Did you even read the question?

If you read through the link Dr. Loyd provided you will see metal is used in many different ways, many options in how you can use it, so in a word yes.

Annette

I would say no, it's not bad... one of my trellises is a six foot tall chain link fence and beans seem to grow right fine on it.

But I guess it might depend on what the metal is- some stuff is meant to be more weather resistant than other stuff. Or some stuff rusts out faster than others.

Turtle, I did read the question and that is why I mentioned metal such as the T posts and rebar that I use. I might add that some people use wire for the top and bottom supports and some use cattle panels for both horizontal and vertical support which work very well. When you have cattle panels supported by T posts the whole assembly is metal.

I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I thought PVC was a type of plastic piping and I somehow managed to forget what rebar was.

I was able to find photos of Zeedman's T-post, PVC T and rebar setup at http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2012813/pole-bean-spacing . He has horizontal strings on his trellis along with the vertical twine. I do not have the horizontal ones. Some of my trellises still have wire horizontals but the twine slips around making for very uneven spacing. So I hope to switch to all rebar for next year.