bean pot teepee

[hangin'witthepeeps]

So I came across this article and wanted to try it. What type of bean would work best. I will not be planting 10 or 15 beans per pot. I will try succession planting 2 beans every 2 weeks.

So my next question is (for fresh eating) in your experience how many pots would I need to have fresh beans in one picking for 6 adults?

Next year I'm taking what I learned this year of course, but concentrating more on plant space and how many to grow to feed us. We have the big garden for canning and such, so my little garden is for fresh eating.

My little raised bed garden would have done much better if I would have paid more attention to space per plant.

ETA: The article!!! lol

http://www.growbetterveggies.com/growbetterveggies/2008/08/how-about-a-veg.html

 

[wifezilla]

I am not sure what type of bean, but I do love the concept. I might try this with some beans or even melons. I have a spot that gets good sun but there is so much competition from tree roots that nothing grows. Not even MINT!!!

Using a teepee set up with the nursery pots would really solve that problem.

I have seeds for 2 types of pole beans...Chinese Red Noodle Beans and Blue Lake Pole Beans. Either would work fine in that kind of set up, but for eating fresh, my favorite is dragon tongue bush beans.

 

[digitS']

I have never grown pole beans in pots but have, at least, one teepee in the garden each year. My pole beans are probably Oregon Giants but the seed was given to me and did not come with that name. Cascade Giants are supposed to be an improved variety of Oregon Giants and you can find that seed more commonly.

Altho' bush beans take far greater precedence, I have grown a number of pole bean varieties including Kentucky Wonder, Emerite and Fortex. The neighbor has Kentucky Blue every year. He also saves seed. But, I like my giant beans .

All of these varieties have been productive but the seed has been sown directly into the open garden. The plants are thinned to 4 and spaced about 4 feet apart. I drive 8 foot poles into the soil and tie the top of four of the poles together with wire. If I grow the plants in my more open big veggie garden, I like to lay one pole horizontally from one teepee to the next tying it also where they all cross at the top.

Growing as well as they do in the open garden, you may find that 1 teepee provides enuf beans for 6 servings, a couple times a week. Two should really be enuf but 3 teepees would allow for some freezing - I would think.

Steve

 

[bid]

I am not sure about 2 beans per week. Why not go ahead and plant the pots and thin to however many is appropriate for the pot size? From the article it seems the author had 8 pots containing a total of 48 plants. But to achieve the same would take about 5 weeks planting 2 beans every 2 weeks and only if every plant grew or didn't get eaten or damaged by some random critter. Just throwing that out there.

 

[hangin'witthepeeps]

I like blue lake and Kentucky wonder. I need a good pole bean, but if I made two teepee's with six pots a piece I might make enough for fresh eating. I have lots of small sunny spots, but don't want to dig up my yard and need to protect young plants from the chickens. They did not bother established plants in pots this year. I did have to protect them when young. My guineas would peck at them, to death. I assume pecking the bugs off. The plants just got in the way. lol

ETA: I though by succession planting you could extend the harvest.

 

[hoodat]

One problem with any potted plant is that the day eventually comes when life gets ahead of you and your watering gets neglected for a day or two. There is also the factor of the pots heating the roots during the hottest part of Summer.
The best bean I can think of for those problems is the rattlesnake bean. It takes drought better than any bean I know of, even better than the Anasazi bean and thrives on heat. It is a very tough bean that will produce green beans all Summer if kept picked. At the end of the season you can let the bean pods mature and get a high quality dried bean.

 

[hangin'witthepeeps]

Thanks Hoodat. That's what I was looking for. As I will eventually forget to water them. It's happened before, it will happen again.

 

[bid]

I like blue lake and Kentucky wonder. I need a good pole bean, but if I made two teepee's with six pots a piece I might make enough for fresh eating. I have lots of small sunny spots, but don't want to dig up my yard and need to protect young plants from the chickens. They did not bother established plants in pots this year. I did have to protect them when young. My guineas would peck at them, to death. I assume pecking the bugs off. The plants just got in the way. lol

ETA: I though by succession planting you could extend the harvest.

Well, I was just thinking in terms of you wanting to use this as fresh table fare. To me at least, I tend to think of succession planting in a couple different ways. Lettuce for example, I want to stagger harvest times because there's only so much we can eat and you can't really save it anyway. Short shelf life. Another way would be plants that tend to produce a lot in a short time and then slack off in production; bush beans, determinate tomatoes, corn, etc.

Pole beans (I like Kentucky Wonder and Blue Lake too!) it would seem you would want them producing as soon as possible and they will continue to produce. But that hot weather we had this summer knocked a lot folks pole beans back from producing this past season at times. Just something to consider.

 

[wifezilla]

Plastic pots do not dry out as bad as clay pots. Even here I Colorado I manage to usually remember to water before they dry out.....usually

As for root protection from heat, some straw around the pot could easily take care of that. I always have some around for the ducks and quail anyway.

 

[hangin'witthepeeps]

So is Blue Lake and Kentucky Wonder considered a "pole" bean? My idea of pole beans are the flat pod beans.

I have bean seeds that my granny gave me. It is what her mom gave her (so on and so forth). We always plant a row for seed. These are good green beans to can. I cannot recommend them for fresh eating, they are gross.

I planted 2 Blue Lake and 2 Kentucky Wonder beans this year. They were a good fresh bean. I ate them raw in salads, blanched them, put them in veggie soup, cooked them "country stile" and they were a very good fresh bean. I just didn't plant enough. It was an experiment as I have never grown any other bean. I want to keep them away from the big garden, I don't know if beans cross pollinate? So I will find a sunny spot in my yard, set up some pots and grow a teepee of Kentucky Wonder, a teepee of Blue Lake, and a teepee of Rattle Snake beans. Of course I'll welcome other suggestions for fresh beans. My yard may look like a road side amusement park with petting zoo come this summer.