First year growing green beans, it's a bush style heirloom variety with green yellow and purple beans. They definitely have been getting abused by some sort of insects but the leaves also look strange and off color. Anyone have any ideas what's going on? They started off growing very quickly and I imagine at the very least the insect damage is setting them back. I know they may be planted a bit close but wasn't gonna cut back until it was clearer which plants were the best growers. Some leaves look great some look almost like they're dying?
by CP-RYOTT
16 Comments
Nitrogen, they need nitrogen. Fish emulsion will help quickly.
Iv had success with beans 3 years in a row and I use a 10-10-10 fertilizer once a month. They love water to
Are they just over watered?
First thing I would do is take out that leaf ground cover . They are in a raised bed the soil should stay plenty moist. Second thing is sometimes beans just look all beat up and funky for a while . I wouldn’t fert yet . Prob sit on it for two more weeks and see what the new growth looks like .
I do not think they are to close. I plant my beans two inches apart.
Is there enough light ? At least 6 in full sun ?
Your soil is mostly non-composted leaves that lack readily available nutrients. Beans need an all purpose fertilizer. To take it to the next level, feed them a nitrogen only fertilizer on top of a balanced fertilizer. I use blood meal. They will have all the nitrogen readily available to grow and don’t have to focus on producing nitrogen through root modules
I think in your case you should also remove a lot of the leaves from the surface and top it up with some manure or raised bed soil mix. Those leaves don’t help that much for providing the nutrition they need within the next few weeks
Like another person has said, they need a good soak of water every day without fail. Beans like it damp
They will probably be fine. Mine looked like crap this year, like yours but with pest damage holes. I plant my pole beans in the same spot every year which your not supposed to do. Now they are taking off. I would gust hit yours with some fertilizer and then plant another round of seeds in between. Beans are resilient , easy to grow, and yummy. I plant tons every year.
They look over watered to me but you might have other soil issues.
I doubt it’s a nitrogen issue as some are suggesting. Beans are nitrogen fixers and these are quite small plants so their nitrogen needs really aren’t high. If the soil is good beans will actually form a symbiotic relationship with microbes in the soil and actually pull nitrogen into your soil (if you leave the roots to decompose when your season is over).
I’ve grown beans in my native clay soil and not fertilized them all season and been very successful.
Lack of nutrients or poor quality soil causing discoloration. Good thing is it can be fixed
This shows many problems within the soil. Calcium, magnesium, zinc and or possibly potassium, nitrogen, and animal/insect damage.
When I started I used liquid nutrients to boost veg growth and yield. Specifically, Advanced Nutrients.
Now I use a method of farming called Korean Natural Farming. If you’re serious about growing, this is the way.
My beans were under a lot of snail and slug pressure and took a while to take off. The leaves were yellow like yours and they were struggling. So what I did – and don’t know if this was the recommended way of handling it – but I gave them a lite weekly feeding for 2 weeks of 20-20-20 and poured it on the leaves for a bit of follicle feeding. I wanted to promote growth in what little was left on the plant. The soil they were planted in had lots of compost so I don’t think that was the issue. I also picked off slugs and snails early in the morning and late at night and pulled back the mulch.
Just this week the plants have exploded with both green growth and flowers.
In my experience…… You have to feed green beans with a high nitrogen mix in the beginning only, and then you stop fertilizing all together. They won’t flower or fruit properly if you continue to feed them. I learned this from a youtube video by a green bean farmer. Sweet potatoes are the same way. The nitrogen causes green growth only, and both green beans and sweet potatoes can produce nitrogen on their own.
I want to say spider mites or aphids are killing your leaves. Check under the leaves for small bugs.
Good news is if you can stop that now the new leaves will have time to grow. The starter leaves usually die off anyway.
Other stuff is eating them but the leaves drying out and turning brown is the biggest threat.
Not sure the best treatment.
The extra carbon from the leaves decomposing could lead the wrong pH for the soil as well as nitrogen lock-up which essentially means the work microbes do in the soil isn’t being utilized in the right way. If you can use a green mulch like pre-seed pod grasses aka straw if you can. A home gardening friendly source for straw is generally chicken bedding which you can find at a farm store or a big box store if that’s all you got.
Soil Nutrient Deficiency, spacing of the trees 25 x30cm, water the plants
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but… I’ve been growing beans for many years and they just always look like this at this stage. A lot of plants go through a rough patch in the early days, and some will die. That’s the circle of life. I think people overcomplicate gardening. As long as you’re keeping an eye on the watering and provide some nutrition to them, beans are really vigorous and typically outgrow this phase. If they’re 2 feet high and yellow or purple, or dying off completely, then you’ve got a problem. I also don’t think you’ve planted them closely, beans don’t have large root systems and can be packed pretty tight with no problems. You also said you have tomatoes and peppers growing in the same bed with no problems, so to me that really confirms it’s just a bean phase. Tomatoes will show problems way faster than beans!
As you mentioned, they will need to be thinned out. You should also give them some kind of support or they will be falling over. I used twine and bamboo poles. Maybe try since insectacidal soap or spinosad for bugs.