Homemade bean tower

[GoDawgs]

The teepee reminds me of when I used to use them for pole beans before switching to a big trellis. They sure do work great! I was wondering if the beans would climb the waxy string on the tower you put together but it loons like they're doing it. In my experience, KY Wonders have been slower to climb than other varieties I've used. Hope you pick a ton!

[ponyexpress]

In my experience, KY Wonders have been slower to climb than other varieties I've used.

What other varieties have you used? One nice thing about KY Wonders is that they're also a shelling bean. My wife is not a huge fan of green beans so I'm planning to let the rest go to "seed" so that I can harvest them as dried beans.

I do have an issue with Mexican Bean Beetles for my bush beans. Need to research possible treatments. Supposedly they affect pole beans less than bush beans.

[rxkeith]

when i lived downstate, a neighbor on the road collected scrap. he cut up, and sold to me one of those antenna towers, three poles in triangular form connected to each other with grid work for their scrap value. i used them to grow pole beans. i had to anchor them to the ground.
my uncle steve beans will climb up that 10 ft bean tower, and most of the way back down. they don't seem to stop growing until the frost
kills them.


keith

[GoDawgs]

What other varieties have you used? One nice thing about KY Wonders is that they're also a shelling bean. My wife is not a huge fan of green beans so I'm planning to let the rest go to "seed" so that I can harvest them as dried beans.

I do have an issue with Mexican Bean Beetles for my bush beans. Need to research possible treatments. Supposedly they affect pole beans less than bush beans.

Over the years I've grown KY Blue, Blue Lake, Helda, Meralda, Romano, Good Mother Stallard, Lazy Housewife, Italian Mix and McCaslan. Since 2011 when I retired and went all raised beds I quit growing pole beans because I'd have to step in the beds to pick them and the teepee legs needed to be farther apart than I could set them. I switched to bush beans. But now I've had a thought or two about using the big butterbean trellis for pole beans if I don't grown the butterbeans next year.

Of those varieties I listed, I'd say the KY Blue and Blue Lake did the best. Meralda I grew for three years so I must have been happy with it. The worst were the Mother Stallard, Lazy Housewife and Italian Mix (three varieties with purple, yellow and green beans).

The Mexican bean beetles found the poles as well as the bushes. For the past several years I've been giving the bean beds a pyrethrin spray right after sowing (gets those darned flea beetles) and one more time as soon as I see the first bloom. That seems to have worked pretty good.