April 2024 BEAN Seed Story!
THE QUEST TO FIND an ITALIAN POLE BEANS LIKE MY GRANDFATHER GREW!
My family is Italian and Filipino where life is centered around good food and the people we love. My grandparent’s garden had orchards full of cherry trees, apricots, citrus along with every vegetable including green beans galore to feed us and our extended family and their neighbors. These were my first garden memories.
I have been on the hunt for THE Italian Pole Beans like my Grandfather grew in his Garden in Cupertino. As a young kindergartener, I remember going up and down the rows with my older sister picking beans and peeling off all the sticky bean leaves on my clothes! It was so fun and a summer memory I can never forget. The dinner table always had grandpa’s sauteed beans with butter and garlic! They were meaty, long and flat and boy they were good!
I looked into the Seed Savers Exchange and purchased the Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook. It’s is packed with a bunch of passionate seed savers like myself who post their seeds and offer to send you saved seeds for a small fee to continue their legacy if you request it. I found an Italian Pole Bean description in the Seed Saver’s Exchange that sounded close to ours and decided to reach out via email. Nickie responded so quickly and we emailed back and forth a few times about my hunt to find something close to our Italian Pole Bean my grandpa used to grow!
Turns out our family names were so close too HA! She said “Your grandfather's last name was Lucchetti. My maiden name was Jiannetti.” She sent me a generous amount of seeds to share and grow with friends and family. I will be sharing these at the San Diego Seed Swap in April to share with other home Gardeners. I can’t wait for you to learn her story and all about these beans! Enjoy this lovely story written by Nickie! She has given me permission to share this with you all!
READ NICKIE’S STORY BELOW! ENJOY!
Italian Pole Beans Romano II Pole Bean
Romano II Pole Beans Heirloom Seeds and Family History with the Rocky Mountain Seed Company
Written by Nickie
The Romano II Pole Bean seeds you receive today are descendants of the Romano II Italian beans my entire extended family grew and ate from the 1930s until the last of the older generation could no longer garden in 2001, which was followed by the demise of the Rocky Mountain Seed Company, where we bought the seeds, in March, 2011.
It was providential timing that I “just happened to” purchase two packages of Romano II Pole Bean seeds from the Rocky Mountain Seed Company about two months before they closed. My son Joel planned to garden that summer for the first time, and I made him a decorated seed can for a birthday gift. (This was an old coffee can, such as my father had used to store seeds, covered with a garden scene cross stitch). I fervently hope that Joel, I, and you will keep these seeds going and filling seed cans from year to year for posterity. These seeds do not produce ordinary Italian bean plants. The plants are hardy, well suited to the area, climate and soil, and prolific. Unlike most flat-podded Italian beans, the pods contain large, meaty, very flavorful beans.
My maternal grandfather, Nicolangelo Capraro, worked at the Rocky Mountain Seed Company on weekends during the Great Depression. It took three jobs to support his family of five children: coal mining during the day, working at a meat packing plant in the evenings (where he was paid in meat rather than with money), and working at Rocky Mountain Seed on weekends. His boss at the seed store was Kenneth Vetting. My uncle Tony Capraro was good friends with Kenneth Vetting Jr. during their school years and as young men.
My mother, Mary Capraro, was the middle child of the five siblings. She met my father, Eugene Jiannetti, in Italian class at Denver’s North High School in the early 1940s and they were married in 1944. When my father returned home after his Navy service during World War II, he began growing several long rows of Romano II pole beans in his large garden every summer. Grandpa Capraro grew even more Italian bean plants every year. His garden filled his whole back yard, and he grew enough beans to feed all of his children, their spouses, and thirteen grandchildren Italian beans, which were part of a pasta dinner, every Sunday. At these dinners, I remember Grandpa saying, “Mangia! Mangia!” (“Eat! Eat!”) as my Grandma was spooning beans onto our plates. While eating and watching us eat the beans, he always said, “God bless the fagioli.” (Fagioli is beans in Italian).
As a young child, I remember accompanying my father on shopping trips to the Rocky Mountain Seed store at 1325 15th Street in downtown Denver. I remember the wooden bins, finished like fine furniture, which lined the wall. They had handles like those found on dressers, and my dad would pull a handle, tip the bin forward, scoop out as much seed as he wanted into a paper bag, and then write the variety of the seed the bag. He carried his bags up to the counter where they were weighed on an old-fashioned scale, and then rung up on an old style metal cash register. I also remember summer evenings during my elementary school through college years spent on our patio with my dad, snapping two or three large paper grocery bags full of Italian beans while we talked. The next day the whole family would be involved in processing and freezing enough beans to eat at least weekly all winter long.
Fast forward almost a decade – My husband and I moved to Louisville in 1982. One of the first things we did was plant a vast expanse of lawn, just like his family had. Our son Joel was born in 1983, followed by John in 1987, and I was too busy with them to garden but kept alive the hope of growing Italian beans some day.
Fast forward again to 2010. Joel came home from graduate school and lived with us for a few months while house-hunting. He began growing tomato plants in pots in our back yard. In July, he moved into his first home, taking his plants with him. He planned to garden in raised beds the next summer, growing Italian beans as well as tomatoes and other vegetables. I went to the new location of Rocky Mountain Seed on Washington Street in January, 2011 and bought two packets of Romano II Pole Bean seeds and a few other varieties of seeds for Joel’s birthday. If I had waited until spring to shop for seeds, the Rocky Mountain Seed Company would have been closed, and our family’s 10-year hiatus in growing Romano II pole beans would have been permanent.
When I heard that Rocky Mountain Seeds had closed, I wondered where we could buy the Romano II Pole Bean seeds. I looked up the last name “Vetting” in the phone book and found a number for Kenneth Vetting III. When I called him and mentioned my grandfather’s name, he knew who I was and reminisced about working with Grandpa in the store when he was a young man. We had a wonderful conversation, and he gave me suggestions of where to look, but none of his suggestions were fruitful. The answer to my question about the bean seeds proved to be that the seeds of bean plants growing in Joel’s yard were the only ones left of their kind. (I later planted many beans that sounded like they could be Romano II’s but none of them were the same. The “Aunt Ada’s beans” in the Turtle Tree Seed catalogue had similar meaty, tasty beans but are shorter pods).
Fast forward again to 2015. The City of Louisville began raising water rates yearly. The first two years water went up 14-15%. They said the rate increases would last five years, but they have continued to the present. My husband was tired of lawn care, and water was getting more and more expensive. After seeing how much fun Joel had gardening, I wanted to garden too. In 2016, Ecoscape came and fulfilled my dream to be able to garden and my husband’s dream of NO GRASS! Our son John built me an eight foot tall bean trellis, thirteen feet long, in the southwest corner of our back yard. We repurposed an old swing set frame in the northwest corner to be a support for growing bean plants. (Click here https://exchange.seedsavers.org/page/listing/id/12638.126981 to see the
photo of Italian beans growing inside the support in 2016). John has become a real gardener with an instinct for knowing what plants need and when, so I can imagine he gardens like his grandfather and great-grandfather now.
We’ve had good crops of beans most years since we xeriscaped. I froze 20+ pounds of beans from the trellis and the swing set the summers of 2018 and 2019. Most years we are enjoying them with Italian dinners through the winter. A few of the xeriscape company's employees and some of their clients in also now grow these beans, and I hope that many more people will also grow them, enjoy eating them, and help us keep them alive for future generations.
Thanks for reading this seed story and for those who received the seeds, thank you for growing these seeds! Please let me know how you like them and abut your growing experience. If you would like to get in touch with the seed saver herself, please contact me at hello@seedandtrellis.com and I can put you two in touch!
Online sources of information about the Rocky Mountain Seed Company
https://www.denverpost.com/2011/03/18/after-91-years-rocky-mountain-seed-co-closing-for-good/
In Stacey’s Garden 20 days after direct sowing with a generous helping of diatomaceous earth for pest pressure. Nickie’s Treasured Italian Pole Beans growing in Late April 2024.
HOW TO COOK ITALIAN POLE BEANS
These beans have always been cooked "well done" in my family. I think they're most flavorful that way. Put then in a saucepan with enough water to cover them and bring it to a boil. Then turn it down and simmer for 14-15 minutes. If you like garlic, stick a toothpick in a clove of garlic and include it with the beans when you're boiling them.
When the time is up, drain them, add olive oil and a little salt, and toss the beans to coat them. Then I just leave the pan on the stovetop for 5-10 minutes while I'm getting the rest of dinner on the table. Take out the garlic clove before you serve them. This was my mother's way to cook them. I don't use the garlic because my husband doesn't like it.
Let the beans grow until they have REAL BEANS in the pod. The beans are meaty and delicious. My older son likes the pods full but still totally green. My husband likes then "over age" in yellowing pods with really large beans in them. My dad picked them still green. Here in Colorado, the beans sometimes decide "it's almost winter" early, in September, and if I'm not keeping a good eye on them we have almost ALL over-age beans for my husband.
HOW TO SAVE SEEDS
When you have beans in large or yellowing pods near the end of the season, leave some of them on the vine. Let them continue to mature and eventually dry out. When the pods are crisp, crumble them and save the seed in a tightly closed glass jar. Store them in a cool dry place. They should be viable for 5 years or possibly longer.
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