A Farmer's Guide to Mastering Growing Green Beans

do you want to master growing green beans then this video is for you let's go what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my gardener channel in today's episode like i said i'm going to teach you all how to master growing green beans this shouldn't be a very long episode because there's quite a few things you need to know but there are things we can kind of just rifle right through when it comes to growing green beans it might not be on the very tip top of your gardening bucket list but it's definitely something that when you can grow them successfully you'll see why i'm so geeked about growing them they are super productive and when grown successfully they can produce way more food than you ever thought imaginable you could easily feed a family of three with like 10 to 15 plants at full production and so this is a crop that while it doesn't take a whole lot to actually grow it it does take some know-how to growing it successfully and to getting it to produce at its maximum potential and so that's we're going to talk about in today's episode so i really quickly wanted to show you guys just how many flowers are on the very first flush of beans these are heirloom beans four different varieties we have a blue lake bush bean we have a top crop bush bean we have a contender bush bean and we also have a purple wonder bush bean and these beans i just water them they're a little top heavy but these beans are absolutely loaded they are truly the most productive beans that i have ever grown now i didn't necessarily just get them like this like i said i've taken some steps using tips that i learned from my uncle and i've used them to getting my production to where it needs to be these plants should produce from this first flush should produce roughly about 10 pounds of beans based on the square footage and some calculations that he gave me but after they actually produce their first flush they're going to start producing even more once the plants start growing and so they're actually very early on in their life and they're going to produce three to four flushes of beans the more you harvest the more you get and we'll talk about that in a little bit and i know what you're thinking you're probably wondering luke how did you master growing green beans well i actually didn't i've learned a lot of what i know about growing green beans and what i'll talk about and show you from my uncle he actually grows them commercially believe it or not and so i kind of have a back pocket ace in my hand that i can actually use to teach you guys something because before growing green beans successfully i really just grew them like everybody else i said oh they'll they'll take care of themselves they don't need good quality soil they don't need a whole lot of nutrients they fix it themselves they're basically just like a set and forget plant and that's what i thought until i talked to him he came over to my garden one day we were having a family reunion and he said whoa whoa luke do you know what i do for a living i said i know you're a farmer he's a luke i'm a bean farmer this is my specialty you've got a lot going on here and you have a lot of potential in these plants but you're just not doing the right things and so trust me i was in your shoes and i learned a lot from him and so that's we're going to talk about in today's episode because once i implemented the things that he talked about and taught me my bean game through the roof if that can be something that excites you you're going to get excited for today's episode let's go so the first step to mastering growing green beans is mastering when to apply nutrients now when i first started growing green beans everybody that i talked to said do not fertilize your green beans you're going to increase growth and decrease fruit yields or decrease the amount of beans that you get and so i never fertilized they said you don't need to fertilize because beans will fix their own nitrogen which is true and so i thought well heck i don't want to give them too much nitrogen i don't give them too many nutrients because that would result in a really beautiful plant but no fruit when in fact my uncle told me no luke you've got it all wrong it all has to do with the time that you fertilize there was a study done in the 80s by two botanists by the last names of atwell and bliss and atwell and bliss studied when nitrogen was applied to beans and the effect that it had on overall fruit yields or pod development right how many beans you're going to get and what they found is that when nitrogen was applied at the very beginning they actually got three times the amount of bean production whereas when nitrogen was applied at pod and seed development they found that production was decreased by half and so what they actually concluded is that nitrogen does not decrease fruit yields it only decreases fruit yields when you apply it at the wrong time and so this was a revelation that farmers all around the world actually utilized to growing more beans now if you're a farmer like my like my uncle when they put seeds in the ground they also follow back up about a week later as soon as the it's called the emergence phase as soon as the seeds start to emerge from the soil and they start to germinate they will follow up with a high nitrogen fertilizer they do that one time and that's to increase the overall growth of the plant so that the plant can actually sustain more fruit more beans and they stop fertilizing so they don't decrease fruit yields over time that's really cool the second tip my uncle gave me to growing green beans successfully and maximizing production was to harvest early and harvest often now if you're like me i like to let my green beans sit on the plant as long as they can so that i have nice large juicy pods i want to get the biggest bang for my buck however he told me that getting the most bang for your buck is actually the best way to stopping production altogether and i said that seems so counterproductive that seems so counterintuitive you know if i'm letting my beans get as large as possible i would think that i'd get more yield at the end of the year because i'm letting my my pods get as large as possible and he said if you were perfect at harvesting beans and you could harvest every single one at exactly the right time sure but he said we're all human and inevitably all it takes is for you to forget one green bean just one and that green bean will mature get large and start to produce seeds as soon as that reaction happens within the plant that stimulant actually will stop the plant production it will actually focus 100 of its energy on producing viable seeds 100 of it that means all future growth all future fruit production is stopped halted entirely until those seeds are fully mature once that happens the plant will actually begin to die and so uh what you need to do is you need to harvest all of the beans as soon as you're ready to harvest beans will flower in what's called a flush and a flush happens basically at different stages of growth the plant will grow it'll stop you'll notice these beans haven't really grown in about a week and a half because they've been flowering they've focused all of their energy on flowering and then now they're going to start producing pods once those pods are harvested it's going to give the plant a chance to start growing again they're going to start to grow then they'll start to flower growth will stop and then the pods will form and then that'll happen all over again beans will produce three to four sometimes even five flushes of beans the third tip to mastering growing green beans is the water my uncle told me that the more you water the more you're going to get and the reason why is because farmers that grow drying beans will actually yield about three times less when they stop watering and the reason why they stop watering is because they want the plants to dry up when the plants dry up it forces the beans to mature and it actually will help the beans to dry which since they're harvesting dry beans things like pinto beans black beans garbanzo beans right you need them to be dry so you can shell them and harvest the beans inside whereas when you're growing snap beans or green beans you want them to keep producing and beans actually contrary to popular belief do not like to grow through a drought they actually like to be watered regularly so by watering on a weekly basis or when the plants need it you're you're going to actually increase their production i actually water these green beans twice a week i'll water them on a monday and then if it hasn't rained which it has and it's been pretty dry here lately i'll water on a thursday and then i'll water on a monday and i'll water on a thursday and that's kind of my my weekly watering schedule based on the soil that i have but don't go off of my schedule um basically what you need to do is poke your finger down or get a moisture test get a little moisture meter and make sure that there's moisture in the soil at all times it takes about roughly about three days for my soil to adequately dry out to the point where it needs water again and so and that's just based on my soil and my growing conditions if it's sunnier it's going to dry out faster if it's windier it's going to dry out faster this is not a hard and fast rule it's just the schedule that i find best works for my garden but again i'm watering twice a week it's very contrary to the people that say don't water your beans you're going to increase growth and slow down pod production unless of course you're dry growing drying beans you want to keep watering all right and the final tip to mastering growing green beans is temperature now that's probably one out of left field you weren't expecting but temperature has so much to do with bean production that you can do everything right but if the temperature is not right beans just won't produce that's because beans are very temperature sensitive too early in the spring bean seeds will rot and die in the soil too late in the season the temperature gets too hot and beans will simply stop producing and shut down production they just kind of go into kind of energy conservation mode and it kind of puts them on life support because they just they don't want to produce when they might die from the heat and so they have a very finite temperature window and farmers all around the world follow this temperature window basically uh you know like it's the law anything over 45 degrees and anything under 80 degrees is your window and so the best time to plant is not early in the spring it's just around you know look at the farmers see when they're planting corn and then remember that date remember when they're kind of planting corn or if you have a soil thermometer test the soil you want to make sure that the soil is slightly warmer than 45 degrees if the soil is warmer than 45 degrees you're good to go it could be that could be in you know mid may late may or even early june it does it really doesn't matter what time of year it is it has everything to do with the soil temperature because too cold the bean like i said the bean seeds will just they'll just rot you'll have very very poor germination now uh like i said too late into the season if you're growing in like july or august you're going to notice that the beans will actually kind of just shut down they'll still exist they'll still survive but they won't produce any any beans at all and so what farmers will do is they will get their their first second third flush out they will pull the plants out entirely and then they'll wait they'll wait until the temperature drops below 80 degrees and when the temperature drops below 80 degrees they'll replant this is usually in like late august or so when the nighttime temperatures start to cool the soil down the soil doesn't spike up it doesn't get super hot the daytime temperatures aren't really above 80 85 degrees or so and it's kind of consistently starting to downtrend that's when farmers will plant their fall their fall crop of beans and they'll get those in the ground and then that way they can grow clear through basically into early october and so it's those two times a year just remember 45 to about 80 degrees that's the the temperature window in which beans will grow and produce best now the other things to growing beans are kind of just givens uh they are important but they're not you know super vital to ensuring the plant is like wow amazing right they're kind of just givens you want to make sure that your plants get about five to seven hours of sun you wanna make sure that the ph of the soil is slightly acidic around 6.5 or so and you want to make sure that your soil is well draining they don't like to be really constricted and you know just uh claustrophobic right like they don't like to they don't like to have the soil compacting around the roots and suffocating them so just make sure your soil is well draining and and nice and fertile and you're gonna do fine so those are all the tips that i've learned on how to master growing green beans i hope you guys enjoyed i hope you learned something new if you did let me know what you learned in the comments box down below and also follow up in a year from now with uh with how your bean harvest did um i'd love to know so as always this is luke from the my gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home we'll catch you guys later see ya bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 132,324

Keywords: Premiere_Elements_2018, beans from seed, complete, easy, ez, farmer, garden tip, gardening tips, green bean, green beans, growing, growing green beans, growing guide, guide, how to, how to grow beans, how-to, howto, luke, mastering, mi gardener, migardener, simple, snap beans, tips, tutorial, walkthrough

Id: LYQcwc-dfVo

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 16 2022