How to grow climbing beans, and when to sow them
Share
Climbing beans give you more food per square metre than almost anything else you can put in a veggie patch, because they grow up instead of out, and a 2 metre teepee in the corner of a small yard will keep a household in beans for months. They are also genuinely easy, with one exception, and the exception is the sowing date.
When to sow, because this is the whole thing
Beans go in direct once the frost risk has passed and the soil has warmed up, which around here means roughly October through to January. Seed put into cold wet soil does not sit and wait, it rots, and you get a bare row and no explanation for it.
If you are not sure whether the soil is warm enough, push your hand into it to wrist depth. If it feels cold rather than cool, give it another fortnight. Sow a short row every 3 or 4 weeks after that and you spread the picking out across the season rather than getting the lot in one fortnight.
Sow direct rather than raising them in punnets, because beans hate having their roots disturbed and a direct sown seed usually catches up a transplanted one inside a couple of weeks anyway.
Getting them in the ground
Push the seed in about 25mm deep and space them 100mm to 150mm apart along the row. They will be up in about 7 to 10 days in warm soil.
Do not soak the seed beforehand, whatever you have read. Bean seed takes up water fast and a soaked seed splits its coat and rots more often than it germinates. Water the bed the day before instead, then sow into damp ground.
They want sun and they want drainage, and they are not fussy beyond that. A dig through with compost or well aged manure before planting is plenty, and they do not need a nitrogen feed because the bacteria on their own roots make their own.
What they climb, and put it in first
The support has to go in before the seed does, or before the seedlings are more than a few centimetres up, because pushing a stake into a bed full of established bean roots damages the lot.
A teepee of 1.8 metre bamboo or timber stakes tied at the top is the simplest version and it stands up to wind better than a flat trellis does. A panel of trellis against a fence works if the fence is not a hot west facing one. Beans climb by twining, so they need something thin enough to wrap around, and a wire or string grid works better for them than a wide flat batten.
Give them 2 metres of height. Climbing beans will keep going past that and you will be picking with a ladder if you let them.
Water, and the flower drop nobody warns you about
Beans want steady moisture once they start flowering, and an uneven supply at that point is what gives you flowers that fall off without setting a pod. Water at the roots rather than over the top, both to save the water and because wet foliage is how rust and bacterial blight get going.
For the same reason, stay out of the bean patch while the plants are wet. Brushing past wet foliage is the classic way of carrying disease from one plant to the whole row.
Flower drop also happens when it gets very hot, above about 30 degrees, and there is nothing wrong with the plant when that happens. It picks up again when the weather eases.
Pests, and two bits of common advice that do not work
Aphids on the growing tips are the usual one, and an oil spray or a squirt from the hose deals with them. Snails and slugs will take the seedlings out at ground level in the first fortnight and then largely lose interest.
Crushed eggshells around the base does not stop a snail. It is one of the most repeated bits of garden advice going and a snail crosses it without slowing down. Pellets, a sunken trap, or a torch and a bucket at about 9pm are what actually work.
Beer traps do work, and they also drown ground beetles, which are the things eating your snail eggs for you, so use them where you have a real problem rather than as a standing fixture.
Picking
Pick young and pick often. Every pod you leave on the plant to fatten up is a signal to stop flowering, so a vine picked every 2 or 3 days keeps producing for months and the same vine left for a week slows right down.
Pods that have gone bulgy and stringy are not wasted. Let them dry off completely on the plant and shell them for the pantry, or for next year's seed.
What to do at the end
When the vines are finished, cut them off at ground level and leave the roots in the soil. The nodules on those roots are where the nitrogen is, and pulling the whole plant out takes it with you. Follow the beans with something leafy that will use it.
If your first sowing rots and the second one romps away, that is the soil temperature telling you something rather than you doing anything wrong, and it is a mistake worth making once.
Shop related products
- Brunnings Garden Compost with Seaweed 25L. Dig it through the bed before sowing.
- Easy Wetta Garden Mulch, 50L. Keeps the moisture steady while they are flowering.
- Seasol Seaweed Concentrate 1L. A light tonic rather than a nitrogen feed.
- Brunnings Potash Power 2.5kg. Potassium for flowering and pod set.
- Multicrop EcoPest Oil Insect Spray. For aphids on the growing tips.
Did you know we also stock the climbing gear and the seed in store. Bamboo stakes from 600mm up to 1.8 metres, timber garden stakes in four lengths, plastic coated stakes, polypropylene trellis panels in several sizes, jute and sisal garden twine, and loose bean seed over the counter at $2.75 a packet including Purple King climbing bean, the dwarf varieties and broad beans. None of that is on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what is on the shelf.
The compost, the mulch and the seed live in the garden centre, and the stakes and trellis sit with the building materials.
Keep reading
Follow our Facebook page: Strathalbyn H Hardware
