A Very Tall Story About a Beanstalk

PORTLAND, Ore. —  Last spring, Minnie Katherine Pomerinke planted beans. Brand-name seeds. Nothing magic.

“Green beans is all I can tell you,” she says. “That’s all they were.”

The beans grew past the top of her one-story house, with leaves the size of pie pans.

Minnie Pomerinke, 77, says she has planted a vegetable garden every year since she was 18. But she says she has never seen a bean like the one she planted last spring.

She recounted her steps.

“I mixed two bags of steer manure and one bag of chicken manure. I just dug holes with a trowel, and I put a trowel full of the mix in each hole, and I filled it up with water, and then I put my seeds in it.”

They sprouted and climbed her house. “I thought, ‘Geez, it’s getting higher and higher.’ So I said to myself, ‘Use ‘em.’ So I got a stick and stuck it up there above the gutter.”

She called the library. She wanted to know whether her bean stalk was the tallest recorded bean stalk in the United States or the world. She told the librarian that the stalk was 15 feet and climbing.

Each season she spends 20 or 30 hours a week working her garden. It is about 3 feet wide and it wraps almost around her house. Harvests include cherry tomatoes, peppers, onions, chard and cucumbers nearly 20 inches long.

The beans, though, are why she phoned the library. The librarian found what is believed to be the world’s longest lima bean, but they’re still looking for an entry about the world’s tallest stalk of beans.