Waves of Beans 

Pole beans certainly outperform bush type beans. Gardening is such a satisfying chore.

I greatly appreciate your efforts to gather data for us to learn. Thank you. 👍🏻

It might be worth growing the vines diagonally. I found this gave them more space to keep growing. It also made the pods easier to see when they were hanging down. I had good harvests from Cobra variety. Excellent video as usual. Thanks!

I love how technical all your videos are! All the graphs and charts are great! Once again, your videos and all around scientific approach is top knotch! The best channel going!

I love that your videos have so much science, math and data.

Bit south of you in maritime Co. Kerry, best year for Climbing French Beans in the tunnel ever for us, sowed a bit later than usual, missing the cooler early summer and then with the unusual heat and less humid weather we had two good waves that we're still picking and eating!

Thank you for taking the time to share your discovery's, amazing work!

Really cool. I’ve loved your videos from day 1, but I must say that the second wave of videos has been even better than the first. Cheers my friend.

This year I'm interspacing my climbing beans with cucurbits growing vertically to see if they can help each other to grow better than monocultures. I tried growing climbing beans with sweetcorn last year, but the timings just weren't right in my climate so my beans grew up before the corn did! I'm in the Westcountry of England, so although a little warmer than you, our climates are quite similar.

Wow. It always amazes me how productive your gardens are. Well done.

*_SMART GARDENING STYLE, WOOOOOWW!!!!,RED GARDENS , You are teaching me to be patient with plants,we will not get tired of watching this video, please don't stop gardening, continue like this, GO GO GO GOOOOOOOOOO!!!_*

I was looking to you for the answer to my poly-tunnel beans near Ottawa.... Seems we are at the same question period on how to do it next year. As always, your videos are way above board and lead me to think harder about every aspect of my potential growing footprint. Can't wait for you to go down the fruit shrubs/trees "rabbit hole"

Very interesting. I've had an awful year with beans. I had planned to plant 240 clusters of 4 plants of beans for drying, Borlotto and Cannoni both bush variety up at a small field we have were we keep bees where I've prepared an area under black plastic. The idea was that as these would be a long time in the ground and they don't need much attention. Unfortunately out of the three attempts at sowing (3X240) I only managed 24 plants, I can only put this down to the insane high temperatures that we witnessed late winter and early spring, or maybe the bought compost didn't work. Next year we will have another go. Thanks for the instructive videos helping us in the garden and weather the Covid restrictions BIG THUMBS UP.

Thanks

I really enjoy your work Bruce, the information you provide is very insightful. I'd like to trade your knowledge for some of mine. I've noticed that your eyes are underlit in this video, so here are two tips from a professional filmmaker (and amateur gardener) to fix that. Firstly, it's worthwhile to invest in a reflector, a.k.a. a bounce board. You could DIY one, but they're not that expensive. Get a 50cm one with dual/triple colours: white is mandatory and always useful, silver is used when you need more oomph, golden is rarely used. Stick to white mostly, although silver would work for an overcast sky as well, or later in the day. They need to be fastened to something, normally a stand but you could also attach it to your tripod using a gooseneck clamp. Alternatively, you could hold it in your hands, just below the camera lens (from experience I can tell you that you'll feel like an ass, but nobody will notice 😉). They're quite directional, so make sure to position it lower than your face, aimed directly at you. It doesn't take a long time to set up and is cheap, so this might help you 🙂. The second tip: in whatever editor you're using, there is an effect/filter to increase the brightness of dark areas only, leaving the light (or overlit) parts of the shot alone. Again, this is a simple and quick technique, which in this case would really improve the visibility of your face. How to do this is specific to your editing application, so google 'make dark areas brighter in [app name]'. Your videos are high quality as they are, so take these tips as a compliment! Much easier to watch than 99,99% of what is uploaded to youtube.

I've sent a donation to help cover your costs. Thanks for all your research.

That was a pretty fantastic yield, and I so agree about maybe having a look how others compare. I'm just over the water near cardigan bay, but inland a bit, and we had a late start so I bought some dwarf french beans out of desperation. I was amazed how much these little plants produced. Beans are such sustainable givers, easy to store dried and frozen, full of vitamins too. I'm growing far more varieties in 2022. Thanks for the great video.

I got Bean Rust for the first time in eleven years. Still ate a lot of beans before they gave out.

Very thorough discussion. Thanks!

Very good harvest bruce, your skills are becoming more and more remarkable. I hope one day I can reach that level, thanks for sharing the experience with us. Greetings.

You could try to angle the climbing string, so that it doesn't go directly upwards. The long beans don't stay hidden under the leaves and in front of the stem

I grew dwarf french beans outdoors this year in four batches to extend the cropping time. Worked well, except for the first batch which suffered from atypical poor weather. Three of the batches were second crops of the season.

Not quite beans, but my mangetout (first time growing this year), I have accidentally saved more seeds than I plant with hidden pods, or pods that looked liked leaves. I've just finished pulling them up and sticking them in compost and found a significant amount of peas to grow next year, more than I even planted 😂

I think I say it every time I comment on one of your videos, but I just must say how much I appreciate your thoroughness in thinking about all (or as many as you can ponder) of different factors that may be effecting different yield results. When you were talking about the weights if your yields, and your total growing space for the beans and compared it to the yields that your other types of crops provide, I was impressed, but then you talked about how the height of the beans and how their shade might impact it’d neighboring crops…. and I just started grinning 🙂. Of course that would pop into your head. I think in much the same way. I can’t just pat myself on the back and figure the better results are from one thing I changed or did better. When multiple variables are present, I have to try and think of as many of them as I can to try and see a more complete picture of things. Been then I also realize that I’ll probably miss a whole slew of factors just from not knowing what to look for and having ever present gaps in knowledge. Thanks for all your efforts. I really appreciate your insights.

Climbing a single string is much easier to remove and clean at the end than a grid type trellis where you have to untangle the vines. Good point about stripping leaves around pods for seed.

My mother used to plant 6 seeds per pole, each one week or so apart. Maybe 2 every two weeks, I’m not positive about the details. That was in Germany.

i have been eating green beans every meal for 3 month now with only 5 climbing french bean

in a lot of plants , stems hanging down or horizontal , collects the gravity effected hormones in the shoots and triggers flowering

Hello little bird 2:06

I noted that you use synthetic threads as rope. Given you wish to reduce plastic have you considered using Jute thread? Outside it rots in a season but inside like the polytunnel it will last must longer. I use it all the time and find it no less convienient than the sythnthetic threads plus I do not get the shards of plastic flaking off into my soil. Since I grow and process my own linen I have been thinking of using some of that to try my own home made linen ropesm I expect it will be less robust that jute.

I feel like beans are an important part of this. I'd like to grow using the simple garden method (albiet probably witha polytunnel because it seem the extra production is really worth the time and effort) but I feel like my diet would suffer from the lack of legumes in my diet - just because they're a very good souce of protein. While the garden wouldn't be my only source of food, it would be my main one so it's at the very least good to hear possible time saving methods. I'd half like to hear what breeds grow well for the later drying just to see if those could be ground into a kind of flour or soup thickener - as I'd certainly be harvesting quickly rather than attentively.

Going for coloured pods would help speed up harvesting. Selma Zebra looks pretty.

An American with a garden in Ireland 😄👍👍🥕🌽🥦🥬🥒🫑🍆🍅🍅🍉

I suggest trying long beans. These are about 1-2 feet long and similar to string beans, but firmer.

In Italy Climbing French Beans are unknown, at least I don't know them. Are they beans of which you eat the entire pod? If so we eat "fagiolini" that are bushes and we have them from April to October...

Hi Bruce, thanks really interesting as always. Have you ever grown cherokee trail of tears? Well worth trying outside in my opinion, very productive variety and open pollenated but not quite as fleshy as cobra. Here in Leeds we grew cobra and hunter outdoors this year and they did really well, just took down the frame yesterday but they'd still be producing if it wasn't for deer coming in and mowing off half of the leaves (only crop with damage so far this year out of many). We did a weekly pick but they would have definitely been higher quality with more regular picking. I've never noticed waves of pod production but will definitely keep an eye for it in future years! Cheers

In Kilkenny. Successful growing climbing French beans outside. Is the climate that different? Haven't measured yield but it's good. Variety is Talisman

Love your channel. I`m living close to Lough Neagh a little north of you. Do you buy your seeds from a seed store here in Ireland? Would love to try those Fasold variety, Cobra did preform very well for me this year, but like yourself I always like to try new varieties.

Does Ireland not have bean beetles, or does the poly tunnel block them out? I was very satisfied (drowned, really) in my pole bean harvest this year--but later on the beetles were voracious.

You didn't mention what varieties you grew.

would the 3 sisters work in poly tunnel?

Can't get the video to play....! It's just frozen on the first frame

Moon phase a factor?