Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: WebSiteEvo on March 22, 2009, 20:57
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Runner beans climbing chicken wire?
Would runner beans and/or French beans climb a chicken wire fence ok? Would save allot of time and space building a complete frame. I was thinking of training the beans up the fence then up and out to form a roof as seen in the Munty frame example.
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They certainly would climb it, but you'd probably spend as much time at the end of the season getting the dead climbers out of the wire than you would have done building a proper frame/fence.
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my oh was on abuot making a chicken wire frame for the beans, and when i reminded him that as a child his dad used to get him to get all the dry stuff offf and he hated doing it, he said 'i was a kid then' ::)
so if he goes with that idea guess who will find out if he still hates it 8)
i am thinking frame, frame, frame, might even do a munty :)
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If you ready Munty's info carefully you'll find he mentions wire and not to use it. Wire tends to send the runners off in all directions rather than straight up a single string per plant which is what he does suggest. As already mentioned, wire is far easier to put up but a nightmare in many ways to untangle later .
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i did it last year!
i had sticks up to about two feet, then chicken wire up to the apex of the frame - it was easy for the beans to twist up and they hung down in the middle like they should, but! the stalks got congested at the top and wove around each other and yes, it was a person to pull off all the dead stalks in the winter.
(i don't know whether i should have chopped off the growing stalks at a certain height, but i didn't do that)
i'm not saying whether it was a good or bad idea in hindsight, so please make up your own mind.
(i might not be doing it again....)
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i might add, though, that generally, if you see something i've done, then that's more than likely the wrong way to do it!!
:lol: