Last year, I had a bumper crop of climbing beans.  I picked baskets full of delicious stringless beans every two or three days.  I had so many beans that I gave them away to family and friends and truly didn’t know what to do with them, they came up so fast.

And all this from a patch of a dozen or so magic climbing beans. It was a roaring success!

Now this year, I didn’t want to grow my beans in the same place so I prepared a new bed in another part of the garden.

Ready Made Fence

There was a ready made fence for the beans to climb on so I thought it was ideal. Then I sat back and waited.

But what a disaster! My beans plants were so straggly that I couldn’t bear to look at them.

All the leaves were reduced to a web of lace by an invasion of some nasty leaf eating insects.  And obviously the yield was very poor. The new garden was a total failure. I had thought I could pull one over on the beans.  But clearly I couldn’t.  They knew better. My climbing beans were too smart to be fooled.

Last Year’s Beans Were in Full Sun

Well, I know exactly why this happened. I had planted the beans too close to a group of trees and they clearly did not get enough sun – whereas last year’s beans were in full sun. Also, the soil was not as rich as the soil in the first bed.

In my defence, I had run out of compost. But I learned the hard way that beans are not to be fooled. Do what they want and they can be charming and obliging. But try to bluff them and they simply go on strike.

Anyway, having learned my lesson I started all over again and went back to preparing the original bed in full sun where I had previously had so much success.

I carefully composted the bed till the soil was dark and friable. I put up a fence for the beans to climb on. And then I planted exactly 20 beans.  Talk about Jack and the beanstalk!  My hopes were high.

Now I don’t want to talk too soon – let’s just say that my beans shot up tall and healthy in record time. At present they are climbing all over the supporting fence and the leaves are big and healthy.  I am now waiting for the first flush of flowers.

I’ll report on any new developments as to the  progress of my organic beans in due course.
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