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

I tried Kentucky Wonder but the beans were stringy.

natp said:


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

I tried Kentucky Wonder but the beans were stringy.

Garden of Eden (Johnny's Selected Seeds)

Helda / Hilda (various sources)

These are both flat-podded and very tender and stringless even when
quite large.
--
Pat in Plymouth MI

"Yes, swooping is bad."

email valid but not regularly monitored

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.

On Feb 16, 1:31*pm, Sean Straw wrote:
On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:14:16 GMT, (natp) wrote:


Nice job, Your building out a nice piece of land.

What are you doing with the IBC? Aquaponics?

On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:20:22 -0800 (PST), Gunner
wrote:

Nice job, Your building out a nice piece of land.

Thanks. I current;y have 4-5K sq ft of garden space enclosed by an
electric fence, plus various raised bed planters outside of that.
Rotate the crops around each season.

What are you doing with the IBC? Aquaponics?

I presume you popped around some other dirs and saw the large "totes"
(275 gallon cubes)? Those are for a rainwater collection project. I
still need to acquire a bladder tank, a suitable shallow well pump and
a solenoid-driven 3 way valve (to switch irrigation between the
rainwater and the well). My irrigation controller has a pump output
(the ability to trigger a relay to activate a pump) as well, though I
want the pump to be automatic (just pressurizing a standard bladder
tank like the household well supply does), so pressure would be
consistent and power use lower.

I have nine of those totes, which in total are just about 2500 gallons
of water storage. Just 1.5" of vertical rainfall off the top of my
barn would fill them to capacity.

On Feb 18, 10:05*am, Sean Straw wrote:
On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:20:22 -0800 (PST), Gunner
wrote:

Nice job, Your building out a nice piece of land.

Thanks. *I current;y have 4-5K sq ft of garden space enclosed by an
electric fence, plus various raised bed planters outside of that.
Rotate the crops around each season.

What are you doing with the IBC? *Aquaponics?

I presume you popped around some other dirs and saw the large "totes"
(275 gallon cubes)? *Those are for a rainwater collection project. *I
still need to acquire a bladder tank, a suitable shallow well pump and
a solenoid-driven 3 way valve (to switch irrigation between the
rainwater and the well). *My irrigation controller has a pump output
(the ability to trigger a relay to activate a pump) as well, though I
want the pump to be automatic (just pressurizing a standard bladder
tank like the household well supply does), so pressure would be
consistent and power use lower.

I have nine of those totes, which in total are just about 2500 gallons
of water storage. *Just 1.5" of vertical rainfall off the top of my
barn would fill them to capacity.


Well, if you get interested in additional uses for your water
storage you might try integrating some fish:
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/

there are some sketchups and Videos in the d/l.