How to support climbing french beans in 2 square feet

Hi

I am new to all this and have an 8' x 4' bed which is doing well but have some questions re beans.

My bed has 3 metal hoops and over the hoops is a poly cover which also has a mesh cover under the poly so that the poly can be unzipped and folded back to expose the mesh.

I am in Scotland so the poly tunnel has helped with nights (and days) when the temperature has dropped.

The temperature is now warmer and drops to about 11C at night so it could probably manage without the poly cover but I am nervous removing the whole cover because without the mesh protection I think I might have a problem from birds and squirrels and foxes as we have a lot of them around.

So the hoops and tunnel only give a height of around 4-5feet but at the end of the bed in 2 squares I planted French climbing beans and now realise that they could grow to up to 8 feet so Im wondering how I'm going to do this.

How do I create a climbing support in such a small 2 square space? There are 18 plants all so far doing well but they will need something to grow on.  Should I just use bamboo and netting but how will that work with 18 plants in a 2 square foot space?

Also, if I add 8foot bamboos in with netting for those 2 squares I will need to remove the whole poly/mesh cover which will open everything in the bed to the birds etc.

Or should I re plant the beans now to a garden space out of the raised bed against the fence and add netting to the fence?

I thought of buying a new pole/bird netting cover that will be a lot higher than the 4 feet but seems a shame to go to that expense when I already have the tunnel cover.

Looking for advice please

Thanks

Mike

Hello, Mike. Welcome to the forum!

I think if it were me, I'd replant if the beans are still small enough.

I also live in an area with extreme weather, I'm lucky if I get 90 days without frost, so I'd be thinking of the plants that are under that cover that might be needing the warmth on the other end of the growing season, too.

So it all points to moving the beans if it were me. HTH!

If you are worried about the wildlife getting your plantings, I would definitely replant the beans after making sure the days to maturity will work with your weather.

Welcome to the site,

Set up some catenary 6 mm polypropylene  ropes  along the length of the green house  using short rope to set the height and drops off the catenary rope that are pegged in the ground next tot eh plants .  Grow the beans up the ropes & along the catenary ropes taking them out of the green house if your able & feel like it . 
 They work well on the 6 mm blue polypropylene rope .

 Before I got hold of loads of carbon fibre ex tent frame rods to make special dedicated 8 foot tall tripods for my beans I used to push in an 8 foot triangle of two poles at each end of the bed .  Lashing a cross pole at the top then run down a polypropylene drop rope every nine inches .  The pot grown plants were put in at one foot spacings .,so it sort of  looked like the  skeleton frame of a ridge tent  pegging the drops out inline with the end poles .

 Even number plants to one side of the triangle , odds  to the other the bed .   As the plants grew train them clockwise up the ropes as they tend to follow the track of the sun in the northern hemisphere .  When they got to the top I let them grow another 2  foot then flicked the growth of beans over the apex of the growing frame . but found I was wasting bean time. 

 If you pinch the top of the beans out when they reach the top of the apex they will send out lower shoots that will produce beans galore and help ripen the beans rather than let the plant waste energy & time growing like mad without too much production. 

 I also grow some of my toms in the green house using four lines of catenary wires and a  polypropylene rope loosely pegged into each tomato tub. gently wrapping the plants round the ropes 7 adjusting their length as they grow . For I hated  getting a tomato cane poke me in the face & having to store them over winter where they would become bug hotels for all grades of greenhouse & garden pests .

Thanks for your replies.

I've decided I will move the bean plants to outside of the raised bed close to a fence.

Only concern I have is that the location won't have as much sun in the day. It will have morning sun but not afternoon or evening.

Also have some soil prep work to do because it is very hard clay.

Moving from the bed will free up space for me to grow other things that won't grow so tall!

I also have a square foot of sweetcorn in the bed that is already about 18 inches tall so I may need to move those too.

Mike

Mike ,
When you say a square foot of sweet corn.. is that just one plant ?    The suggested spacing is sow in a large block with 2 foot between plants . If it is a small block of 16 plants or less you may need to support each plant  as they will suffer from wind rock for being so tall .

The Sweetcorn is in one square foot and the square foot app I use says there should be 4 plants in that square foot one in each corner.

But I'm going to move those too and put them in a border as a square with approx a foot between each. They will have stake supports and are also next to the fence so I can also add extra twine support going through the fence.