Phaseolus acutifolius. A rare black tepary with a complex, earthy flavor highly rated by some local chefs. This accession was selected from white teparies purchased many years ago in a Tucson Mexican market. Similar to a historic Tohono O'odham and Yuma variety. From our Seed-Bank Collection.
Black is a pretty good color, and it definitely has its uses. In general though, I’d say in tucson that White is more useful. For example, painting things White will reflect more sunlight, whereas painting things Black will absorb sunlight, and thus more heat. Heat absorption is really advantageous in applications like solar water heating though, so there’s +1 for Black. Overall, I give Black a good review. The
I live in Oregon and will plant in the early spring so no comment yet.
I am in Lakeside, CA (East of San Diego), and I had great success with the black tepary beans this year. I've never had success with any type of beans in the past, but the teparies worked amazingly well. I grew them in an east facing sunken bed with some corn, and they even climbed a little bit up the corn just like I was hoping. They are currently producing little pods! Also, knock on wood, but the gophers and ants have left them alone for the most part- they have far fewer issues with pests than some of the other things I've tried to grow.
Planted just a couple of test seeds in drip irrigated Rio Grande Valley soils (NM) full sun, in late June/ early July with plenty of moisture already in the ground. These sprouted in less than a week, seriously,....and then poof, those tender little leaves were GONE. I think everything you read about these being low effort starters in the Southwest is true...but you can't just plant a couple of seeds without Ft Knox protective measures LOL. Now a whole field of them would likely have those rabbits so stuffed some of the plants would survive! Actually, the end of the story is that one of those few plants did make a comeback and either there is enough other garden stuff for the rabbit to munch on or if the leaves got a little bitter and less tasty with age I don't know. Whether there will be any beans is yet to be seen.
I planted black, white, and blue speckled Tepary beans in front of a large south-facing, full-sun, trellised wall on the edge of a bed getting minimal once a week drip irrigation. There is no rain in the San Francisco Bay Area typically between May and October so the beans were entirely dependent on provided water. 2020 was an extra-hot-for-us summer too. The beans struggled at first with just the drip, but when I started hand-watering once every 10-14 days during July-August, they went crazy. I got an impressive harvest from just 12 black and white bean plants; the blue speckled beans struggled in this environment.
