Follow these tips for a bean feast in your garden
Climbing, dwarf, runner or drying – there’s a bean for every type of culinary use, including eaten straight from the vine.
But that’s just one of the things that makes beans one of the most rewarding crops to grow at home.
They germinate quickly are relatively pest free, come in multiple varieties (and if you get your hands on some magic ones, you might just end up with a hen that lays golden eggs ...)
When to sow
Beans require soil temperatures of 18-25 degrees Celsius for optimum germination so plant them from late October through to November. Or if you grow the perennial ‘Scarlet Runner’ beans, when you see the plants pop back up out of the ground, you’ll know it’s warm enough to start your other beans from seed.
Growing instructions
If possible, always sow your beans direct as they grow rapidly, rather than having their growth checked by root disturbance when transplanted.
But if you have major issues with slugs, snails or birds attacking your seedlings, you can start them off in trays and transplant when they are well established, or buy punnets of seedlings from the garden centre.
Beans do well in most soil types and need no special fertiliser. Dig in some slowrelease fertiliser before planting or feed with liquid plant food.
They don’t like it too hot, so try to find a space that gets moderate sunshine.
Space seeds at least 10cm apart and bury the seed about 3cm deep. Leave about 50-60cm between each row.
Keep watering (particularly if growing them in pots). If beans dry out over summer they get stressed and will stop producing. Heat-stressed beans are also far more vulnerable to attack from various sap suckers, including green vege bugs and aphids. In sandy soils, mulch to retain moisture in summer.
Varieties
Dwarf beans, climbing beans, runner beans, drying beans – there’s a bean for every job and it’s worth growing as many different types as you can.
In the New Zealand garden,
most beans are cultivars of Phaseolus vulgaris, the so-called french beans, which include butter beans, purple or blue beans, round french beans, flat italian beans and drying beans like borlotti and cannellini.
With the exception of the last two (which are always dwarves), climbing and dwarf forms of all the main style of Phaseolus vulgaris have been developed. Scarlet runners (Phaseolus coccineus) are less varied – most produce fuzzy pods on tallgrowing vines.
Generally, dwarf beans are one-crop wonders, racing to produce all their pods over a short time. This is an advantage when you want to fill your freezer with only a couple of preserving sessions. For maximum production it’s best to sow a new batch every three to four weeks from late October to late January. Dwarf beans only take eight weeks from planting to picking and their size makes them ideal for containers.
If you only have space for one type of bean, try prolific ‘Top Crop’. When NZ Gardener surveyed green-fingered experts a few years ago to find the best beans, this green dwarf bean came out top. You’ll be harvesting from January until the first frosts.
Climbing beans have a longer harvest period. Regular picking of the early pods stimulates more flowers and more beans. They need something to scramble up, so plant near a wall or trellis, or give them an obelisk or a bamboo teepee.
Perennial ‘Scarlet Runner’ beans were once the only climbing bean but there are many more to try. If you were put off stringy beans as a child, try ‘Stringless Scarlet’ – although the pods can get stringy if left on the vine too long. ‘King of the Blues’ is a prolific cropper and looks pretty in the garden, although the deep blue pods do turn green when cooked. Speckled ‘Borlotti Red Rooster’ are good for shelling for casseroles.
Harvesting
Depending on the variety, beans can be picked and eaten when young, tender and green; as teenagers when the pods are no longer tender but the beans can be shelled and eaten fresh; or grown to maturity and dried for long-term storage.