Kitchen Garden Forum

I'm thinking about next year's plot plan! This year my runners and climbing French beans were in a corner of the patch where they wouldn't shade anything else and it worked a treat. I'm sure I read somewhere recently that it wasn't necessary to include runner beans in the usual rotation plan. If this is the case, do you have to do anything special to enrich the soil each year?
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Granny

Hi Granny,
For the past 15 years or so I have had a permanent bean bed and have had no difficulties whatsoever.
I appreciate that this is contrary to common thinking. So I would say if the bed that you have used this year is in the right place to suit you then I see no reason why this could not become a permanent position. Convention is not always correct. My bed is situated slightly west of North to sightly east of south and it means one side gets the morning sun and the other the afternoon and evening sun. Remember the sun rises many degrees further north of east during the summer months.
For the last couple of years I have put a heavy duty polythene awning over the beans some time before the onset of the first frost. Having had the first frost the other day I still have flowers on the beans and they are still yielding masses.
JB.

Hi Granny,
Its me again as I forgot to answer the compost part.
My beans now normally come down at the beginning of December and I remove the weeds and very lightly fork the bed over and then put a goodly layer of FYM and leave until well saturated and then cover with HD Black Polythene. I do not uncover until mid May as beans are not planted out here until the end of the first week in June due to very late frosts and altitude. The bed is just lightly forked over again before the trellis goes back up.
I imagine north of Cambridge you may well suffer from very cold winds that come down that corridor from The Wash.
JB.

We have used the same bed for runner and climbing French beans for a few years now without problem. We dig a trench every autumn, put in lots of semi-composted garden compost, topped up with good FYM and this stays open until spring. Then we cover it up with soil again and warm it up with polythene like Johnboy.
Because of our exposed position, we have to build a very strong bean frame and wouldn't want to rebuild it every year in a different place.

Because my vegetable patch is quite small, tall climbing bean frames would provide too much shade so I grow my tomatoes & climbing beans elsewhere in a south facing border about 2 foot wide. For the beans I have a single row of poles about 8 -10" from the fence and I alternate the position of the tomatoes & beans each year. Where the roots grow I usually dig a trench of uncomposted material in late autumn which I cover and leave to rot down over the winter. By spring it has all virtually disappeared and I fork in whatever manure I have over the top few inches. But I have in the past grown climbing beans in the same place for several years and had good results. I think as long as there is plenty of manure and material to keep the moisture in the soil, you shouldn't have any problems.

Hi Primrose,
I must confess that I have never tried this idea but has anybody with a shade problem growing Runner and French Beans grown them like a flat type cordon. This in effect would be no higher than 4.5ft. If it works it may solve some picking problems and allow a lot more light onto the plot.
As yet another experiment I may try this next year just for the hell of it.
JB.

I have grown my beans in the same area for two years running now having aquired some scaffold poles to put in a secure frame. I have to say the manure trench concept seems to work.
I have grown two rows of beans in the usual teepee format but there are still too many plants and I get a tremendous surplus of beans.
A neighbour on the site has grown his beans on one side only so that the beans fall into the shaded area, he then grows another crop beneath.
This has worked for him and I will be copying the idea in 2008

Thanks Johnboy for such a comprehensive reply. My beans are in the same orientation as yours this year, which is possibly why they've done so well as they have tended to be at right angles to that in previous years. And yes, we do get some biting winds at times.
Thanks to all other repliers. Everyone's saying roughly the same thing, which is always useful. I like the idea of covering it with polythene over winter.
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Granny

I think I read that the most recent research suggests it's actually beneficial to grow runners in the same bed as it's one of those plants that has beneficial micro-organisms to help it grow. If you grow them in the same bed you're allowing these organisms the opportunity to increase in the soil, so theoretically you should get an increase in yield, other factors allowing.