Problem with French Beans - growing too quickly!

ALIBOBSY

Yes cover the whole plant on cold nights in the GH, could use fleece,upturned boxes,plastic bottle cloches etc.

Part of what you learn as you go is the weather/local envioroment where you live. We are lucky in that although we are up north so to speak, we actually seem to have a localised "warm spot" so to speak. We rarely get a late frost or an early one. Do get plenty of rain tho lol. We were on eof the few areas that got hardly any snow before christmas, DS was desperate for a couple of snow days off school but didn't get any lol.

I also now know where the sun falls in the garden all day long and realised apart from one corner against the fence all parts get some sun through the day. Tried to nurse some courgettes through 2 yrs ago after planting out at easter. Even covered at night only one survived, but the beans I had covered at night did survive and we got some early pods.

Plants that grow leggy can usually be potted on and sunk deeply in the new soil/compost, for most plants they love this and produce roots from the stem to strengthen them.

All adds to the fun lol.

ali x

ukbill69

Way to early, you need to wait till may before even planting them in doors, same applies to runner beans.

kingkano

Agree with others far too early for outside ones. Do you have a multi tier blowaway greenhouse? You could put that inside your proper greenhouse (if thats what you have) and then plant them in a large pot and put it inside this. Its then a double glazing effect. You can also heat it with tealights or cheap candles if need be. Always worth experimenting

janibrown

To nip out the middle shoot, they have 1 stem right, and as you look where the very top leaves are pinch out the newest leaves in the middle of it, it will then tell the plant to produce another shoot from the bottom or lower down hope this helps
Jani x

valk_scot

Total waste of good seed sowing them at this time of year. Only go for the earliest sowing dates if you live in the most reliably warm areas of the country (Jersey??) and intend to keep them in a good greenhouse for quite a while. After that go for mid range and then as you go north, add on an extra week for every couple of hundred miles. I'm near Edinburgh and I quite automatically add at least two weeks onto any date a seed packet or gardening book suggests. I start most of my seeds off at the end of April to the middle of May and for french beans, I'd probably just sow them outside around mid-May. Courgettes? Into the propagator at the start of May, plant out mid June. You'll get x10 the failure rate from starting off and planting out things too early than from being a week or two behind.