Green beans are a garden superstar—easy to grow and harvest. A row or trellis of green beans will produce a prolific crop and have you feeling like a green thumb, enjoying the tasty crisp flavor you can't get from a store-bought bean. 

While the typical green bean is green, these veggies aren't limited to just one color. You can grow yellow beans, sometimes called wax beans, purple beans (unfortunately, they turn green when cooked), green beans with purple splotches, and even red beans. Growing purple pole beans on a trellis is a garden feature all by itself.

Growing Green Beans

While growing green beans in the garden or even on a patio is easy, there are a few points to remember for a successful crop. Like most garden vegetables, they prefer full sun, loose and fertile soil, and good drainage. Growing green beans in containers is easy, too, but you'll have to watch the soil moisture more closely.

Green beans can suffer from several diseases, which vary by region. Choose a variety resistant to any local disease issue, and you'll be rewarded with healthier plants and better beans. Kentucky Blue is a rust and mosaic virus resistant pole bean with excellent flavor. Check with your local extension office to find out what bean problems exist in your area.

Choosing a variety of green beans: bush or pole

Green beans come in two basic forms: bush and pole beans. As the name implies, bush beans like the Jade bean have a short, upright habit and don't need staking or trellising. They are usually 1–2 feet tall and can be easily planted in rows. Bush beans are more compact plants than their climbing kin but can take up some space in the garden. They produce heavily for a week or two, then fizzle out and can be pulled to make room for a fall garden planting or a cover crop. 

Pole beans are vining and need something to swarm up. They’re great space-savers in the garden, using vertical rather than horizontal areas to spread. Many gardeners prefer pole beans for easier harvesting, as you'll spend less time bent over or on your knees looking for hidden beans under the foliage—most of the beans are growing right up at chest level. Upright trellises covered in green leaves and beans also make a striking feature for your garden, bringing three-dimensional interest. Heirloom varieties like Kentucky Wonder have been a favorite of gardeners for decades.  

Soil, Light, and Moisture needs for green beans

Green beans like loamy, loose, fertile soil (who doesn't?) and adequate drainage. To help with drainage and fertility, work in a layer of compost prior to planting. Choose a site with 6–8 hours of sunshine per day. While green beans will grow in partial sun, their productivity will be reduced. 

Beans like 1–2 inches of water per week and evenly moist soil. Don't worry too much about them; just provide a good deep drink once or twice a week when it doesn't rain. 

Planting green beans

Green beans should be directly sown into the garden. They don't transplant well, and beans planted straight into the soil will soon outgrow those transplanted anyway. Wait to plant until about two weeks after your last frost date, when the soil has warmed up. Bush beans are often succession planted every 2–3 weeks for a continual harvest right up until the frost.

To plant bush beans, sow individual bean seeds 2–4 inches apart in rows about 18 inches apart. After they've sprouted and have a true leaf or two, thin the beans by removing the weakest plants to a final spacing of one plant every 4–6 inches.

To plant pole beans, first establish the climbing structure. Putting it in place before planting beans makes it easy to plant close to the stakes or fence and prevents you from later disturbing the plant's roots (beans hate to have their roots disturbed). Plant 3–4 bean seeds around each leg of a tripod or pole. If planting pole beans alongside a fence, plant them every 3–4 inches, just like bush beans, and then thin them if necessary. 

All bean seeds can be planted one inch deep, which for many of us is about the first knuckle past your fingernail. There is no need to make a trench; just push them in with your finger and pinch the soil over the top of them. Once the seeds are planted, provide a deep watering, and then avoid watering until they sprout, unless the soil dries out. They should pop up in a week.

Trellising green beans

The site of beans crawling and vining up a tripod or arch is reason enough to plant pole beans, even if you didn't like the flavor of fresh green beans. The vertical elements also serve as premium bird perches for songbirds to hunt grasshoppers and Japanese beetles in your garden. 

Creating a tripod for pole beans is a favorite way to grow them, and you can use a bit of string and any long stick-like things you have lying around. Have fun with the structures, and use what you have available. Pole beans will climb about anything, long as it isn't too smooth. They often need a bit of an introduction to their structure, but once they get a twist or two they will figure out the rest on their own. 

To build a bean tripod:

• Gather three sticks, each about eight feet long. If you don’t have sticks, a few 2x2s from the home improvement store will serve for several years, even if they are not treated or painted.
• Tie them together a foot from the top.
• Spread out the three legs and push them into the soil. 

Cattle panels, trellis fences, or even single poles pushed into the ground also work well. 

Should I fertilize green beans?

The quick answer: if your soil is average or better, you probably won’t need to. Adding compost or aged manure at planting time is normally sufficient for a great crop of green beans.

Green beans can partner with a genus of soil bacterium called Rhizobium in a mutually beneficial partnership. The bacteria fix atmospheric nitrogen into a plant-usable form, and the plant provides the bacteria in its root nodules with food. The arrangement normally supplies sufficient nitrogen without fertilizer. If you want to give the partnership a boost, try an inoculant for beans. 

If your soil is less fertile, you can provide a side dressing of a low-nitrogen fertilizer when the plants start to flower. Avoid adding too much nitrogen, which can cause lots of vegetative growth but will reduce the volume of beans produced. 

Harvesting Green Beans

Once you learn what a ripe bean looks like, there's really not much to it. It's as easy as picking a tomato. Be sure to push the leaves aside and look all over—beans like to hide under the foliage.

When are green beans ripe?

We're after the meaty pods of green beans, not the seeds inside. You'll know they're ready when the pods are firm and plump and 4–8 inches long, depending on the variety. They should be about the size of a ballpoint pen. 

When the beans first appear on the plant, they’ll look short and thin. After a few days, they'll elongate and fatten up. Grab them before the bean seeds on the inside start to show. Look for a smooth bean, not a lumpy one. 

How often can I harvest green beans?

Bush beans produce all at once and often need to be harvested daily or every other day for the peak week or two of production. After that, it tapers off. Pole beans produce at a more modest rate for weeks to as long as two months. You'll still want to harvest at least twice weekly to prevent beans from becoming overripe. 

Harvesting frequently is the key to a heavy crop. Your bean plants are trying to set seed and reproduce. When you harvest the immature pod the plant starts over to try again. If the beans stay on the plant, it will keep pumping energy into the bean seeds, and not make as many new pods. 

Don't break the stem

I like to use two hands to harvest beans. Since we are taking the immature pods, the beans are still connected to the plant with a stout little stem. Just tugging the pod can often result in breaking the plant's main stem, which, of course, reduces future bean production! Grasp the stem with one hand and pull the bean pod free with the other, then drop it in your basket.