Dwarf or climbing french beans?

[Debs]

 Reading all of the bean posts, I shall grow this years dwarf f.b.'s  in pots on the patio as I do not have a plot - but garden size is ok

(the flower border was emptied in favour of vegetables & fruit  ;D)

Debs

[Debs]

[1066]

Yup I grew Safari (dwarf FB) in pots in July and had a decent crop for early autumn, they seemed to like it  :)

[piglit]

Wow! :) What a fantastic response... thank you all for your advice and information.  I'm going to be growing both dwarf and climbing so I get some early and some later crops.

It's great to be back growing veg again... I'm afraid I will be a frequent visitor to the site now and will have lots more questions.

Thanks

piglit

[Vinlander]

Just a couple of points not covered yet:-

Dwarf beans are the obvious choice under cover even if you have space for climbers - they get an early crop in then release the space for peppers etc. Can also give a late crop.

Climbers under cover become a pain because if you put them at the back (the obvious place) you need to stretch regularly to keep them tidy.

Toms and climbing frenchies do well enough outside.

I always grow a lot of climbers (and a few runners to hedge my bets) because the long cropping period means there's always something for the kitchen when you need it.

A key issue is to grow beans a different colour from the plant - you don't know where the beans will appear (unlike dwarfs) so coloured beans will save you a lot time.

If you use fresh canes then yellow beans aren't the best choice. likewise if you use black canes (like I do) avoid purple beans (I felt so stupid), and if you use hazel poles don't grow brown Cherokee (I felt stupid again).

Cheers.

PS. The yinyang climber is the 'pea bean' but the pattern on the seeds is brown not black. They are worth growing despite the camouflaged pods! especially if you let them mature and use them as a fresh substitute for dried beans (so much quicker, so much more delicious).

[Tonythegardener]

I would recommend Cobra for climbing french bean. 

I don't really see any difference in taste between dwalf and climbing french beans.  Dwalf french beans get blackfly easily if you dont watch them carefully. They also get eaten by slugs and splashed with mud so I don't always grow them. 

[goodlife]

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The yinyang climber is the 'pea bean' but the pattern on the seeds is brown not black.
Ahh...no wonder I couldn't find anything about them being climbers when I looked into it...I did see the  'pea beans' and did wonder about it..and now you conformed my thoughts ;D..thank you ;D

[chriscross1966]

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The yinyang climber is the 'pea bean' but the pattern on the seeds is brown not black.
Ahh...no wonder I couldn't find anything about them being climbers when I looked into it...I did see the  'pea beans' and did wonder about it..and now you conformed my thoughts ;D..thank you ;D

The other climbing yin-yang is a variety called Box. Fiendishly hard to tell from pea beans when they're growing but when dried the pea-bean colour is a lot lighter than Box. Sort of a deep pink versus maroon/magenta....
I grew all three last year and reckon that pea beans are probably the most productive, though only just ahead of Box, which is a bit earlier. They both massively outproduced the yin-yang. If you want heavy crops of dried beans then either of those isn't a bad choice, also Polish Climber, it's a BOrlotti style bean but a bit smaller but gets going very early, also Giganda, it might not produce lots of beans but the d**n things are enormous. Needs a good summer though.
I'm cutting back a bit on beans this year, Bridgewater, Bird Egg and Borlotti will bow out cos Polish is so good, I'll still grow Lima's and Gigandas, won't bother with more than a few yin-yang or Cherokee Trail of Tears, won't bother with Black Pencil Pod. Soldier beans and San Antonio will survive the cut simply cos they're pretty and rare adn I ought to keep them going, Ernies Big Eye will get grown for it's earliness to set a delicious massive bean, if not epic quantities of them, might grow some Speedie's under cover to fill in for green beans before the Cobra gets going. Marvel of Venice doesn't make it, really it's not a shelling variety, The Mennonite Stripe climbers will get grown again, if only for the sheer novelty size of those pods, it's not massively productive in our climate.Blue Lake for canellini again, it's pretty good at it.

chrisc