How many beans are produced by an average plant?

[Deleted]

Is there a rule for each variety, such as bush beans, pole beans, lentils, etc?

[raymondo]

Not as far as I know. Two different pole beans for example can have quite different productivity even when grown side by side under the same conditions. And what is productive in your garden may not behave the same way in someone else's garden. The same can be said for bush beans. As a general guide though most pole beans are more productive than most bush beans.

[12540dumont]

Hi,
Last year I planted 40 beans of several varieties, each of these yielded a quart jar approximately (some a little more, some a leetle less). Each jar weighs approximately 2lbs 12 oz. (which translates into 3, 15 oz cans of store bought cooked beans.) These are not the yields for anything except for Phaseolus Vulgaris.

Average Number of
Seeds per Pound
--------------------------------------
Kidneys 900-1000
Pintos 1400
Great Northerns 1600-1800
Pinks/Small Reds 1600-2000
Navies/Blacks 3000
--------------------------------------

I hope this helps.

[DarJones]

A very general rule of thumb is that a bush variety adapted to your climate will produce about 1/2 as much as an adapted pole variety for the same amount of beans planted. The fine print is that the pole beans will produce over a longer total season than the bush beans. Bush beans can be planted about twice as close together as pole beans. My rule of thumb is to have 2 or 3 pole bean plants growing per linear foot of row or 5 or 6 bush beans in the same space. Put into easier to deal with terms, it takes about 100 ft of pole beans to produce enough to feed a family of 4 for a year. You would have to grow 200 ft of bush beans to get the same total production.

DarJones

[ottawagardener]

Also, the bush beans can produce a bit faster so combining them can help you extend the season a bit more.

[ottawagardener]

If you are ordering from commercial sources, they often list yields per a certain length of row or square foot. Given the variables in growing, I'm not sure if they are giving average yields or optimistic yields. As with dates to maturity, it can vary based on weather, climate, soil, cultural techniques, etc...

[davida]

Jan 20, 2012 13:27:26 GMT -5 ottawagardener said:

If you are ordering from commercial sources, they often list yields per a certain length of row or square foot. Given the variables in growing, I'm not sure if they are giving average yields or optimistic yields. As with dates to maturity, it can vary based on weather, climate, soil, cultural techniques, etc...

The base number that I will be comparing in 2012 is Martin's (Paquebot) average of 120:1 ratio. I believe this is based on an average of 20 pods per plant at an average of 6 beans per pod.

[paquebot]

The 120:1 has proven so true as to be uncanny. Seems to hold true for most regular bush type, snap and dry. It's higher for pole beans and may depend upon how close they are planted. I counted White Willow Leaf lima pods one time and averaged 55 pods per plant with most pods having 3 beans. Planted them this past year but much closer and probably got no better than 20 pods per plant. Most regular pole varieties were planted at the rate of 30 per 4-legged tepee last year and nearly all produced at least a pint of beans. Most exceptions were those which gave very small beans.

Martin

[canadamike]

I vote for Martin here, but I admit I have a tendency to do so quite naturally!

However, I would like to point out it is possible to push legumes way behond our perceived limits. I have bugged people here more than enough about foliar feeding of seaweed, alfalfa tea and so on.

This summer, I was vindicated in a way...Alan Bishop, read this my friend...

A research conducted by a bunch of agronomists and doctors have tried my foliar combos in a field of soja. «All that was grown on a field where corn was grown the previous year.

It turns out our Soyasol mix ( fermented seawwed extract plus yucca extract at 2%) doubled the harvest of beans. It went from 1.1 ton per acre to 2.2. With seaweed only it was 1.6 ton.

Seaweed has been my main foliar fertilizer for over 25 years, but I have also worked with many, always in conjunction with it.

Including alfalfa meal tea, a product that one has to breww himself, and many other teas, like compost and manure and so on...

Bean rows that are sprayed twice a week with seaweed, and other stuffs, like yucca extract, will show remarquable differences with other rows. Determinates have a tendency to become semi-climbing...or short indeterminates.

And the yield is way above normal. But one has to be constant and spray often. It is a very very diluted solution, so it is extremely cheap, but being constant is the key.

My 100 feet row of Canning King peas, in 2009, grown on a snow fence to cling, was a wall of peas. And grown in an unfertilized clayish soil. Clay is rich in nutrients of course.

But none of it would have happened without the foliar feeding, same with the beans. As of the ''cent pour un'' heirloom french bean, the name ( a hundred to one) lost its purpose...double it please.

Legumes are very very special veggies, and they react to foliar much more than most. It should not be surprizing, they manufacture their own nitrogen, If there is enough potash in the soil, they will grow like crazy with a lil»'help.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I don't generally grow pole beans because it seems to me like the expense to obtain poles and/or the labor to install them, and clean them, and store them is greater than any benefit of higher yield. If I had a small garden it wouldn't matter. Perhaps one of these days I'll decide that the extra cost and labor is worthwhile to be able to pick while standing up rather than kneeling over.

I tend to think of beans with long vines as sprawling beans rather than as pole beans.

Last summer I grew a pole bean that my brother called an heirloom which he got from a friend. The seed resembles a Bertolli bean, except that it it round instead of kidney shaped. It was watered regularly, but otherwise ignored after initial weeding. Yield was approximately 14:1.

[12540dumont]

Joseph, I saw a farm in Italy that raised runner beans. They never took the poles down. The beans grew in the same place, year after year. What a lovely shady grove it was to walk through.

Here of course, I try to get one planting of peas and one of beans before I move the poles. It is work to move them, but the beans are very clean because they are not so close to the ground. Leo flames the residue before we move them.

I love everything about pole beans, I love the vertical beauty of them, the sense of lush growth, the privacy they provide, standing and picking is a wonderful thing.

Attachments:

[paquebot]

Poles don't have to cost anything. Had roughly 120 last year for the 30 or so pole varieties. Already have added 30 more poles this year. They are the trunks of used Christmas trees. I strip the boughs off and they become the legs for the bean tepees. Those which were set up last year are still in place and I'll just till around most of them or spade in compost. The number of pole varieties was limited to how many tepees I could set up. The addition of 30 more will allow at least 7 more varieties at 4 legs per tepee. And the main rule for any of my tepees is maximum 8 plants per pole. Since the base of the trunks are usually 3 or 4 inches wide, and I stay away about 4 inches, the 8 beans are planted in about a 12 inch circle.

Martin

[paquebot]

There's a story about how I first noticed the 120:1 thing. In 1996 brought back a handful of red beans from Belize and which was grown on a Mennonite farm down there. I grew them out and after a few years noticed that there were two distinctly different growth patterns. One had long pods with each having 6 beans. The other had shorter pods with 4 beans. When picking the pods off them, the ones with the long pods averaged 20 pods. Those with the short pods averaged 30 pods. They were otherwise identical in every other aspect. When I eventually only saved seed to plant from the long pods, all I got was long pods. That set me to counting a lot of other varieties and the bulk of them will average about 120 beans per plant. That only applies to if they are given decent soil and elbow room. No bush bean is planted at less than 8" spacing. Plant at 4" and expect 50% less.

Martin

[potter]

Bean rows that are sprayed twice a week with seaweed, and other stuffs, like yucca extract

Do you buy your yucca extract already made or do you make your own?

[bertiefox]

I agree with Joseph that in terms of yield, pole beans aren't worth the effort, but there are especially tasty varieties that only exist as pole beans, like the Asturian white bean used for 'fabada Asturiana', a bean stew in Spain. There are bush beans which produce two or more flushes of pods if the earlier ones are picked thoroughly as green beans, but obviously if you are cultivating them for the bean seed that doesn't work.