now have their first true leaves, and are ready to thin to 4 inches apart. Drip tape provides water dailly during the growing season, a necessity in this New Mexico garden at an elevation of 7,600 ft.

	A scuffle hoe, left, makes quick work of weeding. Working with the colinear hoe, right, is more exact; you can get very close to the plant stems.
	The bright-yellow Mexican bean beetle larva is a sign of potential trouble. Look for them on the undersides of leaves, and squash any you find.

When the beans are showing their first true leaves, I quickly thin out half the plants, and weed the rows. We rely on a colinear hoe and a scuffle hoe to do most of our weeding work. I use the scuffle hoe most often because it’s quick; I can kill lots of weeds fast with it. The colinear hoe is better for more selective weeding, because you can get really close to a plant with this tool. It’s almost like hand weeding. Several weeks later, as the plants bush out, I go back over the rows, thinning to an 8-inch spacing between plants, and weeding a final time. Once the plants fill out, they shade out most weeds.

We have had no pest problems in the beans. One year I found a few Mexican bean beetle larvae (top photo, p. 13). Oddly enough, they were only on the ‘Emerite’ beans I was trialing that season. I hand-picked the larvae off and smashed them.

It is a good idea to limit handling of the plants or harvesting in rainy or damp weather because this can knock off blossoms and decrease your yield. In humid climates, where rust might be a problem, handling wet plants can also transmit rust disease. Recently we began feeding the plants just at blossom set with a foliar spray of kelp. We hoped this would encourage the plants to set fruit longer, but at this point we don’t have any proof of positive results from our experiment.

We harvest every other day, picking pods when they are 4 to 5 inches long. Filet beans do not keep well for long. You should eat them within four days of picking. If you need to store your harvest for a few days, soak the beans in cold water to remove any field heat, then drain them, and refrigerate in a plastic bag. But if you love these elegant, tender beans as much as we do, you won’t be storing them long.

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posted in: beans

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