Most varieties of pole bean won't set at high temps (90+) so if you are in one of the warmer areas that may be your problem. No way to get common pole beans here in Georgia during July and August.

Hey thanks-- I'm in Seattle. I've gotten plenty of beans here before in the summer including last year. It has been hotter than normal but we've had cooler weather too.

AFAIK excess N will cause a lack of flowering not a failure to set pods/fruit.

irjowo99 where do you live and garden? I'd probably "put money" on Farmerdill's suggestion. Some varieties are more heat sensitive than others. I've grown one pole bean which absolutely refused to set pods, here in hot Oklahoma, until fall had settled in.

George
Tahlequah, OK

in previous reply i said seattle. Are my replies not visible to you? Houzz is pretty crappy :-/. I miss gardenweb

It's the heat, this has been the first year I've had so many varieties that are 'just now' starting to produce flowers due to heat in the 90's, unheard of temperatures for here especially June which is usually cool and damp. Surprisingly a couple of varieties that didn't blink an eye and kept on trucking were Brita's Foot Long, Grandma Nellie's Mushroom, Blue Jay and the purple runner Aeron Purple Star. In fact Grandma Nellie's are finished as far as eating goes, I have a pole of pods drying down nicely for seed, some already dry. The Brita's and Blue Jay are at the eating stage and the purple runner is flowering again, have eaten them several times, I've also picked a few dried on the vine pods already. I did find one vine that is producing green rather than purple pods, if I had noticed it earlier I would have rouged it out, apparently this can happen and it's best to pull the plant as soon as possible.

Everything looks like it's back on track now that it's cooled down a bit, the vines look green and healthy, all we need now is a decent fall to collect seed from these johnny come late-lies.

Annette

Thanks for the thorough run-down, Annette. Sounds like you're quite a bean grower! Pole snaps are one of my favorite crops as a home gardener I have to say. So productive and calorie-dense! I'm sorely disappointed at this year's dearth to date.

I might look into trying some more heat resistant varieties next year if they exist, just to give me some diversity in case of more hot weather.

Macmex-- Well, we have had a few days of cooler weather, but yes it's been really hot here. I don't think we've really gone past the 90s, and we've been in the 80s more often. So maybe we just caught up to you. Still to us it *feels* like we're in Phoenix :-)

Ok I have an update. I've found bugs that might be the culprit. I noticed them back in July but didn't give them any thought. Well through August I saw they were hanging out on my beans as well as laying eggs and I found colonies of eggs and newborns on the underside of leaves.

I've started seeing these bugs in other parts of the garden.

I've attached a couple pictures of some of the nymph stage that I've been seeing running around in my garden lately. Mostly on beans but also on a cucumber, eggplant and tomato plant.

I also realized that they are descendants of a large green adult bug that I had seen around all summer.

I am very concerned about this infestation and wondering what I can do to try to reduce the chances that it will be a significant problem next season.

Seeing these bugs also made me think about shriveled up bean pods I had seen in a new light-- bug damage.

The beans never really produced hardly at all this whole season.

Coincidentally, I just today found out what those bugs are! I've been seeing them this year for the first time myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nezara_viridula

I've just been hand-picking them (with gloves), since they're relatively large and there's only 3 dozen or so in my garden. Otherwise all I've seen mentioned for control is various parasitic flies, carbamates/organophosphates (not for organic gardens), and winters that are below 40 degrees F. Don't know about you guys but we had a ridiculously, record-shatteringly warm winter, so maybe that's why they've shown up all of a sudden.

I haven't had your problem with pod set, but then again I don't have too many of these hanging around.

whew, that is a relief to hear! And it makes sense since it's been so hot (as we discussed earlier in the thread.)

Well they seemed to be taking cover in all the thick vegetation so I thinned out the beans considerably, just to see if that might help with the bugs and also maybe give the beans a shot at producing something over the next month since I put so much effort into growing them...

I am planning to try some tricks to keep some areas warm in the garden using mulch/coldframes and keeping organic waste composting near the plants. So I'll keep an eye out for the bugs clustering around there.

Yeah I've been smashing them by hand too-- and trying to enjoy the process ;-)

yeah our winter was really warm too. And also summer.

If things don't get back to normal maybe these bugs will find a way to make themselves at home :-/