Gadenin日本語Get the appFour moments decide the crop
Beans are a forgiving crop with a handful of unforgiving moments. Sow into soil that is too cold and the seed rots. Fail to protect the seedlings and the row is gone in a night. Let the plants go dry at flowering and the flowers drop. Stop picking for a week and the plant stops producing. Get those four right and the rest is watering and looking.
The list below runs relative to your last spring frost and your first autumn frost, not to calendar months, because those two dates are what actually differ between gardens and hemispheres. Roughly, a bush bean takes 50 to 55 days from sowing to first pick and a pole bean 60 to 70.
| Moment | When | What it decides |
|---|---|---|
| Sowing into warm soil | After last frost, soil over 60F (15C) | Whether you get a stand at all |
| The seedling fortnight | Emergence to first true leaves | Losses to slugs, birds and cutworms |
| Water at flowering | About 6 to 8 weeks after sowing | How many flowers become pods |
| Picking every two days | Through the cropping window | Total yield, often by a factor of two |
Before sowing: bed and supports
The preparation happens weeks before the seed goes in. Choose a spot in full sun that has not grown beans, peas or other legumes for three years, since bean root diseases persist in the ground. Work in compost for structure but keep nitrogen-rich material off it, and lime an acidic bed the previous autumn if you need to.
Then build the supports while the bed is empty, and if your spring is cold, lay black plastic over the row for a week or two to warm the soil. That is worth roughly a fortnight of season and costs almost nothing.
- Check the rotation Look at last year's plan. Beans following beans on the same ground is the most common cause of a mysteriously poor crop in year two or three.
- Prepare, do not enrich Compost for structure and a low nitrogen general fertilizer is right. Fresh manure or a high nitrogen feed gives you leaves instead of pods.
- Build the supports Wigwams and rows go up before sowing, driven 8 inches (20 cm) into firm ground. Doing it afterwards spears the roots.
- Warm the soil if needed Black plastic for one to two weeks raises soil temperature by several degrees. Lift it just before sowing, or sow through slits in it.
The season, stage by stage
Once the seed is in, the work falls into recognizable stages, each with one job that actually matters. The table below is the whole season in order. Bush and pole diverge mainly in the middle: pole beans need guiding onto their supports and pinching at the top, bush beans need a string line and successional sowings.
Keep sowing bush beans every two to three weeks until about ten weeks before your first autumn frost. Anything sown later flowers into cooling weather and never fills its pods.
| Stage | Main jobs | The one thing that matters |
|---|---|---|
| Two weeks before sowing | Build supports, prepare and warm the bed | Nitrogen stays off the bed |
| Sowing | Three seeds per station, 1 inch (2.5 cm) deep, cover the row | Soil steadily over 60F (15C) |
| Emergence to first true leaf | Slug patrol, keep the netting on, thin to two | Getting the seedlings through the fortnight |
| Two to six weeks after sowing | Guide pole shoots onto canes, earth up, mulch, string bush rows | Plants climbing rather than trailing |
| First flower | Water deeply and evenly, stop worrying about feed | No dry gaps until pods have set |
| Cropping | Pick every two days, check leaf undersides, sow the next bush row | Never leaving a mature pod on the plant |
| End of season | Let the last pods dry, cut the tops, clear the debris | Roots stay in, diseased haulm comes off the plot |
Midsummer: the weekly round
In the main season a bean row needs about ten minutes twice a week, plus picking. Do the same things in the same order and nothing gets forgotten: pick everything mature, look under the lower leaves for rust and aphids, redirect any pole shoot that has jumped onto a neighbor, and check the soil moisture with a finger before deciding whether to water.
During a heatwave, expect flowers to drop and do not react to it. The plant will set a full crop when night temperatures come back below about 70F (21C). Keep the water even, keep the mulch topped up, and keep picking whatever pods are there.
- Pick first, inspect second Picking puts you at the right height and in among the foliage, which is exactly where the first rust pustules and aphid colonies are.
- Finger test before watering If it is moist 2 inches (5 cm) down, do not water. If it is dry, soak deeply enough to wet 6 inches (15 cm) of soil.
- Sow the next bush row Every two to three weeks until ten weeks before your first frost. It takes five minutes and it is what keeps beans on the table.
Clearing up, and writing it down
When the plants finish, cut the tops off at soil level and leave the roots in the ground. The nodules on those roots hold nitrogen that becomes available to whatever you plant next, so digging them out throws away the one free thing beans give you. Take the tops off the plot if there was any rust, blight or virus, and only compost clean haulm.
Then spend five minutes on the record. The sowing date and soil temperature, the emergence date, the date the first flower opened, the first and last picking dates, where each row stood, and the first date you saw any pest. Next spring those seven notes tell you when to sow, how far apart to space your successions, which bed is due beans, and which week to have the row cover ready.
Beans are self-pollinating and open-pollinated types come reasonably true, so if a row performed well, leave a few pods to dry on the healthiest plants and save the seed. Never save from a plant that showed mottling or blight, because both carry over in the seed.