Pole beans or bush beans?

For the last few years, we have grown pole beans almost exclusively. They have advantages and disadvantages over bush beans, I will try and make my case as to why I prefer pole beans. I understand your gardening objective is going to differ from ours, so I will try and make a fair comparison if you're trying to decide which variety is better for you. If I have missed a point I would love to hear from you in a reply.

Our goal with the green beans to to have a long harvest with enough green beans to enjoy for a few meals and share our bounty with family. We do use a pressure cooker to put food in the pantry, but that isn't our primary goal. If you're looking to put away lots of green beans and want to do the majority of your canning in a relatively short time frame, pole beans are not likely the best option for you.

Pole beans are a vining variety and are terrific for growing vertically. They are terrific climbers and after a little initial training to get them started up a string or twine they will start climbing on their own. They do need to be "corrected" from time to time as they fall over and begin climbing on their neighbor. If caught early it is easy to get them back on track. They can grow to be very tall and are only limited by your growing season and the height of your trellis. Currently our structure is 8 feet tall and we have plants that have grown to the top and have begun to grow back towards the ground. Here is a picture of our pole beans growing in our heat sink greenhouse.

Pole beans are not as prolific as bush beans. They do not put on as many beans at once as compared to the bush bean varieties. What is appealing for us with the pole bean is the long period over which they produce beans. These beans will continue to grow beans for us so long as they are protected from the cold. These beans are in our greenhouse, so I am hopeful that we will continue to enjoy beans weekly all the way into December. This will be our first year with the heat sink greenhouse, so only time will tell. Those results will be shared in future blog posts, so be sure to subscribe if it is something that interests you.

Another reason I prefer the pole bean is they ability to grow them closely together to maximize space in the garden. By growing them vertically in one row and altering the direction I grow them towards the top of our t-frame structure we are able to grow them just 2 inches apart. We can get a LOT of pole beans into just 10 feet of space.

Harvesting pole beans is much easier on me. The vast majority of all the beans can be harvested with me standing. No need to kneel down or bend over a row to pick the beans. In years past I grew to dislike the bush beans and all the bending and kneeling required to harvest those beans.

Another big plus for me is in weeding. Because the pole bean is growing vertically, it is easier to get under it to pull out weeds. It is harder for a pesky weed to be missed because its growing up in a thick bush of beans. When I am better able to see and reach the weeds I do a far better job of keeping the garden weed free.

This is our second year of growing pole beans. We have only grown one variety and have noticed they produce far less in the heat of the summer. Admittedly, it may be only this variety that slows down in the heat. We need to experiment with different varieties and see if we can find something tasty that will produce in the summer. We are currently getting ready to add some of @papa-pepper noodle beans to our greenhouse. We bought some of his seeds and are excited to give them a try. Here are some noodle beans grown from his seeds.

If our goal was to grow lots of beans to put into the pantry our choice would be the bush bean. The produce a lot of beans in a shorter period of time, making it easier to spend a day or two running a pressure canner and to put away a lot of green beans. We could grow enough pole bean plants to put away beans, but we would have to be setting up the outdoor kitchen every week for a few months. We would spend a lot of time setting up and putting everything away each week with pole beans.

Here is a small batch of beans we harvested today. There are enough here to provide about 2 meals for a family of 4. I can expect to harvest this amount weekly while the temperatures aren't in the 90s. We are ok with having a couple meals a week from our garden and eating it fresh. Putting away green beans isn't currently our priority. This is why we prefer to grow pole beans in our garden.