Iroquois Skunk Beans are an impressive heirloom pole bean that has no trouble climbing to the top of massive cornstalks like my Hopi Blue that reaches 7-9 feet tall. They, and their relatives, have been grown throughout the Northeast for generations, and are attributed to the Iroquois nation in New York. They are edible both in the green stage as fresh beans, with unsurpassed old fashioned flavor, and also excellent dry beans that you can thresh and store to have throughout the winter, spring, and till your next season comes!
If you are growing Three Sisters style, you can vary quite a bit in how many beans you sow- you can have beans with every corn hill, or every other, etc, and you can vary from 1-3 beans per corn hill. For a self-sustaining plot of at least 400-500 corn plants (7 per hill), and an average of 2 beans every other hill, you'd need about 70 bean plants. Assuming you fend off the deer and your own raging temptation to eat them all as green beans, you should assume a pole bean will yield 20 times its planting weight- you might get 2 lbs of beans almost "for free" from a corn plot capable of 100-150 lbs, and an untold number of squash. Head over here to learn how to plant a Three Sisters plot, and how it works.
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