KY Wonder is suppose to produce until the frost kills them, provided you harvest the ripe beans.

Mike

We don't really get our frost until November. So I can keep picking for 4 months?

Yes, as long as you keep the plants healthy and well watered they will keep on producing until disease or pests or frost kills them.

Production usually slows during the high heat periods and blossoms drop just as with any other blooming fruit but it picks back up again once the weathers breaks.

Dave

Dave is right. You also have to pick them.
My hyacind pole beans flower from early june fo frost kill, none stop.Of course I grow them as flowering vine and use some of the young pods too.
My blue lakes and KY wonders are in full blast. I cannot keep up with picking.
The bush types are not as productive.

So here is my dilemma if they really will produce until frost. My beans are about 4 ft away from my paste tomato beds and the beans are 8 ft tall. The tomatoes are approaching 5 ft now and I suspect they will get about 6 ft tall. The tomatoes are more or less on the west side of my beans and right now they are shaded by the beans in the morning. The entire tomato plant (top to bottom) get full sun from 11am til 6pm. In a few months though the sun will be lower so the tomatoes will get even less sun. This is definitely bad planning on my part. What would you do if you were in my shoes?

What would you do if you were in my shoes?

I'd pull the bean plants - BUT not until it is absolutely necessary - that way you'll still get some more beans.

Dave

You could try snipping the beans back to 4 or 5 feet. I would expect this to trigger lateral growth from each node and give you shorter bushier vines.

The problem I've had with pole beans is that they become a bean beetle habitat and get totally destroyed by the beetles long before frost. Bush beans can be removed after harvesting to lower the beetle population and then you can plant another crop of bush beans. You can also use floating row covers over bush beans to protect them from the beetles. I do like the idea of a continuous harvest till frost though. Maybe there would be some way to sandwich the pole beans between two sheets of row cover. I'm using Agribon AG-15 insect barrier this year for the first time and it works great against bean beetles! :)

Some people mow their beans. I posted a link to a gw discussion.

Here is a link that might be useful: bean mowing discussion

I might do what steve22802 suggests before I pull the entire plant in a few months. If I can lower their height to 5 ft, it will be okay to have them until frost. Though I could also just plant a row of bush beans now so when I pull the pole beans the bush beans will start to produce. I just pulled out my beets and the bed won't be used until the fall crops are ready for transplant. Grrr garden planning is not easy!

If it were me I'd first try to train them to go sideways (away from your tomatoes) on a piece of wire fencing or lattice. Or wait and pull them. Pole beans grow pretty fast so you could start some new ones in a different spot.

Yup. the planning bugs got to me too many times too.

I agree with Steve's trimming. daryljurassic's suggestion on training them sideways is also a great idea. How are your pole beans supported now? You can probably lower the support to an arch, L, V, or simply tilt the support depending on your material.

Planting bush bean in place of pole bean will drastically decrease the harvest unless you plant many times more bush beans than pole beans (some books said four times, my experience is 10 times or more). I plant bush beans in early spring because they're earlier than poles. Other times, pole simply produces better.

Since your support is hard to bend and the beans well established, trimming or replant may be a better option. I guess either way, trimming the top very soon like now will help the tomato plants.