Runner bean poles.. how many?

[Notsogreenthumb]

Hi,

I'm growing runner beans for the first time and wanted to know about the poles. Is it 1 plant to pole? I read on the seed packet to plant 15cm apart and then read online 30cm apart. It's all very confusing.

I'm using the square foot gardening method so only have 2 feet spare at the moment, I've attached a picture. My question is, do I plant 6 plants or 9? Do I ignore the middle poles ? And this may be daft, but how do the beans go up the plant, is it my job to train the plant up the pole?

And lastly, how many plants would I need to get enough crop for a family of 2? I feel like I should be planting more maybe but I don't have the space... although I have so many spare plants 🤦🏽‍♀️

Every year I intend to spread them lovely and far apart and do 1 to a pole and every year I put the, closer together and do 2 to a pole. They don’t look like monty don’s but weather permitting we get more than enough for family of 4 plus half the neighbourhood. Last year we lost them to winds.

Ps yours look fine, it should be 1 per pole in theory but I hate wasting plants and worry I’ll lose one

In a 1ft x 1ft tub I put 4 plants and 4 poles. I usually grow two pots of runner beans and two pots of french beans. It's a nice treat every few days but not enough.

My mother used to have a double row of each, about 12 ft long. That gave enough to put some in the freezer too.

The beans climb by coiling themselves around the pole. You may have to give one or two a start - they've already got the twist in the stems, so it's just a matter of gently coiling them around the pole. If you coil the wrong way, they will simply uncoil themselves. Once they've got started, they will just climb to the top of the poles, at which point you're supposed to pinch them out. I once let one climb further into an adjacent tree - it went up to about 12 ft and was very difficult to harvest.

Thanks @Billybagpuss. Maybe I'll do two to a pole on some and one to a pole on others 😅. It's the exact same here, I don't want to waste so many plants and have no one to gift these to. My neighbours don't grow veg and my brother has already planted so many of his own.

Thanks @MereDintofPandiculation. That's really informative and helpful (as your posts usually are 😊). 12 feet? That's really impressive! And I can imagine it being a mare trying to harvest from the top.

Hope lots of sunny warm weather is on its way and we can all have a good crop x