Spilling the beans on the French

As it seemed many of you enjoyed my post summarising the performance of our potato varieties, I thought I would a share similar assessments of how our French Beans performed

We grew four varieties of French beans, climbing French bean - Cobra, a purple variety - Royalty, a yellow variety - Sungold and a green variety - Tendergreen. The planting schedule  and harvesting summary was as follows.

To give a fair comparison, as we planted differing numbers of plants, I have averaged out the yields to reflect the yield produced for a single plant. I also have to state here that we didn't pick every single bean produced and probably stopped picking before the plants had exhausted their supply. We stopped when there was enough beans in the freezer and we had other things in more immediate need of harvesting.

So to delve into a bit more detail. The first variety to be planted out was Tendergreen

We tend to hold fire on planting French beans until we are fairly sure they won't be affected by a late frost. Maybe this is a bit late compared to some of you. Some years we will plant a later batch but this year we planted the climbing French bean Cobra instead.

Cobra was sown about week later than Tendergreen with both varieties germinating after a similar length of time - 10 and 11 days respectively.

Being a climbing bean, Cobra plants were given a support made up of bamboo canes. 

Cobra produced the highest yield per plant and took less space than the dwarf French beans so as Mark from Mark's Veg Plot would tell you has a good VSR (Value to Space Rating). Mark's enthusiasm for Cobra was the reason that we decided to try this variety.

Royalty and Sungold were both sown on the same day and gerniated on exactly the same day too. They were a little quicker to germinate - 8 days - which was likely to be a result of the later sowing - about a month later than the other two varieties. Sungold was planted a week later than Royalty but we had our first pick from both varieties on the same day so the delay in planting had little effect.

As a direct comparison each picking of Royalty tended to out produce that of Sungold although we had an extra picking of the yellow variety.

We didn't go as far as counting the beans picked but as a general rule the Sungold beans were smaller than those of Royalty which could affect the weight of the yield. We have noticed in previous years though that the yellow vareties aren't quite as prolific as the other colours

We really grow the different colours to add variety even though the purple beans lose their colour when cooked.

As you will have noticed the dwarf beans were grown through weed control fabric. This didn't adversely affect how they performed - which was a relief. There was no extra slug damage - if anything there was less. It's hard to say whether the weed control had a benefit with relation to plant growth as this year's weather conditions were quite different to last year's, however the beans were certainly cleaner as they didn't sit on the soil. Whether the fabric reduced slug damage, warmed the soil and reduced evaporation so the roots benefited is difficult to determine without growing some beans without the fabric and I'm not going to those lengths - sorry! One thing I can report though is that the French beans were not weeded once after they were planted out.

To summarise the yield Cobra had the highest yield per plant - almost twice the yield of Royalty and Tendergreen that tied in second place. Sungold trailed behind but was worth inclusion for colour variety. Each plant has a different flower colour too - you seem to be able to identify what colour of bean will be produced by looking at the flower.

Our overall harvest amounted to just over 11.5kg and provided us with a sufficient quantity to eat fresh and also supply both ours and my sister's freezer. As for flavour they all were more or less the same.

We still have to consider whether we grow the same varieties next year or try something different do you have a favourite?

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett