How to Grow Pole Beans for Easy Picking and Preserving

Step 1. Directly sow your beans. Beans do not grow well as seedlings or transplants. They are best sowed directly into the ground as a seed. Beans should be sown when the soil temperature (not the air temperature) is at least 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Step 2. Soak your beans overnight. The night before you plant your beans, soak the seeds in room temperature water over night. This will greatly speed up the germination process. However, if the weatherman foretells rain for your region during your bean-planting week, don’t soak the seeds because they could rot.

Step 3. Plant your beans where your brassicas were planted the previous year. Beans are an excellent plant when it comes to crop rotation because they help fix nitrogen in the soil. It’s a good idea plant them where members of the brassica family (cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, or cauliflower) were planted the previous year.

Step 4. Take advantage of companion planting. Beans are a fairly non-picky plant and get along nicely with almost everything else. The only plants you shouldn’t plant in their vicinity are members of the allium family, like onions, garlic, leek and scallions. The allium family can inhibit or stunt the growth of green beans.

Step 5. Run a string over your planted bean seeds. Birds are notorious for pulling up new bean sprouts. If you tie a string just an inch or two over the row of sprouts, it prevents the birds from pulling them up. After the beans are a few inches tall, you can remove the string.