1.no. since have not given any idea what you setup look like.

try posting picture or diagram

2. use google look bean teepees setup

3.yes.

15'x15' square with a 2' path in the middle. Beans are going to be INSIDE of the perimeter (aka, there are no border edges where the beans will be placed)

Personally I feel a tipi is a waste of space. I would grow strictly virtical with some poles/posts. I'd make a virtical wall of posts, maybe some netting or large chicken wire and position where they won't block light from other items once 7 ft tall and a lush green wall. Probably North side of the garden. Why do a tipi in limited space and have all that useless shady space inside/underneath? I guess if your tipi is narrow and for stability, then it would be great, but note location as it will block the direct sun as it moves across the sky. Blocking burning mid/late afternoon sun may be an advantage for some plants.

This is going to be hard to explain, but we have used it for 2 years and love it! Rather than a ^ teepee type where you have to go inside to pick the beans (spiders and bugs!), we do a v type so that the beans hang outside the X. This way you have extra room to plant on the outside of the bean bed AND it is so much easier to pick the beans! I will try to post a picture.Not too good at this stuff! Nancy

<elaborate netting along the whole edge (which is mainly the set up I have been seeing)>

There are many other options available for supporting pole beans and I agree that the tepee approach is one of the most space-wasting and difficult to harvest. It also has a tendency to fall over unless very well supported.

Straight line support is the most effective use of space and easiest harvesting. So first question would be why the beans cannot be planted along one edge of the garden rather than in the center. That would be the logical location for them and any staked upright fence could support them.

Browse through all these pictures for more ideas:

Pole bean supports

But if you decide to go with the tepee then use at least 5-6 stakes to make it, make sure each stake is deep in the ground or tied to an additional deep stakes as any wind will lay the whole thing over once covered with beans. Then plant 1-2 beans at the base of each stake.

Dave

I use Texas Tomato Cages with the 2' extension, making a cone 8' tall by2' wide. Wrapping twine from the top ring to the ground provides climbing support for 20-25 plants. (Initially I thought it would be cool to grow a mammoth sunflower in the center, but I haven't gotten this to work.) It's never blown over in the wind, but some pesky critters can climb it. One year the whole rig was stripped clean by a raccoon.

-Judy

well, I could probably try to do the non-teepee approach since it seems that is the prevailing opinion here. The only issue I had was part of my garden space is shaded by a maple once it leafs out so I was trying to reserve that border for my lettuce (less summer bolting in the shade). I will try to rearrange my garden plan to make it work somehow.

thanks!

IMHO, pole beans are a waste of time unless you have a vertical surface like a fence you want to put into production. Teepees are quite neat to look at but do take up a lot of space for a relatively limited harvest. Another thing about teepees, if you're successful and they're covered with vines, make sure they're very securely anchored as that's a very big sail for the wind to catch. We've gone to bush beans, lots of varieties and very efficient in terms of space required to harvest obtained. I'm sure the "pole bean anti defamation society" will now be after me. :-)

I have to disagree, exmar, as you expected ;) I grow my pole beans in a 1" strip along the backs of my raised beds. Zero ground space requirement, all vertical growth and pounds upon pounds of beans.

I used netting suspended from electrical conduit for pole beans. I prefer them to bush beans because you get a lot more production from a limited space. (I'm in the same zone as Humsi.) The netting isn't elaborate - it's a big piece you buy in a bag and attach to supports with zip ties or twist ties. It costs less than $5 and you can use it for several years.

Trellis for beans

Im actually a big fan of the 3 sisters approach when planting pole beans. Sure production is not as good as it would be if they had full sun but a4x4 plot can produce a ton of total veggies. Also no need for adding poles, beans fix nitrogen so you can replant in the same plot for a Few seasons, and squash prevents most weeds.

I made a tee-pee like structure to support my beans a couple of years ago. It didn't take up a lot of space because I placed the sticks more upright than spread out. I just collected some larger branches from my woods that I found on the ground. Then I tied bailing twine onto the structure.Once it was covered in beans, I never went inside to harvest them. I always just went around the outside to collect the beans. My son had fun playing inside of it though. The only thing I would do differently is make it a little shorter in height. My tee pee was a little too tall to reach the beans at the top and I am 5'9".

Here it is covered in beans

The tee pee method doesn't have to take up a large amount of ground space but it can. It really depends on how wide you want to make it.

Can't you grow them up a trellis or simply some poles in the ground, on the North end of the bed so as not to block any sun? This would waste the least space IMHO. You can put the poles in outside the bed and use virtually no ground space. My pole beans were grown last year simply on 4 lightweight 8' poles and it worked fine. No teepee, just vertical. 2-3 plants per pole. They eventually spread out over all the poles. Some basic tying was required though. Nothing major like tomatoes. Still have tons of beans in the freezer.

I grow my beans on a teepee and love it. First, the biggest thing for me is that I just like the taste of pole beans much better than bush beans. And second, I like that I can pick from pole bean plants for weeks and weeks. The base of my teepee is a 3' wide circle and I plant the beans every 4 inches all the way around the bottom perimeter. That is 28 plants. The poles are 7 feet high, which is as high as I can easily reach. I have wire that encircles the teepee all the way up so the plants have plenty of places to climb. I usually plant two teepees side by side in an 8 foot bed from April to late June. Then take a break for the hottest weather to pass (beans stop making then), and replant in early August for the fall crop that goes till frost, typically in early to mid November. These two plantings give me ample beans for a year. It's worth noting that I pick every two or three days and usually harvest about a gallon at a time, so I am constantly blanching and freezing small batches. Not everyone likes this, but I really do. It's less time and work but more often. My teepees are made of metal poles driven several inches deep into my very soft soil, and although I live in hurricane country, I have never had one blow over. I don't think the space under the teepee is wasted. It's always full of roots when I pull the plants for winter. And, It's small enough that I can reach through and across the whole thing from any side. Sometimes the ones in the middle are the easiest to see.

As in all things, some people like chocolate and others like vanilla.

Lauren, just as Donna above, I also use the teepee method but I don't expand the teepee very far (one teepee per square foot). I have 52 teepees in one bed and 26 in another. I plant two beans at the base of each bamboo stake (six plants per teepee) and I don't go "in" to harvest. I have raised beds, 16 inches deep, and I plunge the teepee stakes 16 inches into the ground. I also string jute around the tepee to give the beans more grabbing surface. The tops of my teepees are held together with a zip tie. At the end of the season, I pull the whole thing up, zip tie included, clean them off, and store until the following year. Except for the year Sandy hit, I've never had a problem (they even survived Irene). Good luck with it, have fun, and know that you can always change things up in the garden from one year to the next. That's part of the joy!

I grow climbing peas/beans along one border of several of my raised beds. We saw a great idea for building a cheap trellis in a book I have, so DH sank a 2' piece of rebar at each end of the bed, slipped a piece of conduit over each, and then used elbows to connect a third piece of conduit across the top. Then he half-screwed a bunch of screws into the raised bed wall directly underneath the top piece of conduit and I ran twine around the first screw, up and over the conduit, around the next screw, up and over the conduit... hopefully you get the idea. So far it's working great, was easy to put up, and didn't cost more than $10 in materials. I built a teepee one year and planted a few beans at the base of each stake, tied the stakes together at the top and then spiraled the twine all the way down to give the plants a bit more to grab onto. Couldn't be bothered to make gorgeous netting like christacharlene did :-)

Peter, I froze lots of beans from last year's growing season and they are horrible to eat! Did you cook yours first?

Did you blanch them and then ice bath them before freezing as the instructions call for? If not the enzymes remain active and they spoil.

Freezing Green Beans

But some folks just don't care for frozen green beans. It is a common question on the canning forum here - frozen or canned? And it usually splits right down the middle at close to 50/50 in favorite.

Dave

No I did not blanch any of my beans and we have been enjoying them all winter without complaints.

I didn't blanch or freeze either - good to know! Although Peter says he didn't and they were fine. I guess we will just have to eat them instead :)

Peter, I feel your pain. Green beans are not much to write home about. In Latin America, we "cook" them with meat we braise. So chicken thighs or beef that's braising (think slow-cooking kinda stuff) with green beans added in the last 30 minutes picks up all the flavor of your seasonings: garlic, onion, sofrito, saffron, you name it and that way they are palatable. I grow them because I have seeds but once I run out, I will not replace them. Give me dry beans any day! Or snow peas!!!

I grow mine on a wire fence. They do well. I love green beans, with olive oil and garlic.