Last edited on 9 Oct 2019. View history

French Bean

No scientific name recorded

Also known as fine bean (en)

Sun requirement for French bean: Plant in Partial Sun

Green beans are the unripe, young fruit and protective pods of various cultivars of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). Immature or young pods of the runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus), yardlong bean (Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis), and hyacinth bean (Lablab purpureus) are used in a similar way.

2: plantings
4: harvests
0: seed packets

Growstuff is a free, community-run site for people who grow food. Keep track of what you plant and harvest, find seeds to swap, and see what is growing near you. Join to record your own French beans.

French bean facts

Lifespan

Annual living and reproducing in a single year or less

First harvest expected

10 weeks after planting

Grown for

pod harvested 4 times

What are growing degree days?

A plant grows with warmth, not with days. A growing degree day is one day's worth of useful warmth: how many degrees the day's average temperature is above the lowest temperature the crop grows at. Add them up from planting and you know how far along the crop is, whatever the calendar says.

Say that lowest temperature is 10°C. A day averaging 17°C gives 7 growing degree days. A day averaging 8°C gives none, as it is too cold for the crop to grow. That is why the same lettuce takes about 50 days in a summer and 90 in an autumn: it needs the same total warmth either way.

For French bean, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 7°C and a shortest growing cycle of 50 days at its best temperature, about 675 growing degree days to a first harvest.

Where you've told us where your garden is, we use this and the weather there to predict when your French bean will be ready to harvest. We don't use it for how long a plant lives or when it finishes: we go by what members have logged for that.