Bee friendly Veg - Bush Beans / French Beans

Beans are honestly SUCH easy-to-grow vegetables that will bring you as food-loving-humans and the pollen-seeking bees SO much joy! They come in many different shapes and colours, and there are over 40,000 different varieties that are being preserved and stored in genebanks. Isn’t that mindblowingly, friggin’ AMAZING?

Beans can be sowed in cooler regions starting from mid May after the last frosty nights. The seeds germinate quite quickly (between 6-16 days depending on weather conditions) and grow into strong bean plants that produce an abundance of beautiful small butterfly-like flowers. The colour of the bean flowers depend on its variety: they can be white, white with black spots, red, purple, blue, pink or yellow.

Bean flowers are being sought out especially by bees because of their pollen.

This article is about bush beans (also called `French Beans’) which are very easy to grow and keep flowering all throughout spring and summer and will produce plenty of legumes during the growing season. If you wanna give it a try and start to grow them, you won’t be disappointed.

Bush bean varieties do not need any climbing support, unlike runner beans, and grow between 30-50 cm high, depending on the variety. Bush beans can also be grown on your balcony in pots, all they need is a sunny plot and plenty of water.

There are different possibilities to sow the seeds: You can either sow the seeds directly into the soil of your garden plot approx. 3-5cm deep starting from mid May when you live in a cooler climate zone. The other option you have is to get the runner beans going a little sooner: You can sow the seeds into plant pots or module trays on your window sill at the end of April and plant the bean plants out in mid May when there are no more frosty nights to come. You need to make sure to keep the sprouting seeds and growing plants moist and to water them plenty when the soil is dry, especially during hot summers.

If you choose to sow directly into the soil, which is the easier option, sow the bush bean seeds in rows approx. 3 cm deep into the soil of your plot or into a pot on your balcony. The plants should grow around 15cm apart within the row and the rows should be around 45 cm apart. Beans are very undemanding and do not need fertiliser or compost to grow.

The colorful flowers the beans will produce will be visited by bees and bumble bees. Harvest your bush beans when they are between 10-15cm long and do not eat them raw, but boil them in water. The more beans you harvest, the more flowers your plants will produce.

If you would like to keep some seeds for sowing them again in the following year, simply let a few beans stay on the mother plant and wait until the pods turn yellow and dry. Keep the dry pods in a warm and dark place (you can hang them up, like we do, on pieces of cotton string to dry out properly - simply take a needle and string and sew them together). You can peel out the bean seeds when the pods are dry and hard and start to crack at light touch. Store the seeds in a plastic-free container, for example a paper bag or a coffee filter until you can sow them out into your plot again in the next season.

If you wanna make an impact and preserve and grow bush bean varieties that are not commonly or commercially grown, we recommend you to grow these organic heirloom varieties that are perfect for hobby gardeners:

Bush bean `Magpie’ (Heirloom bush bean that was first cultivated in France around the 1900s, and is regarded as an almost forgotten variety. Produces long pale green vegetables. The dry bean seeds are beautifully speckled in black and white.)
Bush bean `Kenearly Yellow Eye’ (A very strong and early heirloom variety that produces plenty of veg and beautiful white beans that are speckled in yellow-orange colour.)
Bush bean `Tiger’s Eye’ (This absolutely gorgeous heirloom variety is a true eye-catcher. The dry beans are in the colour of golden-orange with streaks of chestnut brown / maroon.)
Bush bean `Canadian Wonder’ (A vigorously growing heirloom variety that is famous for its bright red seeds. The dwarf kidney bean plant is being cultivated since around 1873.)
Bush bean `Frauenbohne’ transl. `Women’s Bean’ (A very rare heirloom variety. The pretty dried bean seeds are white with burgundy and light brown colored speckles.)