The plant does not need bees for pollination, and produces throughout the summer.
Blue Lake Green Beans have a mild flavour, and white seeds inside if allowed to fully mature.
The is both a bush and a pole version.
The Pole version is 65 days from seed. The pods are about 6 to 7 inches (15 to 18 cm) long, round, stringless and straight. The vines of the plant will grow up to 7 feet (2 metres), so they need support. The bean can be harvested early, at 4 to 5 inches (10 to 12 1/2 cm) long.
The Bush version is 60 days from planting to harvest. It produces tender, crisp, rounded pods 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 inches (14 to 16 1/2 cm) long, with seeds inside that are slow to develop. The bush grows up to 18 inches (45 cm) tall. Blue Lake Green Beans were developed in 1961 from the original pole version of the Blue Lake Bean.
History Notes
Blue Lake Green Beans are named for the area in which they were developed in the early 1900s, the Blue Lake area near Ukiah, California, US.
They were originally developed for canning. By the mid-to-late 1920s, the bean had been developed into a stringless bean for use as a green bean, probably in Oregon.
In the 1950s, the Ferry-Morse Seed Company developed many of the strains of Blue Lake Green Beans in use today (2006.)
Sources
Swezey, Lauren Bonar. Is ‘Blue Lake’ still the best bean? Menlo Park, California: Sunset Magazine. April 1996.