runner bean supports

[noshed]

What's your best bet?

[pigletwillie]

Either a wooden or scaffolding pole "goal post" shaped frame about 6` high, with eyes big enough to take a cane screwed in every foot. Come bean time simply slide your canes up through the eyes and then push down firmly into the ground.

No messing around with string and your canes are assembled within minutes. Likewise, at the end of the season remove the canes in seconds and put into storage. Voila.

[sewer rat]

I'm going to use 2 sheets of weldmesh - the type of metal grid they set into concrete floors - laid against each other. I haven't yet decided to go with growing my runner beans and climbing French beans in a permanent trench or just up cane wigwams as I have previously done - still weighing up the pros and cons of each method.

[JennieAtkinson]

[QUOTE=pigletwillie]Either a wooden or scaffolding pole "goal post" shaped frame about 6` high, with eyes big enough to take a cane screwed in every foot. Come bean time simply slide your canes up through the eyes and then push down firmly into the ground.

Any chance of a picture? Can't quite visualise it !

[WiZeR]

I did this:




I can't tell you if it's any good or not as i've never grown runner beans before

[pigletwillie]

Jenny, a picture will follow in a few days when I am on rest days.

[Shortie]

I was going to use Bambo this year but have been told that when in full fruit (as it were) a gust of wind could collapse it. Is that true

[Peter]

Collapse

Not if you use one cane per plant and they are sound, plus at least one foot length in the soil.
I have always used this method, but you do use quite a bit of string to secure them each year.
A bamboo wig-wam, is stronger.

BTW, Pigletwillies frame is something like.
___________
| |
| |

(ruddy web-site has taken the extra spaces out!)

and the "eyes" are just screw in hoops, like you might use to hang the cable your net curtain dangles from, screwed into the sides of the top-rail.

I have seen a similar frame with a doubler, so the top was not just one length of timber, but two with the end posts (viewed from the end) looking like a T and the two top rails attached at the ends of the T top, but string, not canes, was used for the beans to scramble up.

[Lesley Jay]

We usually make a long double row out of cane sticks sunk one foot into the ground but when the strong winds were forecast last summer we had to tie it down with ropes. They are big heavy plants. This year we are going to try a few wig-wams (as yet not sure just how many I will need!).

[noshed]

Thanks.
I'm taken with the "2 cheap rose arches linked together with bamboos" idea. I'll let you know how it goes.

[SueA]

I always use the bamboo cane wigwam method & grow sweet peas up amongst the beans as well.

[sewer rat]

I seem to recall Geordie in one of his earlier threads saying that we should invert the wigwam - i.e - narrow at the bottom, wider at the top as this makes the beans much easier to pick, as they hang out and away from the plants - easier to spot too no doubt.

[mole on a motorbike]

runner beans

hi all, what i have done is dig a large hole, 1/4 fill with newspaper 1/4 fill with
last years compost and topped off with soil. hopefully the newspaper will hold moister for a long period.., we shall see. i have used the wigwam cane style also.

[SueA]

I seem to recall Geordie in one of his earlier threads saying that we should invert the wigwam - i.e - narrow at the bottom, wider at the top as this makes the beans much easier to pick, as they hang out and away from the plants - easier to spot too no doubt.

I've heard that as well Rat. I went to one of the gardens open for the NGS last week & saw a frame constructed that way with nothing planted against it. A group of people were standing around it speculating what it was for & I was dying to suggest it was so that growing beans up it meant they would hang on the outside & be easier to pick but I didn't want to seem like a nosey know-it-all as it wasn't even my garden!