French Bean - what am I doing wrongly?

[Des10]

This is my second year of sowing french bean, and the harvest has been very poor again.

I have about 20 plants and so far I have only harvested about 10 beans. I was expecting one plant to be full of beans. Not 1 per week.

I've put some plant in full sun, others in partial shade, the ones in partial shade are slightly taller and have a bit more flowers, but both sets don't have that may flowers or beans on them.

The plants look healthy, all the leaves are fine. The only thing I can think of is perhaps i'm planting them too close to each other, they are about 10 cms apart. Is this way too close?

Any advice would be much appreciated. I'm hoping to have a much better harvest next year.

Thanks.

P.S: The varieties i'm growing are: Dwarf bush - Tendergreen and Green Arrow, bought from Alan Romans

[Redpepper]

Hi Des10, are you watering them frequently? They like to be kept so that the soil is always moist and the roots never dry out. I don't think the 10cm spacing is a problem though.

[chengjing]

Mine just started to crop as well. Maybe you just need to be patient.

[zazen999]

It's been [you see what I did there] a slow year so far; give them some time.

and water; mulch, and remember it's very hot out there for the poor things.

[Des10]

Thanks very much guys.

I think I might need to water a bit more. The plants are looking healthy, so I didn't think to water more. But I definitely will, from now on.

And I promise to be patient

Thanks.

[reetnproper]

Hi Des,

I've only had a few beans so far so you are not alone. Be patient and hopefully you'll have more beans than you know what to do with soon.

That said we have found that climbing beans have a far greater yield than dwarf varieties, at least in our garden.

Reet
x

[Des10]

Thanks Reet.

I've got 3 climbing beans on the go at the moment and they are still..... well, climbing. I'm going to be patient and not question them, yet.

[Ooh thats how you do it]

Are they flowering? Like everyone else says it has been pretty slow so far for the year, but if you have flowers the beans are around the corner. I expect mine to start hitting full production by the end of the month

[Two_Sheds]

You're def. being impatient: I've only had 6 beans off mine too. And no, they don't need masses of water.

[Patchninja]

I sow 5 seeds to a,pocket and don't bother thinning my dwarf beans. I'm always amazed at how crammed in you can get away with. They're cropping fine. They're not in full sun however which would dry them out more.
Also, I didn't sow until the ground was good and warm so they were never checked by a cool spell. They hate the cold, I've heard!

[Two_Sheds]

I didn't sow until the ground was good and warm so they were never checked by a cool spell. They hate the cold, I've heard!

It's true. There is no benefit to be got by planting early. I sowed late April & nothing germinated.
A fortnight later: germination good, but the late frost got them.
A fortnight after that: I'm picking beans off those.
Sown in June: the beans are racing up their poles.

The cold really does check them, and they never seem to catch up with the late-May or early-June sown beans.

[Pigeonpoo]

Mine look very healthy but not even a flower yet! I'm in NE Lancs so maybe a bit behind here....I live in hope that they will catch up before too long.

[Alison]

My outdoor climbing ones are only just starting to flower so I think you're being very impatient. I did do a polytunnel planting of dwarf beans and they've been very good, have even frozen some of those.