Green Bean

A green bean seed is a living thing that can drown. Plant it in cold, wet soil — anything below sixty degrees — and it may sit there for two weeks before it rots. This is the single most common way home gardeners lose their bean crop, and it happens because the calendar says it's planting time but the ground hasn't caught up. Push your hand into the soil. If it feels cold to you, it feels cold to the seed.

The decision between bush beans and pole beans is mostly about space and harvest timing. Bush beans grow to about eighteen inches, set all their pods over a two-week window, and then decline. They're productive for their size, and if you want beans for freezing or canning, a concentrated harvest makes sense. Pole beans climb to six or eight feet, need something to climb on, and produce steadily for six to eight weeks once they start. For fresh eating through the summer, pole beans tend to give you more return on the square footage.

Direct sowing is the only practical method. Bean roots are brittle and resent disturbance — transplanting is possible in theory but the seedlings often stall or die when moved. Sow the seeds about an inch deep and four inches apart, one week after your last frost date, or whenever the soil reaches sixty degrees. If a late cold snap is forecast after they've germinated, cover the seedlings with row cover or an old sheet for the night.

Beans fix their own nitrogen, which means they don't need much fertilizer. In fact, too much nitrogen produces lush foliage and few pods. If your soil is reasonably fertile, the plants will likely perform better with no added amendments than with a heavy dose of compost or manure. A light mulch once the plants are established helps keep the soil evenly moist, which tends to improve pod set.

Mexican bean beetles can be a serious problem in some regions — small, copper-colored ladybug look-alikes that skeletonize the leaves. They show up in midsummer and can defoliate a planting in a week if left unchecked. Hand-picking the adults and crushing the yellow egg clusters on the undersides of leaves is the most reliable control for a home garden. Row cover works if you apply it before the beetles arrive, but beans need pollination, so you'll need to remove it once flowering starts.

Harvest regularly. Beans left on the vine to mature signal the plant to stop producing new flowers. Pick every two or three days once pods start forming, taking anything that has reached full size but is still tender. The more you pick, the more the plant tends to set.