Homemade bean tower

[ponyexpress]

Burpee sells a bean tower for $40 that is only 6 ft tall. I thought that I could build my own much cheaper. My inspiration is the article “My Bicycle Wheel Bean Tower” article found online on motherearthnews.com site. I like the quality things in life so the cost was actually around $30. I think the 10ft fence pole was $15. The garden stake was $6. Three band clamps were $6. Some cable and nuts were $3. My wife found a trashed road bike in front of someone’s house and brought it home for me. Took the wheels off and brought the rest to the transfer station.

People at the garden were impressed. Here are some photos. I planted Kentucky Wonder pole beans. I think there will be 18 plants going up this tower.

D22507A6-9E4A-4ED4-AFB2-2E2000C4C896.jpeg

9AC47CE7-AA7D-44F8-9365-08363AC9BF9D.jpeg

Someone on FB pointed out to me the heart shaped cloud in the sky above the tower. Neat!

F2E9410F-0E00-476C-A479-18CD28F6843E.jpeg

[Nan6b]

Can you reach the top of that thing to pick 'em?

[ponyexpress]

Can you reach the top of that thing to pick 'em?

With a ladder, I can. I might try to rig a simple step stool for me to reach the top. There's another gardener that has a Little Giant ladder in his plot. I can ask him if I could borrow it. I think the top is about 9' tall (1 ft is buried).

If anyone knows how I can rotate the first picture in bbcode without having to download the image to desktop, and re-upload, let me know. Thanks!

[Nan6b]

Well, that's a mighty impressive setup. I also like the bee balm you have planted close by. It attracts so many bumblebees (and others), I have it planted by my tomatoes.

[ponyexpress]

Well, that's a mighty impressive setup. I also like the bee balm you have planted close by. It attracts so many bumblebees (and others), I have it planted by my tomatoes.

Thanks for the kind words. Yes, I love the bee balm. Mine is a purple color. On my walk to the garden, I see another house with a pile of maroon bee balm. Need to ask the homeowner for a clump one day.

One of my projects for the community garden is to setup a "pollinator garden". Some girl scout setup a really nice one at a different garden for her gold badge project. Very well done. It even has some butterfly & mason bee homes. Will post pictures of this one day.

[Nan6b]

The hummingbirds prefer bee balm with high brix nectar; there was a discussion on Tomatoville about that -reference:
http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?p=750544
bee balm "Raspberry Wine" and "Jacob Cline" have a high brix nectar the hummingbirds love. Not all cultivars do, and apparently the pink & purple don't.

[wildcat62]

That's a pretty cool idea.

[PlainJane]

That’s very cool! You should get tons of beans.

[pepperhead212]

I love that idea! I think I'd put it to where I could reach it - maybe just under 8'.

[brownrexx]

Love it.

[ponyexpress]

I love that idea! I think I'd put it to where I could reach it - maybe just under 8'.

Last year, my bean trellis was about 10 feet long 3/4" electrical conduit on top of 2 1/2" conduit supported by garden stakes. It was a wall of beans but at the end of the season, it collapsed after a windy day. The 1/2" conduit just wasn't strong enough to hold all of those beans. I'll see if I can find a picture of it.

I think next year, I'll plant pole peas in the same spot. I suppose I could move the tower to another spot in the garden for proper crop rotation.

[MissS]

That is a very clever bean tower. The only drawback is that it is too high for most people to reach. I would love it at eight feet for me.

[MsCowpea]

That is fantastic. You did a great job. We put together 2 five foot cages for 10 feet but it is a pain to clean it off of dead vines. With yours you just clip the string , then it would be easy to rub off the vine for the compost pile. If it was a natural compostable string you could just throw in the whole thing. Ours also blew over one time but doesn’t happen too often. I love the novelty and ‘look’ but I am going for a bit shorter next time as sometimes we neglected to keep the tall ones picked.

[Paquebot]

Years ago, almost every house had a TV antenna on the roof and it was on either a tripod or quadruped. Almost all scrapped now but I salvaged two and they are permanent bean towers. The best and cheapest are available the first couple weeks of the year. That's when $25 Christmas trees become free mulch and bean poles. Trim off the branches for mulch and you have a bean tepee leg. Such a good idea that I had 52 stolen from the community garden one time!

Martin

[ponyexpress]

If it was a natural compostable string you could just throw in the whole thing.

I think the string I used is nylon wax coated. It works really nice and I'm able to re-use it multiple times. I have not tried it yet in this application though. I do have string that is natural fiber but I find that it seems to unravel too easily. I did use it for my tomato tower but that was only a few lines, not 18+ lines.

That's when $25 Christmas trees become free mulch and bean poles. Trim off the branches for mulch and you have a bean tepee leg. Such a good idea that I had 52 stolen from the community garden one time!

That's an interesting idea. My friend has made a few tomato teepees with thick branches. He puts string/rope around to contain the indeterminate tomato plant.

I have another bean teepee made of 4 bamboo poles that I got from somewhere. I think the poles are 6-7 ft long and are hollow. I put 2 beans at the end of each leg. I probably could put some strings in between the legs to get some additional beans up.

[ponyexpress]

Here is a picture of my other teepee styled breed tower in the same garden.

61B9DDE2-E89A-415F-A7B5-5BB671CA61BB.jpeg

As for other stuff in my garden, some of my garlic is growing on the right. The bamboo bean tower is next to a golden raspberry patch. The raised bed has my carrots.

[bower]

The bamboo is nice, but I can't wait to see your bicycle covered in beans!

[ponyexpress]

Here is a photo taken yesterday of the bean tower. The Kentucky Wonder beans are climbing up.

083DD89F-058C-4A0D-BA1E-AB79BB3CDC3C.jpeg

Here is a picture of my other tower made of bamboo. The beans are too tall for it. This tower also tipped over a bit in the recent tropical storm.

14A47577-0AA8-4F5D-93B6-86E1FEFD6C14.jpeg

[MsCowpea]

Looks like a beautiful garden. The beans look great. My grandmother grew Kentucky Wonder. Love the flavor of that bean. I grow it but doesn’t compare to hers which were grown in the Ozarks.

[JRinPA]

Years ago, almost every house had a TV antenna on the roof and it was on either a tripod or quadruped. Almost all scrapped now but I salvaged two and they are permanent bean towers. The best and cheapest are available the first couple weeks of the year. That's when $25 Christmas trees become free mulch and bean poles. Trim off the branches for mulch and you have a bean tepee leg. Such a good idea that I had 52 stolen from the community garden one time!

Martin

I have heard of white collar crime, but this is the first I have heard of green thumb crime.

I always want to scavenge Christmas trees. Another good use is dumping them in your lake where there isn't much structure, and GPSing the spot so only you know about it. For awhile at least, until you get seen having too much action. My problem is that my lake is closed November to April.