Up until this last vegetable growing season, I have grown only lettuces, spring onions, silver beet and spinach. This year, with a new home and a new growing area, I have branched into raised beds and container gardening with a vengeance, and am loving it. I grew some beans for the first time. However, I have been a bit disappointed with my bean-growing success, or rather the lack of it. Because I only had a couple of largish pots to use, I planted 8 dwarf green bean plants - 4 in each pot. One died immediately, but the other 7 grew quite satisfactorily, growing to a height of about a foot, and putting out lots of leaves and - at first glance- lots of beans. But from those 7 plants, I have actually harvested the grand total of 16 beans. The leaves are still all there, but the only beans I can see are a few little, dried up specimens. It appears that the plants think they have done their duty and it's okay to stop now. Sob. What did I do wrong? How many beans should I expect from an optimum bean-planting situation, and over how long/short a period? This is the sort of information that seems to be almost impossible to find, if you're a novice vege gardener. All the books, websites, articles etc tell you what to plant, when to plant, how to plant, how to feed, and then leave you to it! No info about what volume of product to expect from a plant nor for how long it should produce. Aaaargh!
Okay, off the hobby horse now. But I would be grateful for any information/guidance on this one. For the record, I have since planted several scarlet runner plants which seem to be doing reasonably well so far, but are a long way away from producing any beans, and have also sown some scarlet runner and some dwarf butter beans seeds, all of which have sprouted beautifully and are about 6 inches high. It would help me to know, before these new ones begin to produce, just what I need to know and to do about growing beans. Thank you in advance, all you experienced bean growers!

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I too am a novice and planted dwarf beans for the first time last year. Put in 15 top crop dwarf green beans on 1 November and about the same in yellow beans on 15 November (more than half of which never germinated). I recall slugs attacking them early on so a dose of slug slam or similar dealt to them. Flowers didn't start til around early January and I didn't get beans until quite late in January, probably the last week. From maybe 24 plants which grew I'm now getting a good feed of beans for the family every couple of days. A total of 1.1kg in weight so far (I'm keeping records to know what to grow in future). Still got beans coming but a couple of plants have stopped producing.
My scarlett runners were planted too late probably (late Nov I think, forgot to write it down) and are flowering heaps but only tiny wee beans so far.
Best advise is water, water, water. When the plants are forming flowers and beans give them a good soak every couple of days. Keep picking them as it seems to me the more I pick, the more I get. Its amazing how fast the little blighters grow. Stick them in your garden somewhere next year and see if that helps, they will dry out more in pots probably. Having enough bees around helps pollination and beans forming so that could have been an issue too. I also fed my plants worm wee a couple of times when they just started growing.
Hope this is some help to you. I agree with you about trying to find out how much you will get off a particular crop - it is hard info to come by. I'm now keeping a garden diary and weighing everything I pick to see whats worth doing again next year.

Dwarf bean plants tend to have one main flush of beans and are then done whereas climbing beans just keep going till the weather gets too cold. I usually plant about 20 climbing beans every 6 weeks from late Oct/early November to late Jan/early Feb and that gives me enough beans for 4-6 people to have beans about every 2nd day from just before Christmas till April and have some to give away. They are legumes so can make their own nitrogen and don't need feeding. I have found them to be very easy to grow. I water them regularly when they are first planted (outside) but after the first couple of weeks they are ignored till they start beaning. Then they need to be picked every day as if you let the beans get too mature the plant thinks it has managed to reproduce itself and stops producing more beans. I grow purple beans (they turn green when cooked) because they are easier to see - with green beans it is easy to miss them among the foliage. Vegetable bugs (shield bugs/stink bugs)like them and I get a few beans with holes in them but I usually have so many this isn't an issue.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2010 11:12AM by PennyG.

Thank you both for your response. You're both obviously doing a lot better than I did! Firstly, it seems that I didn't plant nearly enough plants, and then maybe I left the beans to get too big before picking any - if, as you say, Penny, the plant thinks its job is done, then that may have been part of the problem. Not they got terribly big, really. I was interested in what you said about not watering the plants after the first couple of weeks. We have had an extremely hot, dry summer, for the most part - in the last couple of weeks we've had temperatures consistently over 27 degrees, and often hotter than that. I'd be afraid that they would dry up completely, especially as they are in containers and not in the ground. Would I be right in that, or should I try withholding the water from the plants I have going now? And would you know why the dwarf plants have actually got tiny, dried up pods on them which are never going to get any bigger or better?

Anything in a pot will need more watering than if it was in the ground. We don't get as high temperatures as you and usually some rain.

Hi Penny, thanks for that. Yes, having lost quite a lot of container plants when we first moved here about 18 months ago, I am very aware that they need more watering than plants in the ground. I mostly water twice a day, unless we have had rain in the meantime - which is fairly rare in this area, I have to say! But I have taken notice of the advice to pick the beans quite quickly after they appear, and not leave them to grow too big, which I think was my main error. I'm very grateful for all the advice I've received, and am hoping that next year's crop/s will show the benefit of what I'm learning, mainly with the help of my Foodlovers friends.
Many thanks



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/2010 10:01AM by mommamurf.