The main difference between pole beans and bush beans should be obvious. Pole beans climb poles. Bush beans are bushy. To complicate things, bush beans are more common in commercial agriculture because they are more adaptable to harvesting machinery, and they are most productive in a brief season, so are more efficiently harvested all at once rather than throughout summer.
Pole beans are generally more popular in home gardens for the opposite reason. They will not produce all at once, but will instead produce enough somewhat continually until the end of summer. Some varieties can climb past second story eaves, so should be confined to reachable trellises or other supports. They are annual, so the tangled thicket of vines that forms on top is no problem.
Most pole beans, which are also known as green beans, string beans, snap beans, French beans and haricot vert (French for ‘green beans’) are varieties of Phaseolus vulgaris. Some heirloom varieties of the original string beans produce beans with annoying ‘strings’ along one side of each bean. Dried beans are different varieties. Regular harvesting promotes continuous production.
I grow my beans on a bamboo pergola, so they won’t keep going up. I’m not getting up on a ladder to pick beans, lol, so once they start above the top, they have to be trained to go over instead of more up. They’re ok with that, and I get lots of wonderful beans that I can pick standing below the pergola. You can’t fool mother nature, but you can sometimes ask her to work with you. 🙂
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It is silly to let them grow out of reach. I train mine back down, but even without that, I would rather have them just make a thicket on top. They can only get so unsightly in a few months, and then they get removed.
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That must be such an amazing sight. Our climbing beans only grow to 5 foot. Our French beans are only a foot high.
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Five feet is not very tall at all. Mine would go much higher if they had support. I just do not want them to get out of reach.
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