The long bean plants steadily winding their way up their respective strings.

As a follow-up to my last post on the new trellis bed, I did indeed string up the long bean plants to the trellis. One end of the string is attached to the top of the A-frame trellis, while the other end is looped around the stem of the plants – one string per plant.

A loose loop around the stem of the long bean plant is positioned just below a leaf node for a little traction.

It was a little tricky to tie the string around the stem of the plants, because it can’t be tied tight as the stem will continue to grow and thicken (although not too much), and we don’t want to strangle the plant. However, you do need to have something for the string to pull against, so I placed the loops just below the leaf stems. The leaves will fall in time, but by then the stem will have wound its way up the string and that won’t be an issue any more.

Have you ever noticed that long beans wind in an anti-clockwise direction?

What I may try next time is to attach the lower end of the string to a peg in the ground so that I don’t have to worry about damaging the plant stem. It should be a better way of getting the string taut. Right now, one of the strings is a little loose because I didn’t make a small enough loop around the plant, so it’s been dangling around and tempting the neighbouring plant to latch on – which it did. Live and learn.

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