It took me several years to get a single bean plant to grow in my garden. To my delight last year not just one plant grew, but an entire garden of them sprouted, flourished and produced beans for months. We had more beans from our plants than we could eat or give away. I canned them, froze them, ate them, and when we finally couldn’t find another thing to do with them, I looked into how to dry them.
Being the frugal gardener that I want to be, I couldn’t let a single bean go to waste. For months I let the beans sit on the plants undisturbed and at the end of October I harvested all the dry pods. Although my efforts were rewarded, they were not rewarded as well as I would have liked.
Although I’d like to grow as much of our food as possible, for a suburban housewife this is one crop that isn’t worth the effort. That is at least not for the purpose of harvesting dry beans.
I love having had the success last year with our beans, but I am also very content this year that my bean crop failed, and for this I am — Simply Grateful. I know that must sound wrong, but check out my post at Simply Grateful Gardener To Bean Or Not To Bean for the whole story.
Simply Grateful Housewife 
Wow, what a bounty! So what changed do you think? From the time you couldn’t grow them, to such a huge yield?
The previous years I’d tried growing them in pots or in soil that I don’t think was right for them. I was so thrilled when they started to sprout because I’d always been told that beans were the easiest to grow. Well, that surely hadn’t been true for me, until last year. This year I messed up, but that’s okay, everything happens for a reason. We’re till enjoying last years bounty.
So!!! Impressed!!! I have tried to grow beans so many times, to no avail. I bow down to you!
Don’t be so quick. This year I decided to try something new and two plants came up. With my luck it was probably a one-time thing, but at least I’ll have my memories…I just don’t understand why everyone seems to think they are so easy to grow. They certainly don’t grow anything like in Jack & the Beanstalk. I’ll try again next year but I certainly am not going to count on having another year like last year, that’s for sure.