[shokkyy]

This year I've decided to do a bunch of wigwams and I've got 7 different climbing varieties for them. I'm doing tall varieties of mangetout, sugarsnap, pea, runner bean, 2 types of French bean and borlotti. If I do a wigwam of 8 canes and stick in 2 plants per cane, that'll give me 16 plants of each variety, which doesn't really sound like an awful lot, but being tall varieties I'd assume I'd get a lot more crop per plant than I would from (e.g.) a dwarf French bean.

Can anyone tell me if I'm going to get a worthwhile amount from 16 plants per variety, or do I need to do more? I've got room to do 2 wigwams per variety, but I'm slightly intimidated by the number of 8' canes I'd need to buy (all my current canes are 6' or smaller). And though I would like to have enough to put some in the freezer, I don't really want so many I end up having to give a lot away.

And one more question - of the varieties I listed, which are the least/most tolerant of some shade? One end of the bed has more shade than the other, so I need to make sure I arrange them to allow for this.

[lucywil]

In my experience peas and mangetout don't grow well up wigwams, even the tall varietys, they don't climb in the same way beans do

[Kleftiwallah]

Wigwams - always leave one cane out, so you can get inside and pick the ones that normally  "are left for next years seed" ! ! ! I would limit each cane to one bean seed.   

I should tie the canes together about the middle, the beans are likely to become a mass of growth if the canes meet at the very top.

I agree with lucywil,  beans up wigwams peas up netting.   Cheers,   Tony.

[savbo]

16 runner beans which do most people... we had 10 this year (and 10 french beans) and still ended up freezing lots of frankly stringy beans...

[mumofstig]

16 runner beans which do most people... we had 10 this year (and 10 french beans) and still ended up freezing lots of frankly stringy beans...

If you must freeze them.........then pick them before they get stringy! IMO If they're already stringy throw them away, as they're not worth the freezer space

[purplebean]

16 runner beans which do most people... we had 10 this year (and 10 french beans) and still ended up freezing lots of frankly stringy beans...

If you must freeze them.........then pick them before they get stringy! IMO If they're already stringy throw them away, as they're not worth the freezer space

I agree but would add that for this reason I only grow french beans, Hunter being my favourite 

[shokkyy]

I'm kind of hoping not to have that problem too much. I'm planting White Lady, which are supposed to be stringless.

Thanks for the answers on the beans, but can anyone help me with expected crop size for Pea Sugar Snap, Mangetout Carouby De Muasanne and Pea Alderman? Or borlotti, for that matter, as I've never grown them before.

[purplebean]

I don't think I ever managed to get enough sugar snaps for a meal, but that had something to do with a then 6 now 7 year old playing in the garden. I have no idea how productive they were as they didn't hang around long enough for me to work it out. But not really that productive, I certainly wouldn't have had enough for freezing even if I had been able to pick them all

[shokkyy]

I don't think I ever managed to get enough sugar snaps for a meal, but that had something to do with a then 6 now 7 year old playing in the garden. I have no idea how productive they were as they didn't hang around long enough for me to work it out. But not really that productive, I certainly wouldn't have had enough for freezing even if I had been able to pick them all

Were those tall sugar snap plants? And how many plants?

[JayG]

Climbing beans should produce a far greater weight of produce per plant than any pea variety, but then again peas can be sown and grown more closely together than beans.

Kleftiwallahs's suggestion  of tying the wigwam poles in the middle to produce the wigwam equivalent of an "X" frame is a good one, because 16 rampant runner bean plants converging in one place does make for a bit of a tangle (you need strong canes though!)

It has also been mentioned that peas don't readily climb poles; they need netting or twiggy material to hang on to, although you could net your wigwams to achieve this.

Never grown borlotti, sorry!

[shokkyy]

It has also been mentioned that peas don't readily climb poles; they need netting or twiggy material to hang on to, although you could net your wigwams to achieve this.

Never grown borlotti, sorry!

Yes, I was going to wrap some netting round the wigwam for the peas to scramble up. And maybe I should just do one plant per cane for the runner beans if the plants are so vigorous. A few years back I did climbing French beans before and I don't think those were very vigorous plants.

Last year I did small mangetout plants, not sure how many but I think 16 wouldn't be too far out, and I did get a very decent crop from them, so given that these will be much bigger plants I suspect a single wigwam ought to be fine for those too. It's really just the Alderman and Sugar Snap peas and borlotti I need to decide on.

[Ma and Pa Snip]

Climbing French Bean we do one plant per can, wigwam style. Two wigwams gives us enough french beans to eat and to freeze. Have to say though that the best crop of french beans we have ever had was off of 10 dwarf plants. But we ended up freezing so many that we ended up throwing some away when the next years crop came off.

Runners, we do 20 canes, in a row 10 per side, and grow two up each.
Have done wigwams for runners in the past, found them to get so top heavy that in strong winds they were close to falling over.

Pea, we've pretty much settled on Alderman, last year we did wigwam style with netting, leaving a couple of small gaps  where we reach into the middle. we did two wigwams of Alderman last year plus another area of low height Meteor. This year we are going to try and do the Alderman on rows to see how we get on with that.
 Didn't get enough off to freeze but certainly enough to enjoy with meals.

As back garden growers, one things a certainty, we would need more space to grow more peas to get anywhere near as good a crop as we do off beans.

[compostqueen]

I love climbing bean Cosse Violette which is so tender even when it's got too big  Not rampant either 

climbing borlotties don't seem as vigorous as runner beans.  I planted 'Lamon' last year and you need quite a lot of plants, two per cane, to get an appreciable number of beans.  I dried mine for soups and stews etc    They looked lovely on the wigwams with some flowers at the base 

[shokkyy]

Thanks for all the responses, they're very helpful. Having digested all this info, here's my amended plan.

On the basis that Alderman and runner beans are bigger and more vigorous, I think I'm going to do a cane row for each rather than wigwams (6 each side for runner 1 plant/cane and 8 each side for Alderman, 2 plant/cane). This would give me 32 plants Alderman and 12 plants runner, to balance out the relative cropping densities. For the 2 French bean varieties, borlotto, mangetout, sugarsnap I'll do a wigwam each, and I'll risk 2 plants a cane. If they get too overgrown I can always chop bits out. That sound about right?

[Kristen]

I plant my runners two-per-cane and put a seed in when I plant out (for a later, follow-on crop).  I do the same for Climbing French (which tend to have a shorter cropping season, the Runners go on pretty much until first frost anyway)

Maybe depends a bit how far apart your canes are though