I've Bean Meaning To Start This Year's Thread

Yes, Pam, they grow at a fantastic speed this time of year . I may even be able to pick some more before lunch.

 

Your French beans should continue producing until the end of the season but you need to keep picking them otherwise they'll stop.

The runners are really into their stride now (not just at the Olympics). I've already sold 18lb this week and have just come in from the garden after picking this lot.


It looks as though I might be able to pick a similar amount again tomorrow

 

Can I send you some by email?

 

The Shiney Frame is working well

I'm now picking about 10lb per day.






These shots are taken of the area between the rows and there is a simlar area on the outside of the rows where I can just walk along and pick the beans easily.

 

I was a bit concerned that my experiment in letting the plants grow 15ft-20ft long might reduce their life or productivity (or both) because of stress and through not being able to supply enough food or water through their stems.

This has turned out not to be the case. I fed them only once when they were young and watered them heavily once or twice a week when there wasn't sufficient rainfall. They were noticeably stressed during the two weeks that we had the very hot weather and I had to pick the young beans very early because they were trying to go to seed.

Runnerbeans don't like extremes of temperature. That's why they don't do very well in Mediterranean countries.

The last two weeks they have been producing 10-15lb a day, which, together with the whole season's crop, is approx an increase of 35%-40% over my normal crop.

I kept a control group of five normal wigwams with 50 plants. Their total production was down on a normal year because of the slow start to the season. So I would say that the new system has increased yield by over 40%.

After the couple of really cold nights they have slowed down considerably (picked just over 7lb yesterday) so I can't really tell if the slow down has also been affected by stress from being left to grow longer.

Overall, a great success

COMMENTS:-
They produced less flower and fruit on the first 3ft of plant than normal - don't know whether that was because of the weather and lack of pollinating insects or because they were putting strength into the extra growing.

They produced good fruit above that height in what appeared to be a quicker time.

This made it easier for me to do the picking as it required less bending (bad back) and was important because it takes about an hour a day to do the picking.

A very good crop was produced on the plants on the overhead framework and although most dangled down and were easy to pick some were produced above the framework.

This didn't give any problem at all as I had made most of the framework from string and it had sufficient gaps for my hand to fit through.

If you're going to make a rigid framework (possibly trellis or pea netting) you need to bear this in mind - and that the bean stems, although reasonably flexible, will make the gap smaller than the original framework.

Edit - add new paras.
When the runners reached the top of the canes and got to the framework they didn't grow over the framework properly. Most of them tried to continue up to the sky so I trained them around the strings and wires. This was also necessary to make sure that they were evenly spread.

Even when I had got them running along the horizontal strings they didn't naturally want to continue. So it meant going out there every other day and winding them along the strings. Although I have so many plants it only took me about 10 minutes each time.

You do need to know which way they wind to make sure they are not fighting they way they're wound.

 

If they grow on an arch over your raised beds, how will you get to the beans in the middle of the arch?

My plants, once they got going properly (middle of June), finished climbing to the top of the canes and over the frame extremely quickly.

I pinched out some of the leading runners (each plant had a number of them) and let the others continue. The plants then produced many more runners that grew very quickly and I was able to train those over the frame as well.

I'm adding another paragraph to the COMMENTS above re training the runners.

 

That looks just right . I once saw a very wide arched bean grower where the owner grew catch crops underneath - mainly salad. It was wide enough for him to walk between the catch crop rows and still pick beans. He said that it also gave good shelter from the sun.