Long Beans (Asparagus Beans) -- reborn !!

17 years ago

Hello all,

My yard long bean plants had pretty much pooped out. They were about 10 feet tall and giving maybe only 3-4 beans per plant per day. Last night I noticed the yard longs all have new shoots growing from the bottom half of the plants - very vigorous dark green shoots already starting to flower. Anyone have this happen to them?? This is my second year with YL beans and last year they kept getting taller but did not 'regenerate' from the bottom of the plants. I'm in central Virginia zone 7+ (my area is sort of a micro-climate).

I did not give these particular plants a fertilizer ÂsnackÂ.

The variety is Orient Wonder from the John Scheepers Seed Co. (www.kitchengardenseeds.com)

Thoughts? Variety specific?? Climate??

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Comments (5)

mauirose
17 years ago
Good question-i'll be watching this thread.

this has happened in my garden with bush yardlongs and now pink-eye purple hulls. The yardlongs made a second small crop and then gave it up to disease pressure. i just noticed the small vines on PEPH this morning.
dancinglemons
Original Author
17 years ago
Anyone?? Is this normal?? Do I have some sort of super long bean strain??

Picking long beans today and if I did not know better, I would swear someone planted more long bean seeds right next to my old plants. These plants have regenerated and are growing again like gangbusters. They are not growing from the top of the vine/plant but have regenerated from the bottom half of the vine. The top part of the vine is still producing but not as prolific as it was a few weeks ago.

If you have had this experience with long bean plants -- please post. I am going to save some of this seed for next year if this keeps up.

DL
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whgille
17 years ago
DL

Good for you! I did not have the chance to see that the same thing happened to mine. As soon as they started going down with the production, I took them down.

I have a small yard and have to keep planting other crops. I will remember your beans when time for new plantings, next summer in my area.

Silvia
cyrus_gardner
17 years ago
Out of about 8 long bean vines I have, got just 6 beens so far, from one or two of them. The longest one was abot 17" long But yesterday I noticed that more of them are growing beans and buds.
The variety that I planted is called "Dow gauk" marketed by Ferry Morse. As a fellow gardener has suggested, the variety that I have is sensative to daylight; which means they like to have longer nights and not so long days. Now that days are about 13 hours and the nights are 11, they are setting fruits.
Never before have I had grown beans(of any kind). I wanted to grow something exotic, which I am glad I did. Regular beens taste bland to me but these long beens have good texture and taste better too. They sell for 3 times the price of string beans in Asian markets. So it is worthed to grow them for more than one reason.

Cyrus
dancinglemons
Original Author
17 years ago
Cyrus,

You are so right!! The long beans taste much better. I find them 'nuttier' and they have a better crunch. I grew them last year and the vines got really tall but this is totally new growth with lots and lots of new flowers with baby beans starting. I picked about 25 beans from just the new growth today. Somehow the older part of the vines has started putting out 'fatter' beans. These fat beans are coming in on the flower stem where I had already picked 2 beans.

I sure wish one of the 'bean doctors' would weigh in on this.

DL