Something happened in the garden...

As I watered the bean plants this morning, I began noticing long strands of light colored pods dropping down from thin stems branching off the twisted vines of the pole beans. WOW! The pole beans have formed and are 9-12 inches long! While I have been waiting for over 2 months for the pole beans to be ready, the formation of the green beans has happened over the last couple of days. 

The beans I picked today are a bit "meatier" than I would like but despite the size of the beans in the pods, I can't wait to taste these green beans! I wonder how they taste compared to bush beans?  

Pole Beans

This is my first year growing pole beans. I found growing/harvesting pole beans to be different (not necessarily easier) than growing/harvesting bush beans.  

Pole beans require some sort of support system for the vines to grow up. The trellis system that I went this year has been a bit of a pain. We made a trellis out of PVC piping but it is proving to be too wobbly for such a heavy plant mass. At least once a week (sometimes more), my fiancé has to add some contraption to system to keep the trellis from falling over due to the weight of the plants. Next year, we will have to come up with a better system. I think the PVC could work, but we will need to add some wood to add more structure to the trellis.

With pole beans, it is nice to harvest the beans while standing, rather than crouching down. But you also have to look up and down the vines to find all the beans that are ready to harvest. AND, you have to "snip" the pole beans off the plant rather than just tug on the beans to remove the pods like you would with bush beans.

I like that I will have a continuous harvest from the pole beans compared to bush beans, which you harvest over a short period of time (2-4 weeks).  

AND, I love that the pole beans are long (9-12 inches) compared to bush beans (5-7 inches).