I just grow pole beans. No staggering necessary. They produce constantly as long as you keep them well picked.
Beans do not tolerate frost.

I stagger the bush beans and just do one or two season plantings for the pole beans. I make pole beans climb around the corn and the sunflowers and I use bush beans in crop rotation to replenish the soil. So I take my kale and other greens out, they are heavy soil depleters, beans go in there next. This way I always have rich soil and it confuses the bugs. Also, I almost always have beans too... OK not in the dead of winter, we do peas then. Dead of winter in zone 9 and 10 is usually a joke, but we do have freezing some nights so peas are better then.

I planted a short wide row "Dick Raymond" style of green bush beans as early as possible in my zone. Two weeks later did a short wide row of yellow wax beans and about a dozen poles with pole beans.

Rather than pull up the first planted green bush beans, when they slowed production to almost nil, I cut them back to 2 nodes and fertilized as suggested by someone on gardenweb (I apologize as I can't remember who). They have grown back and are producing again covered with blossoms. (I picked off the blossoms in the beginning to give them a chance to leaf out). Some of those tough little buggers tried to blossom without a single leaf.

Ditto with the yellow wax beans.

I have frozen and canned way more than we can eat in the coming year, plus ate them all summer and gave away lots. With the plants I cut back I intend to make Dilly Beans and give the rest to my brothers for their freezers. The pole beans I am only picking the younger beans on the least vigerous plants now as the rest will be next years seeds.

When they are all through I will sickle off the tops for the compost/lazagna beds and turn the roots under. Did the same with the peas. Nourish us, family/friends, the next beds and the soil. Win, win, win! Plus 2 crops of green and yellow wax bush beans with one planting of seed. Saved $$$$ Can't beat that with a stick! Gotta love it!

I do various types of bush beans staggered on 3 week plantings. Every 3 weeks a new row gets planted and by then the first row is done and can be replanted.

Dave

Cabrita, what type of peas do you plant for winter? I've got seeds for Austrian winter peas this year. I don't really know what they are.

Lorna

Lorna, we have been planting sugar snaps, chinese snow peas and shelling peas. We do better with beans than peas but we'll keep trying, since we got a few in early spring and a few of them are great just thinly sliced raw in salads.

Two or three varieties of pole beans (early, midseason, and late) will give you continuous production from mid June until first frost. I plant once in early May.

I usually do a second planting in mid-August for a Fall crop. This year, however, the variety I planted just never stopped producing. That variety was "Jade" which I bought fro Johnny's Selected seeds. It's mid September, and the planting from late May is still bearing. I have never had a variety bear like this, especially with beans up to 8" long, slender, tender, and never a string. This will be my "go-to" variety from not on!
I planted a second batch last week, just for the heck of it!

Ron
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