The Lazy Housewife is one of the first stringless pole beans that became commercially available. It first crops up around 1885 in W. Atlee Burpee’s North American seed catalogues making it a hardy heirloom with lots of attitude and old world flavours.
It produces a good yield of classic round green pods that are 10–15 cm long and slightly curved.
The Lazy Housewife pods have a good flavour that is sweet, tender and juicy even when they get big. They hold flavour and tenderness longer than many varieties.
Some additional information
The surprising name seems to be a marketing strategy hinting at how low in maintenance the variety is and that it remains stringless even when pods are more mature which allows for less frequent picking. So it was arguably a smart thing to grow the Lazy Housewife that freed up time for other things.
There is another old use of the word lazy that springs to our mind which is the famous Irish “lazy beds” used to grow potatoes etc. Anyone that has dug a lazy bed knows it isn’t lazy work at all, but it is a smart way to start a new raised bed that will be low maintenance if set up properly.
Some sources claim that Burpee got the original seed from German immigrants from a German heirloom called “Faule Magd”. That may possibly be true, but it seems to be hard to find any details before Burpee’s 1885 release. For now we assume the variety is from around 1885.
