tall beans and dwarf beans - staggered sowing longer harvest

[Rubykitchen]

I have lots of lovely tall/dwarf bean varieties to try this year. Mainly from heritage seed library.
Few questions...

I've sown some sonesta dwarf beans and these are now 3 inches tall.

should I have sown tallest varieties first? If not, should I sow all the different varieties together now?

Can you plant 2 of each variety round the same wigwam?

Will dwarf beans grow happily in the same bed at the base of the wig wam or be too shadowed?

[Stephen]

Hi
Staggered or succesional planting is a good idea but whether you mix the beans together or not is really up to you.
I do, and just pick, mix and cook French or climbing beans with my runner beans together (and used mixed beans in the chutney too).

[Monika]

I don't think sowing the varieties according to their tallness matters, but I wouldn't mix two varieties on one upright because one might be more vigorous than the other and completely take over. As the plants tend to "fruit" continuously in any case, successional sowing isn't nearly as important as for, say, cabbages.

I also wouldn't grow the dwarf beans in the shadow of the climbing ones because they do want a lot of light if not necessarily all day sunshine.

My climbing French beans (Cobra) and runner beans (Enorma) will be planted out shortly but I have not even sown the dwarf beans (The Prince) because if the weather isn't just to their liking, i.e. quite warm, they will just sulk!

[Rubykitchen]

Thanks. Just read somewhere the dwarf beans don't crop for as long as tall varieties, so if you sow them first and tall one's later, they're ready to take over when the dwarf one's have stopped producing, to lengthen the harvest period.

Will take on board comment and not plant the dwarfs near the wigwam - but think i'm going to have to take my chances with planting the different varieties around same wigwam, just can't really justify taking anymore space up with a separate wigwam. Experimental year anyhow really, to find best climbing beans for my area.

[John]

Hello RK
It's true that dwarf french beans do crop for a shorter period but they will come to cropping stage in a shorter time than the taller varieties. I just grow a few to get some beans really early in the season.
You can grow different varieties together as they do not cross pollinate but as others have said some are more vigorous than others. You won't get much help on the packets about this though - you just find out by experience!
The first several weeks of the crop always give the finest beans and they become coarser as the plants get more mature. I think that it is worth making several sowings for a succession of the best of the crop, discard the earlier plants as the next ones comes along. It is also worth trying a smaller sowing say in July for a late crop in the Autumn - if we get an Indian summer you can be lucky and be picking fresh young beans into early October!
To my way of thinking FBs are one of the best crops so grow as the taste is excellent, they're easy to cook, freeze well and are amazingly productive.

John

[Primrose]

I grow my climbing beans in a straight line of poles, with runners (Enorma) at one end and Cobra French climbers at the other because I find the foliage on the runners tends to be more prolific. I won't be sowing my yellow waxy French dwarf beans for a couple of weeks, and then in trays because last year I sowed them too early and they definitely sulked. I've found dwarf beans have a much shorter cropping season than climbers so unless you can grow under cover, it's not so easy to plan for succession.

[glallotments]

We sowed our French beans successionally last year and so cropped them for a longer period.

[thetangoman]

When I plant my established beans along side the canes I sow another bean alongside the plant as well..this way you get successional plants throughout the summer/autumn season..works well and saves space.