Is your pole bean an out-of-control bean?

By Barbara Damrosch

If pole beans are allowed to get into trouble, they will. Early on, they are like a good baby that sleeps through the night. You poke the conveniently fat seeds into the ground, then let the warmth and easy moisture of late spring nudge forth the young shoots -- big healthy-looking things grouped in tidy circles at the base of their poles or lined up in long rows.

A vine will sometimes seem to hesitate in its upward climb, poised like an acrobat a few feet above the soil as if looking for a trapeze to clutch. That's your cue to guide it gently in the direction of the pole, trellis or fence you have provided for its support. Sometimes a lethargic plant will need to be lifted bodily from the ground and taught to twine. But from then on it's go, go, go.

Just as with guiding a toddler into life, your job is far from done. Once they get going, these beans will scale anything within reach. This is fine if your supports are isolated from everything else, or if you are using the vines to create a shady bower. The Englishman Thomas Turner, in the 1551 edition of his famous "Herbal," described how "Kidney Beanes wounden in busshes whereunto they are sett, whyche encrease to that greatnes, that they make arborres and thynges lyke tentes."

But I wasn't at all happy when scarlet runner beans engulfed a climbing rose that shared the same lattice fence. My beans once made tents out of cosmos and sunflowers growing too close for comfort. And I've seen entire rows of corn brought down by beans that were not the old Indian Cornfield variety, selected in ancient times to climb the corn crop and partner with it in succotash.

If your beans ran amok this year, there's nothing you can do about them now, but there is still time to sow a new row in a better spot if you choose a quick variety such as Fortex. Better yet, plant bush beans -- what the Omaha tribe called "beans-not-walking." Not only will you be guaranteed a harvest well before frost, but you can expect good behavior, too. Unlike pole beans (called "rampicante" by the Italians), bush beans climb a couple of feet at most, then form a terminal cluster of pods.

Pole beans form pods along the stem as they elongate, stretching out the harvest until frost. With the bush type, you get one big harvest all at once -- which is especially good if you like to freeze them or put up dilly beans in jars with vinegar, water, garlic, mustard seed, hot pepper and dill. The only thing that can run away from you is the sudden abundance of your crop. Ignore the seeds for a busy week or two and you'll find them swelling in the pods. No matter. By then the corn is ripe, too, and perfect for succotash.

Article copyright of Barbara Damrosch. Reprinted with permission. Photo credit: Tracy van Cort