Do green beans need a trellis to climb on?

Do green beans need a trellis to climb on? The canes should be at least 3m long; press them about 40cm into the soil; the structure must be firm to resist strong winds. Treated wattle intingus^[4] are also good.

You can make them into a teepee with at least three or four poles or connect them together with a horizontal cane; then you need an angled shaft at each end to stop the whole structure swaying along the length. It must be fairly rigid or it will be blown over. Tie them where they cross together with twine.

Bamboo canes only last one season; these treated wattle poles will endure for ever.

Do green beans need a trellis to climb on? Not the bush varieties but they are much less prolific and more difficult to reap.

Fill your pantry

Do we choose foods because they taste good, are nutritious or only if they are easy to prepare? Cost of course also comes into the equation. Have you considered how simply you could grow your own fruit and vegetables and fill your pantry?

Vegetable protein

When it comes to vegetable protein we shoot first for green beans; especially the climbing cultivars. 1 cup will provide nearly 2 grams, about 3% of your required daily allowance; roughly one-third of that in an egg.

Broccoli too has a lot of amino acids, surprising perhaps since it’s not a legume. In fact many whole foods have more protein than we would expect; a single slice of our true wholewheat bread for example contains 4.4 grams.

In general protein from legumes is much cheaper than that from animals; about a tenth but it does not contain all the essential amino acids. Every child should have an egg or glass of milk too; vegans can get sufficient but they have to work harder at it.

The heirloom Witsa climbing green bean

Green beans are far simpler to cook, have less of the much-debated antinutrients and are tastier than their dried counterparts. Climbers are more prolific and are easier to harvest; save your back. Heirloom Witsa is our first choice; why you may well ask?

Don’t get me wrong, we are not vegetarians but the research has been shifting us away from feedlot red meat, chickens raised in barns and pigs in sties; and even fish from farms in the sea. That means more protein from legumes and whole foods; the climbing Witsa bean remains our favourite. It is much nicer than Contender and Lazy Housewife.

Do green beans need a trellis to climb on? The pole varieties certainly do; but bush do have their merits as they bear sooner after an early planting in spring.

Green beans are a particularly good source of many important phytonutrients that act as antioxidants; and minerals like calcium, iron and magnesium. They are also rich in vitamins such as folate, proven to enhance school performance. Save and freeze the cooking water for stews and gravies; or enrich your maizemeal porridge as the Xhosas do.

• Enrich your grits with greens and other vegetables
  

Chickpeas and lentils

Mind you there is hard competition from dried chickpeas. A 1kg packet for less than R40 is an awesome amount of protein; 15 grams in a cup when cooked. It is not the world’s favourite protein for nothing. Lentils too are good food and simpler to prepare.

Fibre to prevent colorectal disease

But simply for flavour green Witsa climbing beans beat the lot. Just boiled for five minutes, with a dab of butter and some salt they are delicious. One cup contains 4 grams of fibre; that gives the satiety that stops us snacking at 11 o’clock with disastrous results.

With the prevalence of colorectal cancer soaring, especially in younger people we all need to focus on foods rich in both forms. Less than 5% of those eating typical supermarket food are getting the required daily allowance of at least 35g; some folk need even more to prevent constipation. It would also help wean you off statins for high cholesterol. One cup contains about 4 grams.

• Soluble fibre: 1.6 grams.
• Insoluble fibre 2.4 grams.

So one cup of green beans contains more than 10% of the recommended daily allowance of fibre.

The trellis

Start by building a trellis for them to grow on in Spring; three or four bamboo canes, each about 3m long. If the ground is wet you can simply press them deeply into the earth; otherwise first dig a hole and fill it with compost. They must be firm or the whole structure will be blown over in the first strong wind.

Sow one or two seeds around each of the stakes. We also use treated intingus but the vines don’t cling as well. Every month put up a new trellis for successive plantings from early spring until midsummer. They go on bearing prolifically for over a month, starting after about 60 days. You will have fresh green beans daily for at least a quarter of the year. Top each pod as you pick it to save you work later; no need to tail them.

It’s good to move these trellises around the garden each year. Stinkbugs take a liking to green beans too. We often plant them with other other climbers to hide the fruit from pests; for example, with limas.

Keep some for seed

Eventually the beans will get ahead of you, grow hard and then the pods turn yellow. Pick them and place them out in the hot sun for a couple days; then you can pop the little white seeds out easily. Put them for example on a trampoline for another day to dry completely; this will kill any bugs and you can then store them in a bottle for several years.

We recently harvested a box of pods which yielded 275 grams of seeds; they are surprisingly small with 20 beans weighing 3 grams. My calculator tells me 1833 in total.

The last time we bought Witsa they cost us R1.50 each! That means this bottle is valued at R2750! You could make a little business out of growing and selling bean seeds.

Bottle the surplus green beans

Currently we have a glut of green Witsa beans, contributing substantially to our daily food; the surplus is being curried and bottled. The pantry is burgeoning. We never get tired of them.

• How do you thicken curried green beans?

Do floss your teeth after a meal of green beans; bits get stuck particularly between the molars.

• Is flossing good for your teeth?
  

Obesity

There is rightly so great fear of obesity today; it's a killer. There is enormous suspicion about legumes in general, in this instance green beans because of their carb content. It is fake news; they will help you lose weight.

A cup of green beans weighs 100g; the relative risk of obesity will be reduced by a massive 24% if you eat them daily. But you will not be able to go into ketosis.

• Why medication for weight loss doesn't work
  

Do green beans need a trellis to climb on?

Do green beans need a trellis to climb on? We will use bamboo or treated wattle poles.

Plan to grow Witsas, starting in the spring once the danger of frost is over and the soil warms up. Keep sowing right through to midsummer for a mountain of delicious, nutritious vegetable protein. No child in South Africa should be stunted; mealies and beans. Together they go back into the mists of time; fresh from the garden in the summer, dried through the long winter.

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