Green beans, great vines, no blooms??

[jyoutz]

In my little garden I planted Kentucky Wonder Poles Beans as I do every three years. We have great looking vines, but no blooms. Did not fertilize this year as the soil sample from last year was very good.

Any ideas.

RSKY

Just slow. It will happen.

 

[jyoutz]

This is the first year I've grown bush type and it will be the last. The headache of setting up the fence panels for the pole beans to climb is not as bad as the backache bending to pick the bush type.

I keep saying this is the last year for a garden BUT my mother had a large garden until she turned eighty. I believe that is one of the reasons she lived to be 97. I am seventy so maybe a small garden until I'm 80.

RSKY

Yep. I came to the same conclusion a few years ago and bought three steel bean towers from Gurneys. The towers are laced each year with new nylon twine and the beans climb on that. One other thing I learned about pole beans is that Kentucky Wonder and blue lake beans are tough. The most tender climbing beans I’ve found are named Seychelles. They just started producing in my garden and they are stringless and tender. I’m never going back to the backbreaking bush beans.

 

[Jstpssng]

I keep saying this is the last year for a garden BUT my mother had a large garden until she turned eighty. I believe that is one of the reasons she lived to be 97. I am seventy so maybe a small garden until I'm 80

Around 1981 I stayed in an efficiency apartment in a motel in Stratton Maine.
In 2004 I stayed at the same lodging under different management, but the original owner still lived next door. She was 92 and still kept a garden with one daughter's help, big enough to keep the family in fresh vegetables.
She also still drove... the current motel owner said that when people saw her coming they knew to get out of the way.

 

[Oaktree]

This is the first year I've grown bush type and it will be the last. The headache of setting up the fence panels for the pole beans to climb is not as bad as the backache bending to pick the bush type.

I keep saying this is the last year for a garden BUT my mother had a large garden until she turned eighty. I believe that is one of the reasons she lived to be 97. I am seventy so maybe a small garden until I'm 80.

RSKY

I use 1/2" schedule 40 conduit for my beans. Set 'em in a triangle and ziptie them together at the top. Easy to set up and tear down.

My mother kept some semblance of a garden into her early 90s, though nothing like what my parents had earlier.
I'm gonna keep on putting one in as long as I can. Biggest hassle for me is keeping it weeded. A couple years ago got a load of manure that was nothing but weed seeds. Don't know what they are, but they grow fast and tall.

 

[jyoutz]

This is what I’ve been using for pole beans. They are stout and will last a lifetime. Every year I buy a new roll of nylon string. The many strings provide a lot of climbing and growing space. Kind of expensive, but one and done. I like how convenient they are to setup, take down, and store.

Bean Tower | Garden Supplies from Gurney's Seed & Nursery

The bean tower saves garden space and is ideal for raised beds. Can also be used for flowering vines, melons and cucumbers. Easy to assemble and store.

www.gurneys.com

 

[ponytug]

I use 1/2" schedule 40 conduit for my beans. Set 'em in a triangle and ziptie them together at the top. Easy to set up and tear down.

My mother kept some semblance of a garden into her early 90s, though nothing like what my parents had earlier.
I'm gonna keep on putting one in as long as I can. Biggest hassle for me is keeping it weeded. A couple years ago got a load of manure that was nothing but weed seeds. Don't know what they are, but they grow fast and tall.

You might try a thick layer of straw between the rows to shade out weeds. In my experience, the few that do grow through pull out easily. The only downside is that if you get slugs, the straw will make the slugs worse. I used to put out a couple of old beer bottles on their sides with top at ground level, with a little beer or yeast and sugar water, and the slugs crawled into the "hotels". There is always weed control fabric, or plastic sheeting. but I have never really liked using it in vegetable gardens.

@jyoutz FWIW: we used something similar as a kid, but we used either hemp or sisal twine so at the end of the season, it could all be turned under for compost. I could see that it might depend on the local climate.

All the best,

Peter

 

[jyoutz]

You might try a thick layer of straw between the rows to shade out weeds. In my experience, the few that do grow through pull out easily. The only downside is that if you get slugs, the straw will make the slugs worse. I used to put out a couple of old beer bottles on their sides with top at ground level, with a little beer or yeast and sugar water, and the slugs crawled into the "hotels". There is always weed control fabric, or plastic sheeting. but I have never really liked using it in vegetable gardens.

@jyoutz FWIW: we used something similar as a kid, but we used either hemp or sisal twine so at the end of the season, it could all be turned under for compost. I could see that it might depend on the local climate.

All the best,

Peter

The towers come with hemp twine, but I use nylon because the first year I used the hemp twine the vines were heavy enough to break the twine.

 

[ponytug]

The towers come with hemp twine, but I use nylon because the first year I used the hemp twine the vines were heavy enough to break the twine.

IIRC, mostly we used sisal. I think we had an old, old, old partial roll of sisal baling twine lying around the barn. I don't recall the roll ever getting much smaller.

All the best,

Peter

 

[jyoutz]

I use 1/2" schedule 40 conduit for my beans. Set 'em in a triangle and ziptie them together at the top. Easy to set up and tear down.

My mother kept some semblance of a garden into her early 90s, though nothing like what my parents had earlier.
I'm gonna keep on putting one in as long as I can. Biggest hassle for me is keeping it weeded. A couple years ago got a load of manure that was nothing but weed seeds. Don't know what they are, but they grow fast and tall.

We had so much rain over the past 3 weeks that I wasn’t able to keep up with the weeds and my garden is large. I ended up hand pulling weeds around the plants and just using a string weed wacker between the rows. It was too wet to rototill.

 

[Jstpssng]

My ground is so rock hard that pulling weeds is impossible. Last night I walked down the rows with my weed wacker.