Topic: Runner Bean Supports

[Emagggie]

This is really great, all these fab ideas, and a superb piccie from Tim.If I tried to do that, they would all fall down in the first gust of wind !!
Thanks one and all, keep 'em coming.  :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

[supersprout]

Well thank you for starting a brilliant thread emagggie, I'm goggling at the inverted wigwam and may try the Bean Arbour idea, so cooool :D

[Larkspur]

I am growing mine on canes over a path like stated earlier, joined together above the path with lengths of garden hose and reinforced with horizontal supports. Runner beans one side, climbing French the other ;)

[Doris_Pinks]

Mine is a permenant structure put in a few years ago by my 89 year old (sadly now deceased) farmer mentor!  As you can see it leans, that is, he always said, so your beans grow straight and hang so you can see them to pick!  Mind you everyone else on site thinks it is falling down, and one kind chap offered to straighten it back up for me!!! ;D  Made from Chestnut stakes, and the strings I wove using string from hay bales.

[supersprout]

LOL@DP, nice to have helpful lottie neighbours ;) your heirloom bean support looks wonderful. So you grow runners in the same place year after year with no trouble?
Just remembered, a lovely A4a-er sent Morning Glory Split Personality seeds to grow up poles with climbing beans for added Beauty :-*. Am very tempted to do an arbour this year.

[Doris_Pinks]

Yes SS, same spot, though am thinking this year to grow my borlotti here and move the runners elsewhere, this row produces far too many for us!
Each year (didn't this year though  :-\) it has had all my kitchen compost waste added to it via the trench type method, works for me!
I sometimes grow a few sweet peas amongst mine, look pretty and hopefully attract the pollinators! ;)
Split personality Morning Glory huh? On minute it thinks it is a flower, the next a veg? ;D

[Roy Bham UK]

Mine is a permenant structure put in a few years ago by my 89 year old (sadly now deceased) farmer mentor!  As you can see it leans, that is, he always said, so your beans grow straight and hang so you can see them to pick!  Mind you everyone else on site thinks it is falling down, and one kind chap offered to straighten it back up for me!!! ;D  Made from Chestnut stakes, and the strings I wove using string from hay bales.

Is that for real DP? ??? because some of the silliest things are not so silly and to my mind your mentor is a genius God bless him, 8) I am now thinking on his lines a way to erect a similar structure. ;)

Where's that drawing board.

Might even plant a row of beetroot or cos down the middle. ;D

 

[moonbells]

I went for a halfway-house approach - two monster stakes at either end of my bean bed, with stout wire between them. Crossed canes then tied in to the top of the wire rather than to another cane put across them.  Because of the stakes and wire, when it's windy, it doesn't all topple and snap (which happened the year before last - and I said never again!)


Piccy taken in very early June after the beans had just gone out, so you can see the structure.


and 2 months later, end July

Still eating the beans I froze... got loads!

moonbells

[derbex]

I've grown them up sweetcorn -not just because I'm tight. I also used acouple of metal fence posts with chickenwire between them.

[euronerd]

I saw this idea somewhere, using lengths of plastic drainpipe so had a go at making them last year, if you can fathom it out.
They creak like a galleon in the wind, but they're easy to erect and dismantle. And you need diagonals to keep them stable, as with any other frame.





Geoff.

[Doris_Pinks]

is that for real DP? ??? because some of the silliest things are not so silly and to my mind your mentor is a genius God bless him, 8) I am now thinking on his lines a way to erect a similar structure. ;)

Well Roy he had been/bean growing them this way with prize winning sucess for over 60 years! ;D Apparently the supports should have been/bean taller and it should have leaned more! ;D ;D  Makes sense to my small brain! 8)