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Sean Straw · 16-02-2012, 09:31 PM posted to rec.gardens.edible

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:14:16 GMT, (natp) wrote:

What's a good open-pollinated green pole bean?

I tried Kentucky Wonder but the beans were stringy.

You need to harvest them before they get too plump - that's when they
get tough as the pod tissue starts giving up it's moisture to the
actual bean seed development.

Blue Lake 274 POLE is great - excellent raw (such as cut up in salads)
as well as lightly cooked (warm, but still a bit crunchy - I'm not a
fan of limp noodles). The problem I've found is that most places
don't carry the pole variety - it's easy to find the bush type.

Among some other plant varieties (including Moskvich tomato), this is
one of the things I'm seeking to get Baker Creek to start carrying.

I grew just 20' row of pole beans last year - two 10' supports, with
the plants spaced about 14-15" apart (not anywhere near as dense as I
could have planted), and for about two months, I was pulling 5 lbs of
beans out of the garden every day. If I skipped a day and then went
out, there'd be 15 lbs. I'm not kidding - I was weiging the stuff on
a scale. Had so much, I made a sling to carry the daily harvests, and
then for this year, I bought a "hollow leg", which is a fabric 5
gallon bucket with a belt strap (think hideously large fanny pack),
with a rubber ring in the top so it stays open.

I extended my pole bean support to 30' and it's already set up in the
garden, with all the soil below it nice and tilled. Peas are in the
middle section of that to start.

Last year's bean planting and one of the pole support assemblies:
http://www.professional.org/snaps/index.html?dirname=gardening/20110509_pole_beans/

plus later:
http://www.professional.org/snaps/index.html?dirname=gardening/2011_beans/

About a month after the first structure, I fabbed a second support
(which is visible in the pictures in the second sequence). which was
parallel to that. This year, they're arranged in one long linear row,
with an extra pole across the middle.

I've pretty much given up on growing bush beans - they're nowhere near
as productive as the poles, yet take up just as much room, and require
more maintenance, and are more of a bother to harvest from. This
year, I'll only be growing a few black turtle beans, plus soybeans
(would be awesome of there were pole varieites).

Don't forget to inncoculate your beans (and peas) to improve their
nitrogen fixing. If you've grown innoculated legumes previously, you
probably have some residual bacteria in the soil to help, but a direct
innoculation is a near sure thing.