Hello everybody! I’m the seed steward for the 2026 Tepary Bean Crop Species Mix.
This years mix includes varieties such as Blue Speckled, Black Tepary, White Tepary, Sacaton, Local Pueblo varieties, many of which were originally from Native Seed Search. Here’s what they look like.
This is place to post your grow out reports, observations, notes, ect for this year’s Tepary Bean Crop. If you have any questions about the crop species, ask away! I love talking about beans!
Tepary beans from the GTS mix planted May 15 - here they are on June 28 (not all of them are doing as well as the ones shown here). I planted them in a mixed bed with corn, pepo squash and nasturtium. Summers here are hot and humid - this next week is going to be horrendous - so this is probably not the ideal climate for them, but hopefully a few will survive.
Awesome! I do wonder since they are mixed in with other vegetation if that might mitigate some issues?
I feel there is possibility for Tepary beans to adapt to even somewhat humid climates, especially if you cross them with vulgaris genetics.
Also is that straw mulch + wet drip irrigation? I think you’ve upped your chances for tepary bean survival. As long as you can obtain the seeds from this generation, your tepary landrace can start. I feel the real issue might be the later half of summer when the pods are ripening & drying (but summer rain litterally rains on your outdoor seed drying plans), once they change color is a good time to pick them all (even if they aren’t fully dry on the plant). I’ve dried Phaseolus vulgaris pods & seeds like this, I’m sure it works the same way with Tepary beans.
I’d be curious to see if only a “certain” color survives your Hot & Humid weather enough to make seeds. In vulgaris, I remember hearing some gardeners say the white seed types do better than black or pink & vice versa.
Thanks for the encouragement! No straw mulch, just a few pulled-up weeds, but yes drip irrigation. And I agree about picking the pods before they’ve fully dried - I have to do this with vulgaris (though not with lima beans for some reason).
So far, my tepary bean grex is doing well! I sowed them in August in bare soil, and I got much better germination from them than for the common beans or cowpeas I sowed at the same time. They also survived my forgetting to put mulch around them for the next two weeks of drought and hot sun, which most of the cowpeas and common beans didn’t. (Laugh!) They now have a few sets of true leaves, which is very exciting. 
You’re welcome!
Interesting… what if lima beans are just more humid adapted?
WOW! so perhaps they are better adapted to germinating in direr climates, I wonder if they are quicker at germinating than vulgaris or lunatus? I wonder is the soak-up time for Tepary beans shorter than other species and if that’s an evolved/adapted trait specific to Phaseolus acutifolius?
The thinking goes maybe Tepary beans adapted to less water conditions by being very quick to soak up any little water it gets & germinate with that little water as quickly as possible? Otherwise if it takes too long to soak up, it might not get another chance in a very long time?
Tepary beans are bound to be way better at germinating in dry climates; I mean, they’re native to the American southwest, and they’re known to be very drought tolerant.
I’ve had more success with lima beans so far than I have with cowpeas (which are supposed to be quite drought tolerant) or common beans (except for pintos, which seem to be quite drought tolerant). So I think lima beans are probably quite promising for my climate. Sadly, I was too late to nab a lima bean grex this year. 
Here’s my first picking of tepary beans! It’s been an unbelievably rainy summer, hot and humid, all the things tepary beans are not supposed to like, but they’re doing very well, even though my common green beans, which have always been my most reliable crop, are doing poorly for the first time ever. Go figure! I will definitely have enough tepary beans to replant next year, and to send some back to GTS, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have enough of them to make a meal.
In the unlikely event that I get enough tepary beans to try cooking them, at what stage are they ready to shell and eat? Fully dried pods? Yellow but not-dry pods? Full green pods, like shell peas?
From what I’ve researched about beans in general, you can wait for them to fully dry on the pods so they end up dried regular grocery store beans. Fully dried requires a longer pre-soak period before boiling (usually an overnight presoak).
However if you harvest ripe pods that are still wet with the bean still moist/squishy & not yet dry, you can cook those too and what’s nicer is that they require less pre-soaking time. This is the yellow but not-dry pods stage.
You can also eat them as shelling beans from green pods absolutely! Just like shelling lima/butter beans.
What’s great is all 3 stages of eating Phaseolus seeds are good, this works the same in Common Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), Runner Beans (Phaseolus coccineus), Tepary Beans (Phaseolus acutifolius) and Lima Beans (Phaseolus lunatus). You can shell the beans at the green pod stage, the yellow but not-dry stage & the fully dried stage.
The only thing with the shelling beans stage, with smaller bean sizes it might not be as labor efficient. I have not personally tried shelling lots of beans but perhaps it’s one of those things you do while watching youtube or talking with friends to pass the boring time.
Thank you! It looks like I will get enough for a meal or two.
