Why tepary beans are a perfect fit for your climate-resilient garden
A food from the desert. One of the most arid-adapted crops in the world. Small and somewhat wrinkled, it looks like a food for hard times, but as soon as you cook it you’ll realize that this bean is as plump and filling as any other. To know the tepary is to love the tepary, and I think more people should know about tepary beans!
I started growing tepary beans after meeting plant breeder Joseph Lofthouse in northern Utah. Joseph was breeding a landrace of bush tepary beans that would mature extra early in short season climates. Traditional tepary bean varieties differ widely and have a days to maturity range of anywhere from 60-120 days. Joseph collected shorter season bush varieties and planted them all together to see which ones grew best and quickest and saved seeds from those for the creation of this landrace. It was a genius idea and project, because many desert areas where tepary beans could thrive also have very short seasons. Drier climates can have huge swings between hot and cold temperatures as there is less moisture in the air to moderate temperatures. Like most other bean species, tepary beans are not frost hardy. Places like northern Utah where Joseph is, or southern Idaho where we are now, can have very hot summers and still have short seasons with frosty nights in June and then again in September. Joseph’s tepary bean bush landrace is suited to this climate and expands the range of production to areas like ours, where we deal with the dual challenges of a hot climate and a very short season.
Many areas are facing hotter and drier growing conditions, and shorter seasons, with the impacts of climate change. Polar vortexes and extreme weather are shortening growing seasons, just as those same growing seasons get hotter overall. Tepary beans can produce at temperatures of over 95 F, temperatures that kill the pollen of common bean varieties. They are also generally more resilient to pests and disease. Because of this, we believe tepary beans, and especially these short season adapted bush tepary beans we grow, could be a major crop of the future.
About this ancient bean
The tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius) is a species of bean from the Sonoran desert in northern Mexico. The wild ancestors of today’s varieties can still be found in this desert. We grow and sell one of the more wild varieties of tepary bean- Sycamore Canyon Wild Tepary Bean.
Hundreds of distinct varieties of tepary bean are known, having been domesticated and bred by distinct groups of people in different parts of Mexico, the southwest of the United States, and Guatemala for between 4,000-6,000 years. Like many crops around the world, the number of people who grow and eat tepary beans in these traditional growing regions has been in decline for the last few hundred years due to the forces of globalization and colonization. The small tepary bean has often been replaced by the large and plump common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) in the agriculture of these regions. This had led to varietal loss and the loss of cultural knowledge about the bean. But interest in this amazing plant is growing because of how it might help sustain humans in a warmer world. The gardeners, farmers and communities in these areas that have continued to grow tepary beans against economic pressure to grow more lucrative crops are who we have to thank for the continued existence of this amazing food.
The tepary bean in the Mexico and Arizona
For the Tohono O’odham people of Arizona, tepary beans, called Bawĭ, have been central to culture for generations. They tell a traditional legend describing how the Milky Way galaxy is white tepary beans scattered across the sky. The Tohono O’odham people are working to get the tepary bean back into their diet, including in school lunches (USDA).
According to Native Seed Search, champion of the tepary bean, one thousand year old remains of tepary beans have been found at archeaological sites throughout Arizona. Over 30 different cultures in this region grow teparies and Native Seed Search is a non-profit which has helped identify and source distinct varieties of teparies grown throughout this region. They help preserve these important varieties by storing them in their seed bank and growing them on their farms. The frozen seed bank provides a place where the varieties can be saved in the event they are lost, become endangered or are genetically contaminated in the variable “real world.” Another part of the mission of Native Seed Search is to get people conserving these varieties in their gardens and on their farms by sharing and selling seeds from the seed bank on rotation. As the NSS puts it- “Domesticated crops depend on an intimate relationship with humans - they don't exist in the wild.”
Federal funding for their important work has declined. If you’d like to help support the farmers and communities from which they originate, visit their site.
The tepary bean in Guatemala
According to Bioversity International, in the late 1980s researchers from the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala gathered 36 tepary varieties in the southwestern coast of Guatemala among Maya Quiché, Mam and Tzutuhil ethnic groups. However, when they returned in 2016 they were not able to find any tepary variety being grown or sold in markets.
Guatemala is a land of many climates. Though there are wet regions like the high altitude cloud forests, there is also an arid “Dry Corridor” covering 45% of the country. Here rainfall is erratic and becoming even more so. Many think the recovery of the teparies could make agriculture in this region more resilient and sustainable. According to Bioversity, in comparison to the common bean, the tepary has a greater tolerance to common bacterial blight and outperforms the common bean by at least 50% in hot environments.
So in 2018, Bioversity International and researchers from the Universidad de San Carlos set out to find any tepary bean variety still growing in Guatemala. After searching markets and farms extensively, a visit to farmer Señor Arriaga produced the only tepary bean they found. Señor Arriaga, who also grows more economically valuable crops like common bean and corn, has continued to grow tepary beans purely out of his love for the food, and because it is an easy crop to grow.
Since then, seeds purchased from him have been given to a local seed saver network and provided to a steward farmers to test in plots in the Dry Corridor. There remains a great deal to be done to promote tepary beans’ potential as a source of food for farmers in the Dry Corridor, but thanks to Señor Arriaga there are seeds to start with.
I believe that when you grow tepary beans, wherever you are, you are also contributing to these important movements to save and spread this resilient crop. Because the beans are only eaten cooked as dry beans, when you harvest the food you’re also harvesting the seeds, so saving seeds for the generations to come is happily just built into the process!
To grow them, direct sow seeds after all danger of frost has passed, usually in early June. Do not presoak the beans. If you are in a place with a longer season like the southern United States or Mexico, the traditional planting time of around the summer solstice is best.
Placement in your garden is probably the most important consideration when it comes to growing them. Traditionally grown without supplemental irrigation in climates that receive 2-5 inches of rain a year, tepary roots are meant to grow very deep to access water held in the soil. They are actually less productive if they are overwatered. If you grow your garden with a uniform amount of irrigation, say from an overhead sprinkler or drip system, try planting them on a border area that gets less water, or at the end of the drip line so you can limit irrigation once the plant is up and growing. We tend to plant it at the end of the drip lines. We can kink the driplines to limit water once the plants are up and growing. Additionally, limiting compost and fertilizers to about 1/4 of what you are applying to other crops is best as too much fertility will cause them to grow lots of greenery and few beans.
Many varieties will climb a trellis. Some of the short season varieties we carry are bush plants that wont really climb a trellis, and Lofthouse Landrace tepary beans are all bush plants, which is part of why they mature more quickly.
The beans grow in pods holding around 4-8 beans. The beans are small, and depending on the variety range from flat and wrinkled to plump and rounnd.
Harvest in late summer when the pods have begun to dry but before they start to shatter in the field. We cut the whole plant at the soil level (don’t pull them up by the roots or you risk mixing dirt in with the beans) and let the plants and pods continue drying on a tarp in a protected area out of direct sunlight for a week or so. We then fold the tarp over and stomp on it to help the seed pods shatter. Next comes winnowing. We lift the contents (dry plant material and seeds all mixed together at this point) and using the wind or a fan, drop the contents to allow the air to blow off the light dry plant material while the heavy seeds fall clean into a tote or bucket. We repeat this process until the seeds are clean and mostly free of debris. For the final step, we use screens to help remove smaller, less developed seeds, but you could also do this by simply picking out the debris and smaller seeds that the winnowing process did not remove.
Tepary beans hold more protein per ounce than common beans like kidney or pinto! They are packed with nutrients like niacin, iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and have tons of fiber. Beans plump up nicely after soaking and cooking, even the flat and wrinkled varieties, and you will be surprised at how much like common beans they are when cooked.
To cook, first rinse beans in a colander and then soak in water overnight, 8 cups of water to 1 cup of beans. Once soaked, add 4 cups of water for every 1 cup of tepary beans to a pot. They are dense so even though they are small, they require long cook times- around 4 hours in a low boil on the stove or all day on low in a slow cooker. On their own the beans have a nutty and slightly sweet flavor. They are so richly flavorful, they don’t need much in the way of extras but cooking them in broth, with garlic, onions, and herbs doesn’t hurt either!
Check out the tepary beans we grow Giving Ground Seeds here!
