Last year, I planted bush beans over the July 4th weekend, and froze enough beans to last through the winter... I'm still eating them. The average frost date here is around October 5th, so with a frost date 10-14 days later & more heat than I have, there is plenty of time to get a good crop. This year, I planted "Emerite" pole beans on July 5th, and they are beginning to climb & bud up, so they too should bear well before frost. Bush beans & English peas are good crops to plant in mid-summer bare spots, since they will not only give you food before frost, they will enrich the soil. I agree with OldDutch that beans - like many vegetables - are better flavored if harvested in cool Fall weather. I usually plant my snap beans earlier, but when the weather prevents that (as it did here last year) I can't help but notice that the quality of late-planted beans has been outstanding.

nancyjane: well, at least she knew it smelled like COW poop- that City gal!!ha Now pig & chicken poop smell entirely different but 'poop' never- the- less! The manure x the dairies around here smells awful ... those cows do not belong in a dirt enclosure & fed heaven- knows- what from bins... they belong in a green pasture to eat normal 'cow food'-grass! The cow manure x a pasture smells different & when dry & dug in the garden actually smells good & makes me homesick for the 'country'which cracks my husband (city slicker) up! Thanks for all the help everyone!! : I put the cut beans in boiling water for about 2 minutes, drained them & fill the kettle with cold water and ice cubes. I then drained the cooled beans & filled gallon zip-loc bags half full, squeezed the air out & froze them. I did not dry them first so wonder what that will do to the texture when I thaw them? Yes, I like to add onion, garlic & crumbled bacon in them & for me I add some vinegar like the Germans back home did but hubby wants none of that vinegar! It has been a long time since I grew beans so I had forgotten how to freeze them correctly as earlier I later just boiled the beans I froze with out blanching them first before freezing & they were TOUGH when thawed & cooked! I had forgotten how many beans a 10 ft. single row would keep producing! The yellow bush wax beans are not quite ready yet & I do like the too!

Reading this prompted me to think back to at least 60 years ago.I gave up taking good care of my garden(had a baby in mid Aug). The spring crop of beans got spider mites and I just couldn't take care of them, but they were left in the garden. My FIL did the watering for me that summer. To my surprise the green beans got leaves and produced a bumper crop. One of my older neighbors came and picked them several times, towards the end of Sept she came and brought me 20 qts of canned beans.

Kaity, In all honesty, I am not so sure your results with a fall planting will be any more successful than your spring planting this year, so I encourage you to think about how a fall planting is likely to perform if the weather for the next 6 to 8 weeks continues along in basically the same pattern we've had for the last 6 weeks or so. The OSU-recommended planting dates for snap beans for the fall garden are: Pole Beans July 15th - July 30th Bush Beans Aug 10th - Aug 20th To use these dates as OSU intended, you should know that the earlier dates are for folks in northern OK in the fall, and the later dates are for folks in southern OK in the fall. (In the spring it is the exact opposite.) Consider too that research has shown that every type of seed has soil temperatures at which it will or won't germinate well. With beans, the best soil temperature for them is 77 degrees. At that temperature, 97% of your bean seeds will germinate and they'll do so in an average of 8 days. If your soil temperature is 86 degrees, you'll get slightly faster germination--just 6 days, but only 47% of your bean seed will germinate. And, if your soil is a toasty 95 degrees, you'll get germination in 6 days as well, but only 39% of your seeds will germinate. If your soil temperature is 104 degrees or hotter, you'll get 0% germination. You can figure out your average soil temperature by using a thermometer with a probe (like a standard kitcen meat thermometer). Take the temperature of bare soil during midafternoon when temps are highest and take it about 2" below grade level. Record your soil's temperature for 3 to 5 days and average together the results. If the soil temp is higher than is ideal, you might want to find some way to increase your seed's chance of germinating, like germinating them inside in damp paper towels, for example, and then planting them out into the ground as soon as they sprout in the paper towel. Or, you could plant them in the ground and temporarily shade the ground with sheets or shade cloth to help keep it cooler, which could help give you better germination. If you are planting them in the ground into soil that is pretty hot, you need to plant more seeds than usual to make up for the significantly lower germination rates. Are you seeing many grasshoppers in your area? Grasshoppers love to eat bean plants, especially in July and August when there's not a lot of green around. You may need to protect your young bean plants from the grasshoppers. The grasshoppers this year are bad here where I live, but not as bad as they were last year when they stripped all my bean plants down to naked stalks in July and August. Finally, green beans grow and produce best when air temperatures are in the 70s, so since those air temps are a long way off, especially in this hotter-than-average year, try to time your plantings so your plants will be blooming when temps are in the 70s. Accomplishing this is always tricky with fall beans, and I expect it will be trickier than usual this year. You might look at your soil temps, look at your OSU-recommended dates, and choose to plant a week later than OSU says in order to let the air cool down a little more. The problem with waiting a little bit is that you have that inevitable first frost looming in mid-autumn. I'm not saying "don't plant beans" but rather consider all the factors that go into getting a successful stand of beans and decide if it is worth it. If you choose to plant them, you're going to have to work really hard to offset the negative effects of this year's terrible heat and drought conditions. I'm going to link one of the soil temperature maps from the OK Mesonet for you. You can look at the average soil temps in your area and it will give you some idea of what to expect in your own garden. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Bare Soil Temp at 2