Anybody Plant Pole Beans?

[JackE]

Other than planting speckled butter beans (small limas) on a string trellis years ago, I have never planted pole beans - always bush varieties of green beans.

All of our backs are getting arthritic (right on schedule LOL) and I'm trying to plant things that won't be so hard on our pickers. For that reason, we have been harvesting the whole plant with green beans - waiting until they have a good load, pulling up the plant and stripping-off the beans. That's only one picking and very inefficient.

We have built 800 ft of permanent trellis this winter - t-posts and 5' concete reinforcing wire. The plan is to plant 400' of it in cucumbers
and 400' in pole beans - and rotating the two crops the following season.

We have ten lbs of Kentucky Blue (a cross between Ky Wonder and Blue Lake) but will buy more seed later - maybe Rattlesnake? Any heat-tolerant varieties?

I know they grow taller than 5', but that's the trellis height. We looked at other trellis systems -like the CRW hoop house you can walk under and pick the hanging beans - but decided to go with regular vertical trellises for various reasons.

Should I plant one side only and let them fall over the top or can I get away with planting both sides? Are they more heat-tolerant than the bush beans? Can we grow them in the heat of summer? If possible, I'd sure like to be able to stagger the plantings on into July/Aug - we can't do that with the bush beans - spring crop only.

Hopefully, they'll be easier for the volunteer ladies to pick. Any advice would be appreciated.

Jack

[darwinslair]

I prefer Golden of Bacau and Purple Podded Pole, if for nothing else, that they are easier to find than green beans in green plants.

PPP doesnt vine as much for me as others, and is a bit earlier. Golden of Bacau is edible for a far longer time in pod development, right up to just before it starts to dry down.

I grow both of them on 6' trellis and they do just fine.

Tom

[tjg911]

i grow pole beans on a trellis, an A-frame and i think planting on just 1 side of your vertical trellis will be adequate. if you planted both sides you'd have an absolute jungle that would be a major pia to find the beans in, trust me! pole beans will grow at least 10-12' long. they flop over the top of my trellis and fall down the other side growing almost to the ground and that side that has cukes on it so it makes it hard to pick beans and cukes. i used to plant 1 seed every 4" but that was a HUGE mistake! my trellis is 8' long and i now plant just 5 or 6 seeds on 1 side and that is more than enough based upon how pole beans produce shoots off the main stem, probably 3 seeds would be ok!

oh i just saw more things you asked. yes pole beans love the heat so don't worry about that and surprisingly they survive and produce in late sept and early oct even after frosts, it is hard to kill them. i would not have successive plantings. pole beans are not like bush beans, once they start to produce beans they never stop, they never slow down. they do take a little longer than bush beans tho to produce beans but not much. the amount of beans 1 plant produces is astounding, bush beans are wimps in comparison. while they can produce a lot all at once then they take a break, not so with pole beans! and after 2 or 3 pickings at the most bush beans are done therefore requiring the successive plantings. for pole beans plant once but like bush beans the seeds will rot in cold damp soil, i don't seed mine until memorial day weekend.

[Stepheninky]

I planted speckled butter beans last year on cattle panels and they grew like monster plants, millions of blooms but hardly any production due to the high temps here. They started to set once it got a bit cooler but by then it was too late in the year and the frost got them.

I honestly think you will be disappointed in the production. In the heat of summer we have always had more production from the bush type or half runner beans. With the bush types we plant them fairly dense and as you had said in your post we pull them up and pick them. They make a lot sooner so you can get two crops of them. Works well for green beans.

We pull them and pick them then reseed them. I did not grow any green beans last year though as I had to try and use up all the ones we had canned from 08 and 09.


As for the specked butter beans will not plant them here again. Just too hot and humid. Might grow great up north where it is less hot or less humid. Its cheaper to just buy them and use the space for other more productive crops. I did pick about a hand full off a 12 foot row and that might be overly liberal. They were loaded up right before frost but none had filled out.

[JackE]

Thanks, folks, for you helpful advice. I'll plant them a foot apart, tjg911 - Thanks. I love your post - just what I wanted to hear!. I'd feel a little more secure, though, if you were in Mississippi or Luziana - "hot and humid" means one thing in northern Connecticut and quite another in Southeast Texas!LOL

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Hi Stephen. We plant speckled butterbeans on the last frost date (3/15 here) and harvest through July. They are pretty well done by Aug 1st. June and July are plenty hot and humid here. They do okay as long as they get plenty of water. I hate them because they are a nightmare to pick. For the people around here - who would consider themselves butterbean experts - the pods have to be picked "just so" - not too skinny and not too fat. It drives me up the wall! I'll never plant them again! They bring huge prices though, if "just so" grrrrr!! I don't recall that they were ever a big yielder - it would take a hundred feet of string trellis for a family of four - IF they did well. I never thought they were all that tasty - I'd rather have the big butter beans (Fordhook).

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Darwin - I never heard of those varieties - or recall seing them in a catalog. I'll Google them.

Jack

[dustdevil]

A runner or half runner is good at a foot apart, but KY Blue pole beans can be planted 4-6 inches apart. You put a lot of work into a trellis, so you want to maximize production. Don't be surprised to see your bean vines grow 8-10 ft. long. Also, there are bush varieties that grow their beans on top for easier pickin'.

[Fusion_power]

A trellis using hogwire or similar with T-posts should have the wire lifted up at least a foot high off the ground. That way you can use a hoe to work the beans beneath the wire. I've put mine up with as much as an 18 inch gap between the bottom of the wire and the ground with no problems. When pole beans start to climb, they will reach any available support.

For varieties, I would get Rattlesnake or Fortex to add to your Ky Blue. If you want to grow a wide podded roma type, Musica or Smeralda are good producers though seed are expensive.

DarJones

[roper2008]

The rattlesnake tastes very good. I am growing it again
next year.

[RinTinTin]

Pole beans will give a higher yield per foot of row than bush, plus they will produce all season vs one or two crops and kaput! Pole beans are less affected by pests, but will suffer if winds are a problem during growing season. If properly trellised, the air flow around the pole bean plants will help avoid diseases associated with bush beans. The back breaking labor of picking is avoided.

I would pick bush beans if my goal was a single crop at once for canning.
Otherwise, I would go with pole beans.

[JackE]

Wow! Thanks for all the great input. I'm gonna get some Rattlesnake seed too.

DarJones - We had that discussion when we built the trellises. One of the guys wanted to raise the wire but I vetoed that.

The pole beans may go straight up a foot and grab, but I know that cucumbers and Sugar Snaps won't, and we will use the same trellises for them. Some of the cuke plants always have to be trained to the wire anyway - and it's a time consuming pain with large plantings. Also, we sometimes plant Sugar Snap peas in the winter. They grab better than cukes, but they have a flimsy stem that will fall over and run on the ground if the wire is even an inche away.

We can still hoe with a hog wire trellis - we follow the tiller with an old-fashioned wheel hoe with a half-sweep blade and lay the dirt to them when they are about a foot high. Our old trellises are 6 ft apart, but we built the new ones at 7 ft to give a little extra room for the 48" tractor/tiller. A foot on each side isn't enough because the CRW bows out in places. The tiller blades picked-up the wire twice last year - talk about a mess - tore down the whole trellis and took hours to cut it all out of the baldes. We only cultivate cucumbers once and then just let the weeds grow - they don't seem to hurt much on trellised stuff (give 'em extra fertilizer LOL).

Jack

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[tjg911]

sorry jacke, i normally would not give advice to someone who's climate is so different than mine. typically i don't comment to folks in the south as i just don't feel my advice would be valid for their area. my comments were based upon summers at my location (42 north latitude) and you are certainly correct about texas summers! like apples and oranges compared to here.

[JackE]

Nuthin' to be sorry for - your zone is clearly stated. I doubt that any snap bean is really tolerant of our mid-summers - or anything else for that matter, except okra and watermelons (which we can't grow because our veg stand is operated by older ladies who can't handle them).

We'll be trying something new this summer - I think I mentioned it elsewhere here. It's called Purshade - a "paint-like" ORGANIC spray that coats the plant, and/or fruit, with a thin film of white reflective calcium. I have an update on it too -- it's well within the reach of home gardeners $20/gal in a 2.5 gal jug - 50 bucks! No expiration date, I'm told. I'm going to do a test patch on tomatoes (our worry there is removing the coating since we don't have a wash line), and I might try it on those beans as well. It's labelled for ALL vegetables and fruits. If my data is right, it might bring the temp down as much as 10 degrees below ambient - which would make-up the difference between a Conn summer and a Texas summer.

Helena Chem Co is the distributor - big ag supplier of truckload chemicals with branches all over. They are not retail-oriented to say the least and have limited patience with people like us - but I charmed the office lady into getting us a jug.

One drawback for home gardeners - although it can be applied with a hand sprayer, shaking it up regularly, it really should be agitated, since it settles quickly. We're excited about it's potential. But if it leaves white stuff on the vegetables that won't come-off with a quick rinse, it won't work for us. It's totally harmless, but it would obviously repel people (pesticide residues!). But that wouldn't matter in a home garden.

Jack

[RinTinTin]

Purshade is sold in 2 varieties: regular, and organic.

[JackE]

Yes, thanks for the clarification. The rep told me that although the original formulation did not meet organic certification standards, for some technical reason I assume, it is completely non-toxic and the trace residues are harmless.

[maupin]

You could go exotic and plant long bean. Even purple long bean--they're easier for aging eyes to pick out from the foliage. Yield is good in hot weather, and the size of the bean makes for good market $$$.