Yardlong Beans from Seed to plate

Growing the Beans

This year (and last year) I planted Yardlong Beans.  These are basically your normal green beans, but they grow to be 18-24 inches long (or so).  Last year I planted them with the express purpose of saving seeds.  I only had a few seeds, and it worked out great.  We had hundreds of seeds left over and this year planted those seeds.

In the planting I planted 1 row about 7 feet long, and I just put several beans in the small canal in the dirt and covered them up.  I then put up some $10 metal posts from lowes on either side, and used some twine to make a little fence for them to grow up.  It works pretty well, except they like to climb up poles rather than working up the fence, so they spin around things instead of moving up the fence.  But it's ok, a little training and they've done really well.

That's about 7' wide, notice they like to climb up the hoophouse
posts rather than growing up the fence.  Next year i'll use all posts

I also noticed that in my other garden plot a few seeds must have gotten dropped in because about 10 or 15 plants started growing, about 3ft across or so.  I had a few eletrical conduit posts (I used in my greenhouse post earlier to hold down the plastic), so I just stuck them in the ground about 2 feet apart in the middle of the beans, and the beans have done extremely well climbing up the 2 posts as a group.  The posts are 10 feet tall, and today a few of the plants have almost reached the top.

Notice they're within a foot or 2 from the top,
that's at least 8 feet up (1 or 2 feet in the ground).
These seem like the easiest way to grow these,
and 5 or 10 on a poll doesn't seem hurt them.

About 1 or 2 weeks ago they started growing flowers.  They grow flowers in groups of 2 pointing away from eachother making a little V.  These flowers then turn into small green sticks that continue to grow for a few days until they're 20 inches long or so.  They turn lighter green when they're ready, and turn brown and dried out when they're ready to have their seeds saved.

These are the flowers, the beans just start
growing out of these after a few days.

Today's Harvest 7/19/2014

Today we didn't have a vegetable for dinner (the kids were so disappointed) so I decided to go pick whatever beans were ready.  I got out there and was pretty surprised to find 41 beans ready to pick.  Now if these were normal green beans then 41 beans wouldn't be any big deal, but these are yardlong beans.  I weighed them (after removing the top and bottom) and they came out to 15.84 ounces.  So basically 1 pound of beans for dinner.  Not too shabby :)

While picking I only picked the larger beans, so we'll see how many i get and how often, but for only 11 ft x 1ft (1 row) these things make for a great harvest.  If anyone in the St Louis area is interested in any seeds for next year I should have plenty :).

Ignore the socks :), but these are the beans.
That's a yardstick next to them to show how long they get. 

Here's the end so it's easier to see the numbers, notice
they're all about the 20 - 24 inch mark
(though the tops aren't perfectly lined up).

Update - Today's Harvest 7/22/2014

Today we did another harvest.  18.02oz (1lb 2.02oz).  There are a few that are a little over age wize, they're yellow, must have missed them last time.  And there are plenty of small ones still out there.  But this is today's harvest.  Not bad, last harvest was 3 days ago so it seems like so far there is 1 lb every 3rd day.  I'll keep updating as we go.

Update - Today's Harvest 7/24/2014

Today we did another harvest.  9.5 oz

How to build a grapevine trellis

It's supposed to be a really windy weekend, and I looked outside and sure enough the small 6ft steaks i've been using to "trellis" my grapevines are blowing all over the place in the wind.  It's been this way for a few days, but what can I say i'm lazy :).

Well today I finally decided to not be lazy, and I finally put together my grapevine trellis, and I must say it's working great.

Steps:

Step 1 - is to go to your local "buy all your home goods" store (lowes), and buy

• 4x4 outdoor post 6ft tall - you need 2 of these, one for each side.
• 4 eye screws (they're basically just screws with loops on the end)
• 200 feet of bailing wire (or multi-purpose wire), I got 16 gauge stuff, and 200 feet isn't important, just so long as you have "enough"
• 2 of These bad boys (these were where I was being lazy, and i'm really really happy it did) - If you don't get these, then get 9ft or 10ft tall posts above, and a shovel, and a strong back :).
• 2 Turnbuckles - I found these at lowes and just bought the biggest ones they had.  These help tighten up the wires

Step 2 - hammer in "those bad boys".  Give your plant at least 3 or 4 feet and hammer the posts in, try and get it straight up and down.  I would recommend getting a 6 inch piece of 4x4 wood so that you can sledge hammer it in easier.

Step 3 - Put the posts in, and screw them in.

Step 4 - Now it's time to use the eye screws, I used 4 so I could make 2 lines of wire, but you could easily do 3 lines, up to u (i might even add another one myself, it's pretty easy).  If you do 3 lines, make sure to get 3 turnbuckles.

Step 5 - Add the wire, and the turnbuckles.  I made the turnbuckles near one of the posts, but i'm sure it doesn't actually matter.

Step 6 - Tie the grapevines to the trellis, I used small pieces of bailing wire, and didn't make them very tight.  The 16 gauge is thick enough that I'm not too worried about them digging into the vines, but I also made them pretty loose.

Step 7 - Enjoy :), though if you're like me the next step is to find a good way to add netting to protect against birds.

Best Pictures I could take:

Notice the loops if you can see them.  Also see that I kept the
old posts I had and just tied them to the wire.

Other post on the other side. 

This grapevine is much happier now (or I am anyway)
Notice that i found the best vines to train along the wires, these will grow the
full length.  Also, you'll notice a little on the right the turnbuckles that I got.

All in all I have to say, for a couple hours of work this was much easier than I was afraid of.  Especially with the e-z post guards.

UPDATE:
If I had to do this again, which I'm sure someday I will, I'd have used one way anchor vices instead of the turnbuckles and eye holes.  Would have made things a lot easier.

If you're interested in growing grapes, This video series is simply amazing (dry :), but amazing)