How to Grow French Beans in Your Own Backyard

How to Grow French Beans – French beans provide you with two harvests for the price of one: you may eat the pods while they’re still young and delicate, or you can let them dry on the plant and utilize them as haricot beans later in the season. French beans are easy to cultivate and produce a large amount of fruit. It’s possible to get dwarf varieties that are great for growing in pots, as well as climbers that can grow even when it’s hot outside.

How to Grow French Beans seeds

Whether grown in the ground or in containers, French beans are a tasty and simple vegetable to cultivate. They are an excellent finger food for youngsters and may be grown in a variety of appealing colors, including cream, yellow, and purple-podded variants. In addition to the traditional green color, you can also produce cream, yellow, and purple-podded variations.

Climbing French beans and miniature French beans are the two varieties available. Dwarf beans are ideal for tiny places since they grow well in containers as well as in the ground. Climbing beans need tall, solid supports in order to grow well. They thrive in the ground, but can also be grown in large containers.Climbers generate a huge yield on a small amount of land due to the fact that they grow upwards.

Dwarf beans are easy to cultivate, but they only produce for a few weeks at a time. Sow them again and again for a summer-long supply. The maturation of climbing beans takes longer than other types of beans, but they will yield beans for a longer length of time, from mid-summer to early fall if harvested frequently.

In garden centers and on the internet, you’ll discover a vast selection of cultivars available as seeds. There are cultivars with pods that come in a wide range of colors, from traditional green to yellow and dark purple, and more.

How to Sow French bean seeds

French beans need a lot of sun, a lot of shade, and a lot of good, moisture-retentive soil. They do not grow well on thick clay, so before planting, make sure to put in lots of well-rotted organic matter, like garden compost, into the soil.

Given their sensitive nature, French beans must be started inside in April and transplanted outdoors after the last frost, which is normally in late May or early June. They are a tender crop that requires special attention. Continue planting every three weeks until early summer to provide a continuous supply of beans into the fall. Later sowing may be done in the open air, but seedlings must be protected from the elements with a cloche to keep them warm.

Dwarf French beans planted 15 cm apart will not need any additional staking. A wigwam of canes with climbing French beans and sweet peas in the flower bed makes them look even better.

How to Care for French bean plants

Plants should be watered on a regular basis, particularly when they are blooming, to ensure a healthy yield of beans. The application of a mulch of garden compost around the roots will help to keep the soil wet and healthy.

Watering

Beans are thirsty plants that produce their highest yields when they are irrigated on a regular basis, particularly as they begin to blossom and create pods. It’s especially important to water plants that live in containers because they dry out quickly if they don’t get enough water.

Mulching

During July, cover the plants with a layer of well-rotted manure or mushroom compost. This will help keep the soil moist, and it will also help the plants grow.

Weeding

Maintain a weed-free environment around your plants. It is possible to grow plants via openings in weed-suppressing membranes, which protect the pods of dwarf beans from being destroyed by soil contact.

Supporting the French beans Plants

Climbing French beans need strong, tall supports in order to climb up. Grown traditionally along a double row of bamboo canes (1.8m/6ft tall), with 45cm (18in) between the two rows, this approach yields the best results. Within each row, space the bamboo canes 15 cm (6 in) apart and slant them inwards before tying them towards the top to a horizontal cane to construct an A-frame.

Another option is to construct an X-frame by sloping the canes at a steeper angle so that they intersect in the center. Tie them together in the middle, and then add a horizontal cane to connect them all together and strengthen the solidity of the structure. When you use an X-frame, you don’t have to think about how much space it takes up, and cropping is usually easier with an X-frame.

If you don’t have enough space for a double row of canes, you can construct wigwams instead. Use 1.8m (6ft) canes, four or five per wigwam, with a 15cm (6in) spacing at the base of the wigwam.Tie the ends of the canes together at the top. Wigwams are an eye-catching addition to a border or vegetable plot, and they also perform well when grown in containerized arrangements. To get new seedlings started, tie them loosely to the canes using twine.

In order to keep dwarf beans upright and raise the pods off the dirt, you may put small twiggy rods between the plants to keep them upright.

Harvesting French beans

Pick French beans as soon as they are big enough to eat if you want them to be tasty and soft (after about eight weeks). Cut them off with a pair of scissors. Picking the beans on a regular basis promotes the plant’s ability to produce more beans.

Keeping French beans in storage

Instead of eating the whole harvest at once, blanch the beans in boiling water for two minutes and then freeze them for later use.

How to prepare and use French beans

Raw pods should never be consumed. To prepare the beans, top and tail them before softly steaming them and serving them with a knob of butter. Salads may also benefit from the addition of cooked beans. Prior to using dried beans in soups and casseroles, they must be thoroughly soaked for at least five hours, then quickly boiled for 10 minutes and cooked for an hour or more.

French bean varieties to plant in your garden

Dwarf beans Varieties

• Borlotto is a kind of mature pod that is brightly colored and excellent for drying. Beans have a good texture as well as a pleasing flavor.
• Purple Teepee is prolific harvests of eye-catching purple pods up to 15 cm in length, with a purple hue to them.
• Sonesta (Stringless Yellow Beans) are a beautiful yellow bean that may grow up to 13 cm in length.

Climbing beans Varieties

• Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco Nano is an Italian variety with spectacular pods splashed with red.
• The Hunter variety is a large crop of stringless, flat pods up to 20 cm long with good disease resistance.
• Sansoucy is a variety that produces beans that are held high above the foliage. 45cm in height and 30cm in length.