Hi,
I used to post on here about 8 years ago and have recently moved to a house with sufficient room to grow vegetables once again. Miraculously I could remember my username and password so am back on the forum and hoping for some help.
Could anyone help me understand the difference between dwarf and climbing french beans, apart from the obvious! Which would give a better yield, have better flavour and are the dwarf and climbing beans of the same variety equally tasty?
Thanks in advance for any help,
piglit
Hi - welcome back! Do you still recognise the place? ;D
I'm not sure about taste. I do both, because you can get a crop off the dwarf ones quicker. The dwarf ones I had weren't as tasty as the blue lake, but then maybe that's just the variety more than the dwarfishness. They were called 'Tendergreen' but were actually splashed with red streaks.
Maybe French bean 'Dwarf Tendergreen-splashed-with-red-streaks' was a bit long for the catalogue. ;)
Welcome back Piglit.
I grew a dwarf bush variety last year, it was my first year to grow beans & they were ok but whilst on hols were left in care of of sister-with-no-greenfingers, so suffered through lack of TLC.
I think dwarf bushes take up less room but someone will have greater bean knowledge than I ;D
Debs x
HI, Piglet last year I grew the dwarf beans out the front garden with the flowers , I think the pots were 15inch by 15 inch square they cost here about £2-99p for 2 I put 8 x 3ft canes and tied at the top the folwers were purple and the more I picked the crop was great honest. And for the flat french beans I put them in large pot containers they are the largest in pound stretcher they cost £3-99p each same method but I used 6ft canes from home bargins they cost a £1 for ten have a go you know you want to
;D
I hadn't thought of beans in pots - stupid really, I grow sweet peas in pots. I might try that!
I would have said that climbing take up less ground space since they crop over a couple of metres from the ground. I grow both types. But you need the supports for the climbers so they are a little more effort. I hate having to put the canes away at the end of the season.
I have a lot of weeds and a lot of slugs so it's climbers on the plot and dwarves in pots. There are some really nice dwarf yellow beans like Sonesta which give several meals from a medium size pot.
Definitely climbing for yield per space used - they crop more heavily and for longer - right through from about mid-July to Oct. Negatives - they take longer from seed to harvest, need support, and obviously might shade other crops.
Dwarf beans are best for early beans. But you need to sow them successionally if you want beans all summer - at least in my experience.
My favourite climbing beans are Cosse Violette, Cherokee Trail of Tears, or Hunter (which has massive yields of pale, flat pods.) I also like Sonesta for a dwarf bean.
Both is best if you have room!
Have grown both, but prefer climbing. You tend to get much straighter long beans, not that that improves flavour ;D
We grow several climbing varieties, but our favourite is Fasold.
valmarg
I grow all my beans for the dried ones rather than for when they are green, so my preferences are probably different....however I get a better yield from the climbers but it just so happens that alot of my faves are dwarfs.
Climbers: Madeira Maroon, Cherokee ToT, Yin Yang, Red Calypso [all really good yields as well as being good dried beans]
Dwarf: Emperor Of Russia, Canadian Wonder, Cannellini, Black Valentine
All the beans that I have now are listed here http://linearlegume.blogspot.com/search/label/bean%20project (http://linearlegume.blogspot.com/search/label/bean%20project)
And of course, for good all roundedness - the classic Pinto which got me into beans in the first place. Lovely little bean :D
I'd say climbers will give you a bigger yield as long as the shading issues isn't too much of a problem. I grow a lot of beans, mostly for use as shelled out beans but thouroughly recommend Cobra as a climbing green bean. The only dwarf I'm growing this year is likely to be Ernie's Big Eye, and that's only cos it's so early, the yield is pretty low though which is typical of the really early varieties. Plus it's definietly a shelling bean.
hi, I do both but lean towards the climbers unless the dwarf is a favourite one. I process my beans too so sometimes I choose on how concentrated the harvest is .
If yeild is your first considerationand space is an issue. I would go for climbers, but there are so many to choose from. If not I would go for a couple of dwarf types to use until the climbers come along and take you through to the end of the season.
XX Jeannine
Hi and welcome back Piglit :)
well I grow both, I find I can get an early crop from dwarf FBs, and every year i grow several varieties, different colours, shelling or eating. I love Safari - straight green pods, don't get too large or seedy, so the perfect green bean, I also try and get a few late crops from these as well. As for climbers I tend to grow for shelling, have you tried borlotti beans - wonderful colours to enjoy
1066
Here in lancaster i tend to find that the dwarf beans are much hardier and cn be reliably direct sown. (i eat mine as the young pods) I get the yellow wax beans from lidl and plant a dwarf tendergreen to and just leave them to it.
The climbing beans need a bit more cosseting to start and i usually plant them three weeks later than the dwarfs and start some of in pots to fill in the gaps. But once they get going they will crop all summer and therefore each plant gives a bigger yeild , i use cobra as my main climber.
Good luck with the beans I can recomend all the above for freezing as young pods.
x sunloving
My ying yang turned out to be dwarf. I put them at the north end of a row of climbers and they definitely did not climb and were rather shaded out by the rest of the row.
Myclimbing favourite is Mrs Lewis's purple podded, drips with beans for weeks on end and for dwarf Teepee was very fast and for flavour Hungarian Wax.
Slugs are an enormous problem for the dwarfs but I use a lot of mulch to keep the weeds at bay though this increases the slug issue. Some varieties are much less susceptible to slugs so I would plant a selection and choose the best to save seeds from.
My ying yang turned out to be dwarf ;D..yes, so they should turn out to be ;D..if they only would excist as climber,,I found they are bit messy growing drawfs ::)
I grow variety drawf and climbers too..but every year without fail I have to grow Cosse Violettes..they are allways so reliable, not tough even if they go bit bigger and produce untill quite late of the year.
I like my Ernie's Big eyes as fresly shelled beans..from pods to pot..althoug they are perfectly edible as green beans and dried beans too.
All others that I grow are just bonus...normally they do well and are plentiful, but for for some reason those two are the main lot that I always start with and plan the other beans to grow 'around'.
I have climbing Yin Yangs, I bagged a couple up last night - if you want some; PM me and send an SAE....
Climbing are much heavier-yielding, but take longer. I rely on the climbing types, but I've got seed of several dwarf varieties I want to grow out, so I'll be squeezing them in as well.
we do climbers on wigwams and dwarfs in pots,, keeps them away from the slugs. we do haricot, borlotti,cosse violette ,climbing french and another one I can't remember, we also sow some more dwarfs in july, we were eating these until the end of october :)
Dwarfs in July is my plan as well, to go in after the onions and garlic. I'm glad to see that it works!
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
Yup I grew Safari (dwarf FB) in pots in July and had a decent crop for early autumn, they seemed to like it :)
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
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).
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.
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
Quote from: goodlife on February 06, 2011, 09:06:26
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