Anybody Plant Pole Beans?

[JackE]

Other than planting speckled butter beans (small limas) on a string trellis years ago, I have never planted pole beans - always bush varieties of green beans.

All of our backs are getting arthritic (right on schedule LOL) and I'm trying to plant things that won't be so hard on our pickers. For that reason, we have been harvesting the whole plant with green beans - waiting until they have a good load, pulling up the plant and stripping-off the beans. That's only one picking and very inefficient.

We have built 800 ft of permanent trellis this winter - t-posts and 5' concete reinforcing wire. The plan is to plant 400' of it in cucumbers
and 400' in pole beans - and rotating the two crops the following season.

We have ten lbs of Kentucky Blue (a cross between Ky Wonder and Blue Lake) but will buy more seed later - maybe Rattlesnake? Any heat-tolerant varieties?

I know they grow taller than 5', but that's the trellis height. We looked at other trellis systems -like the CRW hoop house you can walk under and pick the hanging beans - but decided to go with regular vertical trellises for various reasons.

Should I plant one side only and let them fall over the top or can I get away with planting both sides? Are they more heat-tolerant than the bush beans? Can we grow them in the heat of summer? If possible, I'd sure like to be able to stagger the plantings on into July/Aug - we can't do that with the bush beans - spring crop only.

Hopefully, they'll be easier for the volunteer ladies to pick. Any advice would be appreciated.

Jack