Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

I've been using 6-inch nylon mesh that I purchase at the garden shop at outrageous prices -- like $9 for a section 5 feet wide and around 15 feet long. It works great; but, no matter how carefully I handle it, it deteriorates and is unusable after about 3 years. I even repair it when it breaks. But, at some point it is no longer possible to fix it cause it's falling apart. While the product has a lifetime warranty, it's fairly costly to mail the failed product back. And if I return 2 or 3 a year, the company will eventually get disgusted and stiff me. Any suggestions? What do the rest of you give your tall peas and pole beans to climb on?

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

Chicken wire is dirt cheap too.

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

I started out using chicken wire, unfortunately it was really old chicken wire as it had been used for decades as a mini-fema camp for the chickens. It eventually crumbled.

Currently am using what sounds like the same mesh fencing you are using. It is in almost brand new condition after 2 years. I roll it up and store it during the winter.

But I expect it to break sometime and have been looking around for what to use next. I have a lot of unused nylon hay baling twine stashed, and I think that will fit the bill.

I looked around real quick and found this. I have no idea if you can find a better deal anywhere or not.
http://ropesandtwines.com/proddetail.asp?prod=baler2

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

Infidel, poles for pole beans?! You must be kidding. Seriously, though, if I had timberland and could cut my own saplings, I think that would be a great solution. But if you've been to the lumberyard lately, you know what you're suggesting is fairly expensive by the time you build half a dozen of those teepees.

Chicken wire would work and it is cheap but you can't reach through it to pick the peas and beans -- have to have access from both sides. In my square foot gardening scenario, that's definitely an issue since my garden is pretty small to begin with.

I guess bailing wire or fish line would be cheap and work well; but I'll have to design and build some kind of framework for it. A good winter project.:wink:

If I could find a way to get it home from the lumberyard (other than on the roof of my Chevy Cavalier), I'd buy several sections of steel concrete reinforcing mesh. That's open enough to reach through for picking. I wonder how many years I could reuse it before it rusted away?

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

Fishing line I think will cut right thru the plants if you get any kind of a windstorm.

I have some steel fence posts that I put in every year at the ends of each row. With nylon hay bailing twine I plan on just building a 4 or 5 strand fence.Think barb wire fence, but more benevolent in nature.

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

In my experience, the plants climb the vertical strands, not the horizontal strands. If you're going to build something, the strands should go up and down, not side to side.

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

I use concrete reinforcing mesh, 6 inch square. The mesh is 5 ft wide and cut off 7-8 feet and make a tube 5 ft high and 2 to 2 1/2 ft diameter. I also use these for tomatoes and cucumbers. They require a steel fence post to support them if you have wind. I have used some of these for 20 years now, corrosion ultimately causes the welds to fail, then turn them over and put the good end on the ground. (Note: if you get too close to one of these with your rototiller, you have quite a mess.)

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

Yeah, the plants will need some help for my plan to work, but not much.
If they don't grab on to the next higher strand as they grow past it, I will have to attach them to it. But I am in the garden almost every day anyways.

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

+1. To that.
I have constructed my own "mesh" using fishing line with good results in the past.

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

Bamboo poles, triangle pyramids, 6 ft tall

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

I mostly have settled on succession planting of bush Blue Lake green beans.
I don't have to worry about beanpoles anymore. Thank God. :wink:

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

What you need is pole bean string. It's available at many good farm stores and resembles kite string. (I say good because some farms stores have forgotten what a farm is.) Put up posts, metal or wooden about 5 feet apart. Put a wire, or strong rope, on the top and the bottom. Tie the string to the top, then loop it over the bottom wire and then back up to the top in a zig zag pattern every foot or so. It usually works best to have one person on the top and one person on the ground, passing the string back and forth to each other.

At the end of the year remove the posts and wire. The string will naturally decompose before spring. Huge fields of pole beans used to be planted this way before bush beans were created. I still do my pole beans this way, and it works pretty good.

Good luck with the beans, since they are predicting a freezing cold here for the next week, I look forward to warm spring days.

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

I do something much like Quixote using 5 foot hog wire 4 inch openings. I cut open the bottom squares to make tines to stick in the ground. Good for beans, peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. I've even grown small cantaloupe in them, but if I don't make little slings for the fruit, some may fall before I pick them.

Vertical gardening lets you grow a lot more in a small space.

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

My favorite permanent setup after decades of gardening is a six-foot-tall support frame. The setup comes from Mel Bartholomew's "Square Foot Gardening." I use 1/2" aluminum electric conduit for lightweight crops--beans, peas, cucumbers and steel water pipe for heavier crops--tomatoes, bitter melon, squash and the like. The electric conduit is inexpensive, but if you try to use it to support the heavier stuff it will ultimately crumple.

Using cotton string, I string a line near ground level from foot to foot of the support, then one string per plant from the top of the frame and tie it to the bottom string. So for cucumbers--6" apart, for beans 2-3" apart. It's a bit of work on the setup, but once the crop is done clean-up is so easy--just take a pocketknife to the strings along the top and toss the whole mess in the compost bin. I used to hate trying to untangle dead vines out of my livestock panels and acrylic support mesh. :10_1_20:

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

I usually get the bush variety, and the only thing I do is plant them and pick them when they're ready.

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

The pole beans however will bear until killed, requiring only one planting, plus they're a lot easier to harvest since many of the beans are at eye level.

I have a young 'un that loves fresh green beans all the time, so I plant the pole beans except for when I am having the beans do double-duty as a cover crop.

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

I use two T-posts 8' apart. String 2-ply sisal twine horizontally between the two posts about 6" above ground level and then again near the top of the post. Then more twine vertically about every 10"-12" down the length of the run.

Posts last forever, more or less. You can get a big o' roll of sisal for not a lot of $$$. Two-ply sisal is strong as heck, but I have reservations about trying to go greater distances in between posts. I'm guessing strong winds put an enormous strain on them, not to mention the weight of a long run of bean vines. At the end of the growing season, snip the horizontal runs off and drag the whole thing to the compost heap, 100% biodegradable to boot :10_1_20:

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

Now there's a rockin' idea for low-cost supports for lightweight plants.

I'm planning on expanding the gardens in a big way this spring and was wondering how to do supports without spending a fortune. Thanks for the method. :applause_

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

How about this one and it doesn't cost you anything more than the cost of a seed....

Three Sisters

I did this last season and it worked out great. The beans help feed the corn, the corn supports the beans and the squash covers the ground to help keep weeds down. A great way to improve the density of food grown in a given area.

A couple of notes
Last year I made a couple of mistakes that could be improved upon. One I started my corn far to early and it was stunted and the beans out weighted the weak corn, but my succession plantings of corn did great. The second mistake I made was I planted zucchini instead of a vine squash. The zucchini is like a big bush instead of a vine so that stop any new plants from being able to grow because it blocked to much light.

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

Very interesting. I shall have to try this next spring.

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

We drive steel fence posts down the center of two rows, probably 25-30 feet apart. String barbless barbed wire (or any other heavy stranded wire) down the top and anchor either end. Cut canes provide the vertical poles between each plant and are tented down the wire strand, providing a climbing surface for two rows at a time. When we clear the garden, the canes are discarded, and the wire and steel posts get rolled/pulled up and stored in the barn for next year.

Re: Pea and Pole Bean Fencing
 

Plant corn. When the corn sprouts, plant 4 beans around each stalk.