There are pole beans and bush beans. Pole beans grow on a vine and can be trained to climb up a pole, a net, a fence…well, you get it. Bush Beans I grow at 6 to a square foot. Pole Beans I grow 9 to a square foot. I grow pole beans on the back row (furthest from the sun) and let them grow up a net that I have installed on the back row of my gardens. I have seen all sorts of vertical designs that add so much flair to gardens so don’t limit yourself to one idea.
When rotating crops, avoid planting beans where peas were last and vice-versa. Also, beans do not like sunflowers, onions, garlic, beets, or gladiolus. If you are planting bush beans, plant them away from your pole beans. Though this may seem odd, they have the same enemies in common. If one crop suffers you may have time to correct the problem before it hits the other crop if they are planted away from one another.
When to plant beans? If the lilacs are in bloom, it’s warm enough. Beans prefer being directly seeded (rather than transplanted) when soil temps reach at least 60 degrees.
Marigolds and Nasturtiums are good companions to plant nearby as they repel bean beetles naturally. Pole Beans are excellent companions for Corn as beans make their own nitrogen that then feeds the corn and as they will climb up the corn stalks, it helps anchor those stalks into the ground. What I’m saying is, you can grow them right in the same squares with your corn! Remember to add compost before planting.
Dry beans include all the beans that you might use making chili, soups, or just plain beans themselves. These may include garbanzo, kidney, navy, chickpea, black-eyed peas, pintos, etc. Dry beans must be left on the vine until they are completely dry and brittle. If the rainy season hits, pull the entire bush and hang it upside down in the shed until they are dry (brown and crisp pods). They are then automatically ready for storage.
Most shell beans reach maturity at 9-11 weeks. Harvesting begins somewhere around the second week in July (seasonal weather permitting). When the beans plump up all the way in the pods they are ready for picking and can then be shelled and cooked, frozen, or canned.
At the end of the season DO NOT compost bean plants. They can actually rust and cause damage to the next crop. Pull them out and discard them instead.
Easy Raised Bed Gardening 
Hi,
I just found your website, and its full of great information! Thank you for all your wonderful details and choronicals. I just had to ask for more detail on your last comment on this particular post. You’re saying to NOT compost bean plants? That seems strange to me because I’ve read in several other sources of information to either till the plants into the soil or that they would be ok in compost. I haven’t heard of them rusting. Can you explain further on that?
Thanks for the comment! I read about this years and years ago in Organic Gardening Magazine. Peas and beans, though full of nitrogen, have the same diseases in common. The following pea diseases may be a problem: seed rot, damping-off, fusarium wilts, basal stem rot, powdery mildew, downy mildew, root rots, and bean leaf roll. Bean diseases include seed rot,damping-off, seedling blight, root rot, sclerotinia (white mold), curly top, bean common mosaic, and bean yellow mosaic. Turning any of these (unknowingly) back into the soil or adding them to a compost heap seems risky to me. Could they help your soil? Yep. Could they harm your soil? Yep. To me, although they are huge in nitrogen, there are safer ways of adding in that needed nitrogen to your compost pile. I still use these plants for nitrogen but the method is by growing them where nitrogen is needed, not by composting them. Just my two cents worth.