second harvest of green beans from same plants

[blueeyes11]

I read somewhere when your green beans quit producing you could cut them back I think to the main stem. Fertlize them and water and they would start producing again. Anyone heard of this and if so how much do I cut the plant down to?
Thanks

[Longtail]

Cant say Ive ever heard that?? But you should get 2-3 picking cycles from the original plants.

[zeedman]

I've done something similar, back when I grew only bush beans (I grow mostly pole now). When the beans began to slow down or get stunted, I plucked or cut off all of the leaves, leaving only the stems. Any remaining flowers or pods were removed also. If I kept them watered, the plants would sprout new branches & bear a second picking, sometimes larger than the first.

When pole beans slow down or start getting a lot of "polliwogs", I just snip off all remaining pods and flowers. The vines usually resprout within a couple weeks, and bounce back to give me a good Fall harvest.

I have mixed feelings about using fertilizer for this purpose. It will encourage the plants to revert to the vegetative (growth) cycle, which stimulates new growth... but too much N will delay flowering, and could reduce the yield. A single application of a water-soluble fertilizer might be the best compromise, since its effect would be short lived..

[Longtail]

seems it may be more efficient to just make succession plantings? I do see the experimener part of it all tho.

[JLJ]

This topic reminds me of a time when my mother's sister-in-law said to her, "We're going to be out of town for a while and my green beans are just about ready to pick -- I really don't want to waste the harvest. Eat all you want, but could you possibly pick the rest and put them in the freezer for me?"

So every day, my folks went over and checked the garden -- Dad picked the beans and Mom processed and froze them. Mom said she thought there were a lot of beans, but she had been asked so particularly to save them, and she didn't want her sister-in-law to be disappointed about a lost harvest.

Sister-in-law came back and said, "ARRRGH!!! I looked in my freezer -- stuffed with green beans, refrigerator freezer, stuffed with green beans -- refrigerator -- stuffed with green beans ready to freeze. Just to free up a little usable space in my refrigerator and freezer I gave green beans to all my friends and then to everyone I knew who didn't run fast enough when they saw me coming."

So the moral of the story is -- if you use these tips to get a great green bean harvest, and ask someone else to pick and save it for you -- be sure to specify how much is enough.