The first rose I saw on a telephone pole was Chevy Chase in full bloom. It was spectacular. So much so that I stopped to ask the owner whose house was just back of the pole what it was. To add further interest, he had the same rose trained up the side of his house and along an area between the first and second floor all along that side. Both examples were truly car stopping for me. What in introduction to a rose. I asked for cuttings and came back later for some. I think he used heavy wire to hold it up and twisted the canes arounf the pole to increase their likelihood to bloom from the laterals - most likely pruned the blooming laterals one or more years to 2-3 eyes to get additional bloom in subsequent years. I think the upright somewhat stiff nature of Chevy Chase worked well in this case. I am uncertain about Francois or other wichuriana climbers - perhaps they would twine more easily. My Francois covered 70 feet of fence (35' in opposite directions) in its glory.

Growing most pole beans on short supports is like trying to house-train a moose. Messes will happen. ;-) My best recommendation would be to use a trellis (such as fencing) rather than poles, and train the vines horizontally as much as possible. You might also want to prune the first runner immediately, to encourage several smaller runners instead (note: this can backfire with some of the more rampant varieties, including some Romanos). It's too late now to change planting... but in the future, to grow shorter pole beans, one method is to crowd them. This will lead to fewer & shorter runners, but it also runs the risk of disease problems, should moisture & cool weather weaken the plants. Note that "moisture" includes overhead irrigation. In future years, for the community garden plot, you might want to look into growing "half-runner" bean varieties. As their name implies, they are only half-hearted climbers. Some Appalachian beans, and many "cornfield" beans, have shorter runners.

Jimster told me about this thread today when I posted in Vegetable Gardening on the subject. I'm growing Kentucky Wonder pole beans in a spot just outside one of my kitchen windows. It's been fun watching them grow, and noting that they put on about 4-6" of new growth every night. Two of the vines have grown about 8" beyond the top of the support I provided for them. Over the past two days (including last night, using a flashlight) I watched the vines move in various directionsÂfacing each other, facing away from each other, etc. I wanted to find out why and how they did this. So I wrote to a Ph.D. bean research scientist, and this was his reply: Susan, The twining habit in climbing beans is controlled by the Tor gene (Latin torquere) first described in 1915. It confers the light controlled phytochrome climbing habit in climbing beans and is absent in bush beans (recessive tor gene). Ancestral primitive beans were largely climbers and used this trait to climb over vegetation to seek light. So the two plants in your case are not reaching for each other but they are twining around (have a rotational motion that has been demonstrated with time lapse photography). If they did touch they would vine together and might climb upwards more as they support each other. Since the vines do not have support (8" above the stakes) gravity will take over and cause them to fall earthward and this action is a kind of free fall - without direction. If they detect support again they will continue to climb upwards toward the light. I have see vigorous climbers in wild climb over all types of vegetation. In your case the vines are not seeking each other but as they continue to grow they will rotate in search of support driven by light. When we work with climbing beans in the greenhouse (rarely in the field) we turn the vine down on the plant itself otherwise they would seek the greenhouse supports, flower and set pods were we would not be able to harvest them. I hope my few comments are of interest - have a good harvest!

You can try to train them going down but it's not the way they want to grow. I would either let them be or find a way to add additional height to the trellis. If you let them be they will try to keep growing taller but find no support until they grab onto something lower making a somewhat thick mass.