Bush beans are a great option for a quick, easy snap bean harvest in a limited space. Most varieties grow to about 2 feet tall, and don’t require any trellising. The tradeoff is that usually bush beans produce just one or two flushes of beans, whereas pole beans will often keep producing over a longer season. Many gardeners grow both types of beans - bush varieties for early harvests and/or canning and pole types for heavier yields. All the varieties on this page are typically grown for snap beans, but there are bush varieties for drying beans as well - check them out in our drying beans collection.
All common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) originated in the Americas, and were probably first domesticated in what is now central Mexico, along with corn and squash. Beans were a staple of indigenous diets throughout much of North and South America for millennia, before early European colonizers brought them back to their countries in the 16th century, and the common bean subsequently spread across the entire globe.
