# looking for help with green beans



## ajky (Apr 10, 2009)

just like the title says i need some new ideals for growing green beans. we have tried a few different way for green beans to grow and not so hard to harvest. we ( the wife and i ) know that they just dont run off the vine and into the house. if you have them let us know! any way i know there is some better ways out there. and you dont care i'm asking for your ideals.
thanks.


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## rivet (Apr 10, 2009)

We always plant purple bush beans. They grow in bushes, so they do not need stakes or trellises. They are purple when they grow, but turn green as soon as you cook them, so when they're cooked you cannot tell the difference until you eat them. They are the tastiest beans around! We can dozens of pints every year.

They're real easy to pick...you can just pluck up the entire plant and pick off the beans on a table, or snip them off with kitchen scissors and you'll get a second crop from the same plant. You can find seeds for these at ace hardware, nursureies or any online or catalogue seed company.


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## trapper (Apr 10, 2009)

The first question is do you want a big crop to ripen around the same time for canning or a few each day for a continuous harvest?  Bush beans generally have a big crop ready about the same time and like Rivet said, just pull the plant and pick them in the air conditioning. Pole beans keep producing all summer as long as you keep them picked.  I grow the pole beans on cow panels. My garden is slightly raised beds, each one is 4'X16'. A cow panel is 16' long and I have one down the middle of about half my beds. The panel is wired to 4 t posts. I grow all my vining crops on these so I can rotate the crops between tomatos, beans, and the cucumber family. Everything is very easy to pick and care for. The panels are a little pricey, probably $15-$20 each but I have been using them for 15 years now and they still look like new.


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## alblancher (Apr 11, 2009)

I am trying something new this year.  I had a grape trellis that wasn't being used and added a couple of pieces of wire on the bottom about 1 ft off the ground.  I then bought some inexpensive natural sissal twine from Home Depot and intertwined between the top and bottom wires of the trellis.  I was able to plant rows on each side of the wire because the top wire is T shaped.  I saw something similar to that in a natural gardening site I visited.  I now have two 50 ft rows of pole beans growing on my trellis.
Al


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## fire it up (Apr 11, 2009)

Well offering of my 2wo cents is this...
Last year I did bush beans and they grew fine but didn't produce what my Mother had wanted. I add anything family wants to the garden and grow it.
This year I am going all pole beans and have decided on a method to try.  I am going to put poles in the ground, plant about 8 seeds around each pole and when they get about 10-12 inches tall thin to 3 plants per pole.  They should all grow around and up the pole without chocking each other and will make for an easy picking.


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## alx (Apr 11, 2009)

I agree with what has been said.I tee-pee my pole beans with free bamboo.I grow alot of bush beans for blanche freezing then vac-u-seal.I have hated picking bush beans since a kid, but my mom is a 75 year old picking machine.I plant crop in may and one in early august for fall crop-i like french filet bush and two types of drying.


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## bayoubear (Apr 21, 2009)

we run deer netting between two fence posts and grow pole beans. dirt cheap, the netting takes only minutes to install, and even less time to remove to plant something else on that row. we also plant cukes this way.
staple gun is easiest attachment method for the netting.


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## curious aardvark (May 11, 2009)

what do you call green beans ? 
Runner beans or french beans ? 

Runner beans we grow up bamboo tripods. 
Three bamboo poles tied at the top and opened out at the bottom.
ACtually thinking about it we grow french beans the same way. 
Cheap, easy to setup and you can make the tripods any height you want. 

Does that help ?


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## tn_bbq (May 11, 2009)

Pole beans and a trelis will give you a steady harvest for a longer period time.   Not as much stooping over come harvest time and you can pick a few every day rather than pick them all at one time the way you'll need to with bush beans.

Put up 2 poles (6 to 8 feet tall) and some cotton string so the beans can climb. The cotton string is biodegradeable so the whole thing can go right into the compost pile when they're done next fall (or if you're lazy like me...you throw them in the compost pile the day before you plant next year's crop).

Just zig zag the string back and forth a few times wraping around the pole in a net-like fashion. 

http://www.northerngardening.com/NGB_articles/beans.htm


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## drlouis (May 12, 2009)

pole beans are a pain around these parts with the wind.  I've never found a support that will stand up the whole season.  But, bush beans will also give a [semi] continuous harvest, with a few days gap in between, but it's never mattered cuz you get enough to last through to the next flush.  I used to hate (HATE) picking them cuz it killed my back to get down that low.  last year I hit on a way to help with that problem, totally on accident.  I made raised beds using 1"x10" boards, this raised the plants enough that picking them was MUCH easier.  if you really want to make it easy you could make taller beds (ie 1x12 or 2x12 or build up a "box" using landscape timbers to whatever height suits you).  It doesn't _sound_ like much, but it really did make a big difference.


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