Kentucky Wonder Pole

Kentucky Wonder Pole bears solid, meaty pods seven to nine inches long and about half an inch wide, silvery-green and stringless when young, with brown seeds developing as they ripen. The pods start oval to round but flatten as they mature, all while keeping a dense, meaty texture. Once cooked, the beans have a distinctly nutty flavor that carries through even after freezing. The vigorous climbing vines produce long, curved pods that can be picked young and tender or left on the vine to fill out into shell beans.

Kentucky Wonder Pole serves as a multi-use bean, valued fresh, canned, or frozen. Left on the vine to reach full size, the pods convert into a reliable dried bean. The resulting buffy-brown seeds also make an excellent baking bean once fully dried.

Kentucky Wonder Pole is enormously productive, setting pods thickly all along the pole from bottom to top and yielding more than most other pole beans, averaging 150 to 200 pounds of fresh beans per 100-foot row. It performs reliably even in hot climates and is noted as early maturing. Unlike bush beans, which stop producing after a handful of harvests, its vines continue bearing from spring until the first frost, provided pods are picked regularly, since they toughen once the beans enlarge.

Kentucky Wonder Pole traces to a pre-Civil War variety already grown throughout the South by the 1850s, first appearing in print in 1864 under the name Texas Pole. It also circulated under an assortment of regional names, among them Old Homestead, Missouri Prolific, Improved Southern Prolific, Georgia Monstrous Pole, Egg Harbor, Eastern Wonder, and American Sickle Pole. In 1877 the Marblehead, Massachusetts seedsman James J.H. Gregory gave it its present name, and it has remained a favorite among gardeners ever since, prized for its productivity and old-fashioned flavor.