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GREEN BEANS

The three commonly known types of green beans are string or snap beans, which may be round or have a flat pod; stringless or French beans, which lack a tough, fibrous string running along the length of the pod; and runner beans, which belong to a separate species.

Green beans may have a purple rather than green pod, which changes to green when cooked.

Wax beans are P. vulgaris beans that have a yellow or white pod. Wax bean cultivars are commonly grown; the plants are often of the bush or dwarf form.

Compared to dry beans, green and wax beans provide less starch and protein and more vitamin A and vitamin C. Green beans and wax beans are often steamed, boiled, stir-fried, or baked in casserole.

How To Grow Green Beans Overview

Any kind of green beans can grow amazingly easily. In small space you can grow plenty of beans and there’s a great variety of beans. Sometimes called green beans or string beans, the traditional garden bean may be non-green as well as stringless colors. But it is the “green” bean which is regarded as one of the most commonly eaten vegetables by all. Hot, cold and even raw, string beans are flexible in the kitchen and garden plants are very abundant.

Typically, beans are directly seeded in the garden, but small bean plants can be transplanted. The most critical thing about growing green beans is not to plant the seeds too soon. They’re going to decay in cold, damp dirt. You could put black plastic down to get an early start, warm up the soil. After all, the frost threat is past plant the seeds.
Plant the seeds one to two inches deep and ensure to water the soil directly after planting, and then frequently, until it sprouts.
Bush beans can be planted in single columns or by spreading seed in full rows with a range of around four to six inches between plants.
Pole beans need some form of support to grow on. Try to ensure that the trellis, teepee, fencing, or other protection is in place in front of your crop. Plant seeds at a level of around six to eight seeds per teepee or six inches apart.
Bush beans tend to be developed before the pole beans and sometimes come in all at once. Succession planting will keep the bush beans running longer every two weeks.

Green Beans Nutrition Information

Raw Snap Green Beans, 1 cup (100 grams)

Name	Amount	Unit

Water

90.3

Protein

1.83

Total lipid (fat)

0.22

Carbohydrate

6.97

Fiber, total dietary

2.7

Sugars

3.26

Vitamin C

12.2

Ash

0.66

Name	Amount	Unit

Calcium, Ca

37.0

Magnesium, Mg

25.0

Phosphorus, P

38.0

Potassium, K

211

Sodium, Na

Energy (calories)

kcal

Carotene, beta

379

µg

Zinc, Zn

0.24

Iron, Fe

1.03

source

Garden Vegetables & Fruits Plant Preferences Profile

Specific Plant Growing Requirements and Information

Common Name

Green Bean, Snap Bean, or String Bean

Plant Type

Annual

Sun Exposure

Full sun

Sprout Time

55 days after planting

Scientific Name

Phaseolus vulgaris

Full Grown Size

Size will vary with variety. Bush beans on average get close to 2 feet tall and 1 foot. wide.
Pole beans can grow across or up a trellis for 10 feet or more. Beans will grow from 3 to 4 inches long.

Soil Type

Moderately rich soil

Hardiness Zones

2 – 10

Green Beans Detailed Growing Information

Green Bean Seeds

Care should be exercised in the selection of beans for seed. None but the best hand-picked beans should be used for planting, as the success of the crop is entirely mostly dependent on the vitality of the seed.

The quantity required to plant an acre of beans varies with the size of the beans; that is, a half-bushel of small Pea beans is sufficient to plant an acre of ground, while a bushel of Red Kidney beans is hardly sufficient to plant an acre when the seed is distributed in the usual fashion in drills rather than in hills. In planting beans of the Pea and Marrow types, the quantity of seed varies from one-half to a bushel per acre, depending upon the quality of the beans and upon the preferences of the planter.

For Kidney beans, the quantity varies from a bushel to as much as six pecks per acre. Ordinarily, with rows 30 inches apart, a bushel is a sufficient quantity for seeding an acre.

Ideal Soil for Green Beans

While clay loams or soils overlying limestone are most desirable, sandy and even gravelly loams may be used. Still, these latter soils should contain more or less humus, and the gravelly soil should not be too coarse. Beans may be grown on heavy clay soils. Still, the surface or underground drainage, or both, must be excellent, and special attention must also be given cultural methods to produce a beautiful, mellow seedbed. Muck soils or those with a superabundance of humus are not suitable as they tend to produce vines at the expense of the seed. It is also true that this crop will not thrive on low, wet, poorly drained soils. Beans seem to produce good yields on soils somewhat deficient in nitrogen when well supplied with potash and phosphorus. Contrary to a slightly prevalent notion, seeds will not render well on impoverished soils, but require a fair degree of fertility.

Tilth of Green Beans

Since the bean is a warm-season crop and can not safely be planted until after danger from killing frost has passed. The preparation of the soil for field beans should be deferred until the vegetation covering the area has made considerable growth. This so that it may be as thoroughly tilled during the operations of plowing, and prepping the soil for the seeds.

The short-season character of the bean crop enables the area to be occupied during the winter months by some cover crop, such as wheat or rye. If the same area is used year after year for the production of beans, the turning under of winter cover crops furnishes an essential means by which the store of organic matter in the soil can be maintained. Consideration of a significant moment in sections chiefly dependent upon commercial fertilizers as a source for available plant food.

After the land has attained proper dryness in the spring, it should be plowed from 6 to 8 inches in depth, and immediately compacted and harrowed, to prevent the loss of moisture. The surface of the seedbed should be made smooth and fine so that the drill or planter can be economically used upon it. If dry weather follows at this season of the year, a good practice is, immediately preceding the planting of the crop, to run a heavy land roller over the area, mainly if the planting is done with an ordinary grain drill.

If the planting is done with a planter similar to the ordinary corn planter and the land has been rolled previously, it is advisable to go over it with a spike-tooth plow or some other type of smoothing harrow after the crop has been planted, in order that the land may not possess a compacted condition from the substratum to the surface.

Depth of Planting Green Beans

The depth at which beans should be planted is determined by the character of the soil and the season of the year at which they are planted. In heavy, retentive soils planting should be made comparatively shallow, as the peculiar habit of growth of the bean is such that it can not readily reach the surface if planted deep in such soils. Upon light soils and early in the season, planting can be made quite deep.

Three inches is not too deep upon such soils, but an inch and a half or 2 inches is the maximum depth for planting upon retentive soils. All things considered, a satisfactory depth for planting beans is about 1½ inches.

Cultivation of Green Beans

Like all other hoe crops field beans require frequent, shallow cultivation. The stirring of the soil for the purpose of holding the weeds in check and preserving a soil mulch over the area occupied by the growing crop, is the important factor to be considered in culture. At the last cultivation the plants may be slightly hilled; that is, the soil may be thrown toward the plants with small wings.

This has the advantage of leaving the plants on a slight ridge, which facilitates the work of harvesting when such work is done by mechanical means. In the cultivation of beans it is traditional that they should not be cultivated when the dew is on the vines. This undoubtedly has a slight foundation for the reason that moisture is a conveyor of spores of disease and might have a tendency to distribute them more widely than would be the case if moisture were allowed to dry off the leaves without being disturbed.

Planting Of Green Beans

Gardners have found that it is better to postpone planting the green beans until late in the season as is practicable and yet are able to safely harvest the crop before the vines are injured by fall frost. The late-planted plant has the advantage of escaping the most severe attacks of the bean rust. While there are undoubtedly varieties which are more or less resistant to this trouble, yet the general practice of late planting is of decided advantage.

In planting green beans, the distance between the rows varies from 28 to 36 inches, according to the implements used in harvesting the crop, 30 inches being a very satisfactory and not an unusual distance for placing the rows. The seeds are so scattered as to fall from 2 to 4 inches apart in the row. The ideal length would be undoubtedly 6 inches if it were possible to obtain a perfect stand of plants at this distance. For distributing the seed in the row at these distances, a bean planter or a check row corn planter may be set to drop the seeds in drills. A common practice is to use an ordinary grain drill and stop a sufficient number of tubes to enable two or three rows of beans to be planted at the proper distance apart without the necessity of purchasing a particular implement.

Fertilizers for Green Beans

While beans are quick-growing and early-maturing plants requiring an abundance of available plant food in the soil, yet, because of their family relations, being legumes, they make the soil better for having been grown upon it. They are nitrogen-gathering plants, and for this reason require only a small percentage of this element in any fertilizer used upon them. While heavy applications of fertilizers containing nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash are used by truck growers in the production of beans, as a rule such fertilizers should be relatively richer in phosphoric acid and potash than in nitrogen.

The production of garden beans for snap or string beans, however, demands a larger percentage of immediately available nitrogen than does the production of field beans for the dry grain, as in the former case the crop occupies the land a shorter time and therefore gives it less opportunity to provide itself with a supply of nitrogen from the atmosphere. The fertilizer, if used in the form of commercial fertilizer, may be distributed broadcast over the area occupied by the crop with a grain drill or a fertilizer distributer, or it may be scattered along the row at the time the seeds are sown by one of the many types of seed drill having a fertilizer attachment.

Harvesting Your Green Beans

From the nature of the product the harvesting of garden beans for use as string or snap beans must necessarily be done by hand. After the beans are picked they are carried to a convenient sorting table, either in the open or under shelter, where they are looked over, all diseased and broken beans rejected, and the baskets uniformly filled and shaken down preparatory to covering them for you table.

garden fresh green beans made into a side dish

Print Recipe

Green Beans Parmesan

Prep Time5 mins

Cook Time10 mins

Course: Side Dish

Cuisine: German

Keyword: german style, green beans

Servings: 6 people

Author: Hans

Ingredients

2 tbsp. butter or margarine
2 tbsp. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
1 c. milk
1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
2-4 tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese
2 14 oz. cut green beans, drained

Instructions

Melt butter in a saucepan.
Mix in flour, salt, and pepper.
Stir in milk until it boils and thickens.
Add Worcestershire sauce and the first amount of cheese.
Add more to taste.
Add beans.
Heat through.
Stir often.
Serve hot.

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