I have to say pole beans both begin and end production later than bush beans. And produce continuously during that time, easily overtaking the bush beans in total production. But it is a much larger plant after all.

Yes but....they need something to climb on. I plant both. I use bush beans to add nitrogen to the larger beds, then harvest, uproot, and plant something else. As tcstoehr mentioned, pole beans will hang around with you a bit longer, I think they look prettier climbing overt stuff, and they keep on producing. However, not all planting sites that need beans are suitable for pole beans. Besides, I like to sprout my pantry, and pantry beans only come in the bush variety.

I feel the same way. Pole beans are romantic and charming in a garden, but I can and preserve and I need mega quantities of beans coming on dependably at one time, or the effort of putting them by isn't worth the time involved. I get multiple pickings from one planting of bush beans before they just tire out and get ratty from bugs or weather. So, I stagger a second planting, and this year I have a third planting to come on right before frost. Some years I just rip out the first planting and plant again immediately. In the dead of summer, it doesn't take beans long to come on and mature.

Romantic and charming? I guess.
I currently grow a 24 foot row of Helda (Romano) pole beans containing 20 plants. Since mid June (darned early for us) I've had more than enough for fresh eating and as of last weekend I've put up 32 quarts chopped and packed as densely as possible. Not to mention that several bags have been wasted in the fridge cuz I didn't get around in time to doing something with them. And they're still coming faster than I know what to do with, without having to stagger or replant.
Now, you may or may not do better, that's not the point. I just think that qualifies for more than just "romantic and charming".
However, I do have alot of sunny space to spread out my plants, so they're more productive. You may have to crowd your plants more. And my trellis is less densely packed with vines so picking is relatively easy as the pods are easy to spot. Even though I have to reach high and low, with my old knees I find it quite preferable to crawling and kneeling along a row of bush beans.
It also depends on where your growing them. My 8-foot trellis shades out a considerable bit of potential garden space. But it's space that I'm not using so that's not a factor. In my case, going vertical is the way to go. To get the same amount of beans from bushes, you would need to cultivate more ground and have more plants, but you wouldn't need to bother with a trellis. I just happen to have an 8-foot deer fence all around my yard.
As usual, your mileage may vary.

Considering how small the bush bean plants are, compared to pole beans, they can yeild quite a lot of beans in one picking. The only thing is they don't last too long before they need to be cut back or replanted. Mine only last 2 or 3 weeks before the quality starts to deplete. So if you don't have a lot of room for multiple plantings pole beens would probably produce more overall for you.

For me bush beans are definitly easier and quicker to pick. Pole beans take forever to pick if you have a lot of them.

Hey allenwrench,

Like tcstoehr, I vote for pole beans. I can get as many beans in one 20 foot row of pole beans as I can in 3 of bush. They're also easier to pick because they are mostly above shoulder height. Some grow lower, but most pods form at the top as the plant grows taller. Most beans I pick come from the horizontal bars in the middle of my frame.

{{gwi:85514}}

Thanks to ALL for the help.

One question...

"I like to sprout my pantry, and pantry beans only come in the bush variety."

...what does this mean?

Yes, charming and romantic, LOLOL. Even though I seldom plant pole beans, they're a beautiful sight growing well in a vegetable plot and it strikes me as the same effect as old fashioned flowers do in a cottage garden.

Since I answered this question in great detail on this Bean Forum thread, I won't repeat all of my comments here.

But to summarize... A single row of a high-yielding pole variety (as snaps) will easily yield as much as 3-4 rows of bush beans. If you have limited space, then pole beans are the way to go. And speaking personally, I find the quality of pole beans to be higher than bush varieties, and there are fewer problems with cleaning, pod diseases, and critters chewing on them.

Even if your garden is larger, a single row of pole snaps on the North edge of the garden (to avoid shading other crops) will provide a heavy yield, and free up a considerable amount of space for other things.

Pole beans have their greatest advantage planted in a single long row. Once multiple rows are used, some of this advantage is lost due to shade & spacing concerns.

Like Tcstoehr, I have absolutely no problems with getting enough pole beans to can. My main snap bean crop is "Fortex", and I picked three 5-gallon buckets yesterday from 60 feet of row. This is at peak harvest, I normally pick about half as much... but since the beans need to be picked every 2-3 days over a long period, this really adds up. The freezer will be full after today, so from now until frost, I'm just giving most of them away.

(By the way, I heartily endorse the "Plant a row for the hungry" program.)

Pole beans are not for everyone. Since they occupy space for the entire season, they don't fit into short rotation schedules. They also, as a rule, take longer to bear than their bush counterparts, so might no be suitable to very short seasons (but IMO, more than make up for the wait). And if you are growing dry beans, bush beans actually hold the advantage.

As others have mentioned, you can stagger your plantings of bush beans... but that takes more space, and without a high degree of planning, there are areas of dead/unused garden space throughout the season. Unless other crops are planned to fill the voids, pole beans would make more sense.

It pretty much comes down to personal choice; with the proper planting scheme, either bush or pole beans will work for most gardens. While I do grow a few bush beans, I prefer pole varieties. No bush bean can give me the "Wow!" factor of the best pole varieties. I have been gardening as an adult for over 30 years, and when I am picking the 11-12" pods of "Fortex", I feel like a kid again. ;-)

Let me vote for pole beans. And if you have large tunnels for winter hoophouses, like I do, picking them is the easiest of gardening tasks. The plants cover the hoophouse as if it were an arbor. Standing inside, the pods hang down under the plant and you can pick them without hardly touching a leaf.

Under the beans, collards enjoy the shade in summer, and the nitrogen, and become huge, and determinate tomato plants (like Roma), while shaded, still make it to maturity for canning in September.

Pole beans are also trouble free plants, all I need to do is scatter seeds, cover with wood chips, give them a bit of wood ash, and let the drip line do the rest. No fertilizing, no spray, no watering of seedlings, no weeding, and snap beans every day from June 15 to Sept. 30. Romano are my favorite varieties due to a combination of earliness and great flavor, even though they do not compare with other varieties production-wise and get tough eventually. They start the season until the purple ones kick in, followed by the best regular varieties.

Allenwrench, by sprouting my pantry I mean I take seeds from beans that I bought at the store to eat. I am sprouting New Orleans Camelia beans now because I like them a lot, and I am trying to figure out which beans are good both as green beans and dried beans. A couple of years ago I did black eye peas. I was not happy with them as green beans, so I let them dry. I collected them and ate them as dry beans, wow, were they good. So what I mean is that even if I don't like them green I can enjoy them dried. I re-use the seed so then I have bean seed well adapted to this climate.

Because they are commercial, all pantry beans you use will be bush beans. Pole beans would not work for commercial production as far as I can tell.

Anyone else here sprounts their pantry?

I grew a little row (8') of white navy beans that I bought at the grocery store...the same type I use for making bean soup. Yes, they were a bush bean and I was fairly satisfied with the production from the "soup beans." I certainly was happy to pay $.75 for 2 lbs of soup beans where I cooked all but a handful and from the handful I planted I got 4 quarts or so of shelled beans. It beat paying $2.15 for a little packet of bean seeds from the local stores, where that barely planted my short rows.

Boy, I sure don't agree that bush beans are easier to pick! I absolutely HATE leaning over to pick the bush beans. For those of us who have leg/back problems, there's nothing worse than leaning over for an hour. And the weeds grow crazy in the bush beans, and as some others have already said, the bush beans seem to get yukky quickly. We could only pick about 1-2 pickings of them, before they would get tough or diseased.
I am finding that the rabbits that get into my garden (over the 2' chicken wire fence) have actually bit off some of the pole beans at the bottom, which of course killed the whole vine. So next year, I'll protect the bottoms of the pole beans.
I just need to find a pole bean that produces early, since it is hard to wait until August to get beans.
I suppose we could plant one row of bush beans to tide us over for fresh eating. But boy do I hate leaning over! lol!

catherinet, I agree about the bending over for picking. Maybe you could do what I do. After a knee replacement, I couldn't "squat" any more so I got an old oilcloth tablecloth. Now I sit on it and scoot along doing my picking and weeding at the same time. I use it for planting in the spring, too. The neighbors are finally getting used to seeing me - at first they would stop and ask if I was okay thinking I had fallen or something. LOL

Granite I am curious about the navy beans. I agree with the cost savings! See, I mostly buy bean seeds for pole beans, no need to buy for bush beans, just go to the pantry LOL. You say you harvested as shell beans, did you try them as green beans too? were they too stringy? Just wondering. I planted some great northern beans yesterday. My red beans are doing well but just starting, no flowers yet. I wonder if they will make good green beans.
Cabrita

I didn't try them as green beans as I had half-runners and pole beans planted for that and I wanted shelled beans.

Thanks for ALL the replies.

Regarding 'snap beans every day from June 15 to Sept. 30'

Do you stager planting every few weeks or plant the beans all at once?

My beans seemed to finish up and did not produce after the main harvest. Just some stragglers.

Glib,

Do you really have your beans ready to pick by June 15? If so, how??? When do you plant them. I'm so curious especially since you're in zone 5. Thanks.

These are my findings:

I find bush beans produce more. That is I grew 4 45 foot rows of Pole Beans. I was hoping for high production to sell at Farmers Market. What I got was a whole lot of nothing. Fast Forward 1 year, I didn't plant pole beans, however I started to see some volunteers coming up in August. It is now October and those volunteers are loaded with beans. I am wondering what I did wrong the year before. They were very healthy and grew all over the place. I just think they were too thick.

I am growing bush beans again. Not a fan of bending down, but I want to get beans again.

Jay

glib,

I do believe you live near me so I am wondering when you put in your planting of pole beans. Thanks!

May 1, soil already warm (clear or black plastic). Sorry, I do not read all threads, I notice you asked already 4 yrs ago.

Thanks! Actually, I just posted the question yesterday (in 2013) so that makes you more on top of stuff than what you realized. :) I may have to try the plastic as well.

I have only planted bush beans and I'm new to gardening. I do one full planting (4x8 raised bed) and had about 2lbs of beans weekly from early July through to first frost after Cdn Thanksgiving.

I have planted both pole and bush beens in the Fordhook lima beans...bush wins very easily.

Limas are a whole different ball game. ;-) I like the Fordhook 242 limas too; but the same bush-vs-pole rules apply for limas... except that you get no snaps. All limas are, by their nature, treated as dry beans.

When growing bush limas (like Fordhook) I usually get fairly heavy losses due to rot, insect damage, mice, and slugs. The same can't be said of pole limas, I've had virtually no losses - and incredibly high yields. And unlike dry beans (which are predominantly bush), there is a wider selection of pole limas to choose from, vs bush limas.

I tend to prefer pole limas, in spite of the fact that their (generally) longer DTM's make them a challenge here... but the higher yield makes them worth the extra effort. I have to admit, though, that its hard to find a pole variety to equal Fordhook 242's eating qualities. The white seeded version of King of the Garden comes close.

***A bean lover's dilemma***

When I retire (not many years from now) I may face a choice. Do I break my back pounding poles (and pick with ease), or do I plant bush beans with ease, and break my back bending over to pick? Only time will tell, I suppose. ;-)

No contest here. I'm 83 and like the bush for quanity, and less work. I like them before they get very mature...nice and bright green...a real savory treat.

Pole Beans have more variety and quality IMO, but I would agree that Bush Beans are more dependable/ predictable for production. You get a big first crop with Bush Beans before whatever diseases, bugs, heatwaves, whatever take their toll.

Zeedman - I have the same dilemma regarding pole vs. bush. Right now I grow both. I usually plant an early patch of Provider that can be planted in cool soil in late April here and I am picking by mid June into July when the heat of summer hasn't really kicked in yet. I also plant pole beans around the same time as the Provider. I then plant another planting of Maxibel bush beans in late July for picking in mid to late September. I harvest the pole beans between the 2 for fresh eating. 3/4 of both bush bean crops get frozen for use during the off season.

I hate harvesting bush beans when it is hot because I sweat all over the beans. I can't/won't harvest in the early morning because I am at work (weekdays) or the plants are wet with dew on the weekend.

Last year the pole beans (Rattlesnake) were a magnet for Japanese Beetles and both yield and quality suffered as a result. I applied Milky Spore in a wide area in and around the garden late last summer so I'll see if that helps to keep the JB numbers down at all.

This year I am switching up a little and planting Maxibel in early May and the Provider for fall harvest. The reason being is that I am about out of Maxibel seed so I will be leaving 1/3 of the patch to dry on the vine for seed. I have a couple pounds of Provider seed saved already.

I still grow several bush beans & limas; if bad weather delays planting the pole beans, I might fall back on bush varieties with their shorter DTM's. Recently though, I have been using pole bean transplants as a backup plan - because I am growing most beans for seed. Transplants saved my seed crops of pole beans in 2016 & 2017.

A brief departure off topic...

"Last year the pole beans (Rattlesnake) were a magnet for Japanese
Beetles and both yield and quality suffered as a result. I applied Milky
Spore in a wide area in and around the garden late last summer so I'll
see if that helps to keep the JB numbers down at all."

The JB are just beginning to move into my area; having read others comments about them for many years, I'm obviously not thrilled about that. So far, though, their damage has been minimal, and confined to just certain plants. They have yet to reach my rural garden (just 6 miles to the West) so they don't seem to be spreading too rapidly.

They really like soybeans (what doesn't???) so the first beetles appeared there. I use a spray with soap & several other ingredients, it kills them in a couple minutes... and is easier than trying to catch them, they are very elusive.

When the soybeans stopped growing, the beetles began attacking the pole beans - but only at the very top of the trellis. They were pretty easy to spot there too; I went out with the spray bottle twice a day, and kept their numbers down. I'm not sure how high their population will become, though, so I may need to try milky spore in the future.

Two observations, regarding JB. Trap crops are effective in reducing damage to beans... besides the soybeans, an ornamental mallow (Malva sylvestris) also seemed to attract them. The beetles can be killed on the trap crop.

I also observed the beetles in motion... and they seek out locations where other beetles are gathering. In some cases, they were attracted to beetles I had already killed, so they may locate others by scent; so it might be worth trying to bait a trap with a few dead beetles.

Last year I just knocked the JBs off into a soapy water but I was limited on how often I could do that to evenings and weekends. Like most pests they are very easy to catch in the morning when they are cold and covered in dew.

I'll have to try an insecticidal soap spray. I have some Murphy's oil soap that might be effective. They are also very attracted to asparagus ferns which works well as a trap crop and they are much easier to spot and pick there.

I did buy one of the JB traps late last year but never deployed it. I'm wary of it attracting even more beetles. Warning, if you knock them into soapy water don't leave them in there for very long because they quickly start to stink to high heaven. I dump them out on my gravel driveway and stomp.

The JPs first arrived here about 25 yrs. ago. Not mant for a few years. then in 2003 they were horrid on certain crops. I estimated bagging 270,000 of them that year besides killing a lot more. The next year I put down a small amount of Milky Spore...besides bagging them. Soon there was 5 one year. another year 8 and another year 11...then a lttle more.

I have a wild grape vine on the dence around the gardens on one side. The JPs are drawn to it almost entirely. It serves a double duty.

I prefer pole beans, but just realized that somehow, in all my garden planning, didn’t realize that my pole beans will eventually shade my peppers and potatoes from about 2:00 pm until sunset (more like 4 for the potatoes). Right now they get about 7-8 hrs of sun, it will fall to 4-5 hr in about a month as the pole beans climb.

The afternoon shade might be fine for your potatoes, the main plant growth should be done by then and the afternoon shade might keep the plants from drying up early. You should still get good production.

Now the Peppers? While the plants may not mind some afternoon shade on the hottest days, I would want plenty of sun for August, September, October when the production explodes and peppers ripen readily.