Cutshort Beans

Last week, I wrote a short story about “greasy beans,” so today I would like to talk about cutshort beans. This is another class of beans that a number of our readers may not be familiar with.

Most cutshort beans tend to be short in length, and their feature characteristics illustrate the fact that the beans are tightly packed in the bean pods, giving the appearance of being squared or cutshort.

There are a number of bean varieties that fall into this category, and some are referred to as cutshort greasy beans, having the characteristics of both greasy and cutshort beans.

Cutshort beans were once commonly grown in our area here in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. In former times, cutshort beans were used to make “leather britches.” In their green stage of development, the beans were strung, snapped and sewn into three-foot strands and hung from rafters and dried for Winter use. When they dried out on the line, they looked like leather pants hung up on a laundry line – hints leather britches.

Cutshort beans have excellent flavor, both as immature green beans and when canned. One of the great advantages to many of the old bean varieties is the fact that the bean pods remain tender up to a late stage in their development. This advantage allows for the enjoyment of the green bean and the immature beans at the same time, whereas with modern green bean varieties, when beans begin to form in the pods, they quickly become too tough to eat.

This year, I am growing a variety called the George Atkins cutshort bean, which comes from Campbell County, Tennessee. The bean pods are three inches long and have small, light, grey seeds with brown mottling. These beans were planted late and will mature sometime around mid-September.

– John Coykendall, Master Gardener