Pole beans

[New Day Farm]

Plants are healthy plenty of blooms very few pods
What pods there are they will not fully develop most will turn yellow and shirvel
Had a soil test and all minerals are high or very high the ph is 6.8
Can you help me with my problem

 

[Meadowlark]

I'll try. The nighttime temps here are never falling below 80 deg. and the daytime temps are 100 deg with 100% humidity. That is too hot for pole beans.

I suspect Florida is hot also maybe not that bad but...anything above 90 deg is too hot for pole beans. Those yard long beans or so-called asparagus beans will grow in that heat but not regular pole beans like Kentucky, Blue Lake, etc.

I will start my second crop of pole beans in about mid-August and if past repeats itself will have bountiful beans in October as the temps cool down.

I hope this helps. I believe the problem is not you but high temps.

 

[redback]

You could try to get pH up to 7.5 with some lime. Also they like cool roots, so mulch if you haven't done so already. Lastly try a foliar spray of seaweed to help with fruit set or sulphate of potash on the soil watered in. If it is high temps cover with shade cloth?

 

[Susan BBPM]

I'll second what meadowlark says.
I started out my beans indoors then began putting them out during the day and bringing them in at night (early in the season our nights tend to be cold). They didn't look happy at all. Eventually I found an article saying that beans wouldn't tolerate high night time temps - I think perhaps 18 degrees C was the max but I'm not certain. Anyway, indoors is probably over 18 degrees at night so I started popping them in an unheated greenhouse at night instead of indoors and they romped away.

More info in this article which explains that the warming climate can take beans off the table for 50% of growing areas by 2050.

"The researchers focused on night temperatures because common beans, which are a primary source of protein for over 400 million people, can produce viable pollen only if the nights are cool. They often do best at raised elevations, where nighttime temperatures reach no higher than 18 degrees Celsius (around 64 degrees Fahrenheit)."

30 Heat-Tolerant Strains of Beans Identified

New strains of beans that beat the heat could do more than protect food security; they could even expand into new territories

www.scientificamerican.com