I don’t know whether green beans are tempermental for everyone or just for me. One year they’ll be wildly successful so I think I’ve got it all figured out, then the next year they’re not so hot.
This is mostly a not-so-hot year. I’ve switched over to growing all pole beans since I put up my two bean fences, because I find pole beans easier to pick than bush beans, and it’s a better use of my limited garden space.
This year I planted one whole fence (8 feet) in blue lake beans, then a couple of weeks later, I planted the other fence with four short sections, one each musica, rattlesnake, purple pole and french gold. The blue lakes and musica tasted good, but there haven’t been many of them, the french gold produced nasty tough little curly yellow beans, and the purple beans are good, but they’re very slow, and just now starting to produce a skimpy crop.
The rattlesnakes, though, are fantastic! Long, slender, sweet, juicy, and plentiful, they’ve produced as many beans in their little two-foot section as everything else put together. They lose their pretty purple speckling when they’re cooked, but it really doesn’t matter since they taste so good.
The seed came in a mixed packet with the purple pole beans from Renee’s Garden Seeds, so this week I pulled out the blue lakes and replanted using all the remaining rattlesnake seeds from the packet. Depending on the weather, I may or may not get a nice fall crop.
I googled the bean to see whether it would be hard to find more seed for next year, and found that they are valued for hot and humid conditions in the south, and they are often grown for dried beans. Hot and humid is certainly not what they encountered here, but they were clearly happy anyway! One source said the name comes from their habit of forming a coil when they are fully mature.
Your experience with beans sounds like my luck with tomatoes.
Our garden is so tiny that I never put anyhing else in.
Interesting, Ken! I’m glad to hear it isn’t just me. I have high hopes for my fall crop. My seeds are up after just 5 days!
Hi Chris, Walt and I have had the same experience with green beans. One year, they are fantastic, and then the next we get none at all. I has to do with weather, maybe, but more likely with pests. Invisible pests, however. After getting no beans last year, we didn’t even plant any this year. I got some nice ones yesterday at SuperU for 1.20 € a kilo — good price.