The humble bean is a wonderful vegetable – both for you and your garden. Beans are legumes so they draw nitrogen from
Green Beans
the air and fix it into the soil on their roots. This means whatever you grow after your beans will benefit from the extra nitrogen in the soil.
Growing Conditions For Garden Beans
- Beans are susceptible to frosts so they should only be grown in warmer months, unless you live in a subtropical climate where you can grow them all year long.
- They love sunny well drained beds.
- Beans like a soil manured the previous season, you might also add a little lime before sowing.
- In a 4 bed rotation system beans are grown in the same bed after you’ve harvested your winter brassicas (cauliflower and broccoli).
Garden Care For Bean Growing
- There is a lot of variety with beans. The best tasting beans we’ve had so far is Blue Lake and Butter beans. Bush, or dwarf, beans are low growing while climbing beans start reaching for the sky.
- Climbing beans are far more productive than bush beans. Tie together some tall stakes into a pyramid and plant a few seeds at the base of each stake.
- Remember to direct sow your bean seed. Transplants don’t work very well.
- Keep an eye out for bean bugs. They look like ugly lady beetles with too many spots on an orange shell. You might also see them on your potatoes. Squash them and their fuzzy larvae before you get too many otherwise they’ll eat all your beans’ leaves.
Harvesting Garden Beans
- To avoid damaging the plant always harvest beans by cutting their pods off with scissors or a knife.
- Pick your beans frequently, it encourages flowering. Which means even more tasty beans!
- When your beans are on their last legs cut them off at the ground, leaving their nitrogen fixed roots in the soil.
Beans are an easy vegetable grow and are extremely handy for cooking so you might want to consider growing beans too.