A Review of the Purple Teepee Bean

Most every year we purchase the tried and true varieties we've come to trust as we've planted them over the years.  Some varieties we no longer buy since we try to save the non-hybrid heirloom seeds that we originally purchase from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company.  Their website is Rareseeds.com.  They are an excellent seed company that we support.  Their seed catalog is like a coffee table book - beautiful photographs and very descriptive verbiage about the seeds that are collected from all over the world.  There website is responsive and easy to navigate.  There are also reviews of each variety along with popularity of varieties in terms of sales.

In making my purchase of snap beans, I ordered the normal varieties I normally buy, like Contender, Italian Roma II, and Blue Lake Bush.  However, something caught my eye.  I always like buying things that are strange, different, new and brightly colored.  There was something on the page that was irresistible.  The Purple Teepee Bean.  It is a french bean, a bush bean that has a straight pod, and as the name suggests, it's purple.  it is the row on the left.  It makes a small bush and doesn't spread out quite as much as the Contenders, Bush Blue Lakes, or Romas that you see in the middle and on the right.

It makes a beautiful purple flower that catches your eye.  The honeybees seem to be attracted to them, too.

The Purple Teepee bean is highly productive.  I mean very highly productive.  The beans are high off the ground.  That's a good thing.  Other varieties' pods lay on the ground and are susceptible to bug damage.  

This handful of beans were just the mature beans off of one plant.  I left the young ones for later pickin'.  There were more small ones coming, too.

When I finished the (back breakin') job of harvesting the row of Purple Teepee beans, we had a beautiful basket of purple beans.

Chlorophyll gives these beans their beautiful purple color.  These purple beans, when cooked, turn deep green.  We've yet to cook them, so I can't give a taste test, but from production alone, the Purple Teepee Bean will be in our rotation from now on.  I think I'll harvest the whole row as they mature and leave one plant in which I'll save seeds from.  I give the Purple Teepee beans five stars and a thumbs up.