Everyone loves the taste of crisp crunch and fresh green beans. This easy growing vegetable plant needs full sun and love warmth season.
There are more than a dozen varieties of green beans, and all of them require similar growing conditions. Some of them include scarlet-runner beans, snap beans, broad beans, lima beans and dry beans.
Edible plants like green beans are heavy feeders and sunlight exposure helps them to produce nutrients.
With exponential increase in apartment gardening, new gardeners are worried about how many hours of sunlight do green beans need for good harvest?
Green beans need 6 to 8 hours of full sunlight to grow and thrive. Anyhow, in hotter days, you may need to protect this vegetable plant from harsh sun.
Soil, Water and Sunlight for Growing Green Beans
There are 130 varieties or cultivars of beans available. Almost all have similar environment and soil requirements. (1)
- This easy to grow vegetable plant needs slightly acid and well drained soil.
- As an edible plant, you must ensure it gets enough nutrients in the form of fertilizers or compost.
- Water is an essential need of plants; it helps to transfer the nutrients to produce energy.
- Water twice in a day depending on your climatic conditions. As a rule of thumb gardeners recommend checking for dryness before watering.
- Overwatering is one of the most common issues faced by new gardeners.
- Green beans seed can germinate in shade, but the growing plant must need at-least 6 hours of direct sunlight as mentioned above.
- Temperature of the soil to grow bean cultivars must be 60F to 70F; it shouldn’t go below 50F at night.
- Like many vegetable plants, green beans can’t survive frost. So, you must start planting this edible plant after last frost.
Apart from sunlight, water and well-drained soil, you should enrich the soil with compost or fertilizers. The NPK ratio in these fertilizers will help the plant in formation of foliage, flowers and fruits.
How Does Sunlight Affect Green Beans?
Sunlight, water and carbon-dioxide are essential to produce sugars and starches through photosynthesis process.
Anything low than required sunlight, will negatively impact your vegetable garden.
Without adequate sunlight you can’t expect good vegetable yield.
As a gardener you must know the sunlight requirement before planting. In case of green beans, it needs full sun exposure. According to Kansas State Research and Extension, full sun means at-least 6 hours of sun exposure.
Before planting, choose the location in your garden where the green bean plant can get the required amount of sunlight of 6 hours. When you fail to provide sufficient sunlight, you may get fewer yields in this harvest season.
Likewise, too much sunlight can result in shriveled green beans leaves.
How Much Sunlight Do Green Beans Need?
Too much or too low sunlight will damage your plant growth.
So, while buying or sowing any plant in your gardener, it’s your responsibility to know its sunlight requirement.
Coming to green beans, they are full sun plants and need sunlight for 6-8 hours for better yield.
As mentioned above, vegetable plants like green beans will not grow in complete shade.
Green beans plant catch light energy through leaves and use it to convert water and carbon-dioxide into glucose. Cellulose and starch made from the glucose are used in formation of cell walls. (Source)
Also Read: How Often Should I Water Basil Plants?
Sign of green beans with inadequate sunlight?
Green beans are sun loving plants, when you fail to provide at-least 6 hours of sunlight; the plant may flower but fail to produce as much yield as it can. This is because, fewer hours of sunlight drop blossoms.
Apart from this, you might also find leaves turning yellow. This is due to lack of nutrition, plant drop lower leaves first.
How to Fix:
While planting, you should ensure that the location in which you’re planting green beans gets at-least 6 hours of bright direct sunlight. However, at the same time you must assure that the plants don’t get sunburned due to extreme sun exposure in summer.
Also Read: How Long Does it Take for Squash to Grow After Flowering?
Signs of Sunscald or Sunburned Leaves
Like few hours of sunlight will reduce the yield. Long hours of exposure to extreme sunlight will cause green bean foliage to burn or shrivel.
For a balanced sunlight, you must regularly check your plant’s foliage. (Source)
How to Fix:
Mostly, you’ll face this issue or sunburned leaves in summer. To protect your green beans plant from extreme sun, you can use shade cloth. This will minimize the exposure.
What temperature do green beans need to grow?
I already mentioned couple of times in this article that green beans are warm-season plants. They need to be planted after the last frost has passed in spring.
Required air temperature for growing green beans ranges from 65 to 85 Fahrenheit. Soil temperature in night should be above 55F.
Temperature above 85F or 90F can cause blossom drop and reduce yield. Likewise, temperature below 50F will negatively impact the plant growth.
Green beans seed germination need 55F of soil temperature. Seed germination doesn’t need sunlight, but to grow into an adult plant you must provide adequate sunlight and temperature.
Can green beans grow in shade?
This vegetable plant is a shade tolerant plant.
Bush beans and pole beans are two types of beans that come under green beans.
If you’re looking for vegetable plant that grow in partial shade, then choosing bush beans will be a better choice.
However, green beans may produce fewer yields when grown in partial shade.
Also Read: Tomato Branches Curling Down
Planting and Growing Tips
Green beans are annual plants, which mean you must plant them year after year.
Along with growing medium, you must ensure that this plant gets enough sunlight and water.
Below mentioned are important tips that will help you to grow green beans of all types and varieties.
- Green beans like moist and fertile soil. If you’re growing them in container, make sure to add garden soil, compost and perlite to the growing medium.
- Second most important tip is, beans wants lots of sunlight.6 to 8 hours of sun exposure is ideal to grow healthy plant and get good yield.
- Watering green beans plant is essential, but don’t overwater. Excess water that gets logged in the container will cause root rot. Best time to water the plant is when it is dry by 70 percent at-least.
- Underwatering you plant may result in dry and wilted leaves. So, pay attention to its foliage and moisturize it regularly.
- If you’re growing pole beans, then you must support them with bamboo sticks. You can wood, metal or any structure that would help the pole beans plant to grow. Make sure the structure is 6 feet tall.
- Instead of germinating seeds indoors, gardeners recommend direct planting. This is because, roots of green beans are fragile and don’t like to mess with once they are growing. If your region experience late frost and cold, then you have no choice but to germinate seeds indoors. But, make sure you use peat pellets that can easily be breakable while transplanting.
- You don’t have to fertilize green beans often. This belongs to legumes and they produce their own fertilizers from nitrogen in air. Anyhow, you must add fertilizer at the time of planting and when small beans appear on your plant. (Source)
- If you see your bean plant isn’t producing flowers and beans, then you might have to add liquid fertilizers.
- Trim or prune the bean plant when it reaches out 6 to 7 feet. This is because, after growing huge it starts flopping over and breaking. Along with this, the bottom of this top-heavy plant starts drying or at-least show less production.
- Harvest is one of the important tips to increase yield. When you stop harvesting, the bean plant reduces or stops producing beans.
Spider mites, bean leaf beetles, cutworms, while mold, bacterial leaf diseases and viral diseases can damage your plant and reduce yield. You can check pests and diseases associated with beans and how to fix them.
Also Read: When Is it Too Late to Plant Potatoes?
Summarizing it
Green beans are warm season crop; it thrives in 65F to 85 F temperature.
This plant loves full sun exposure for about 6 to 8 hours. Too low or too high sunlight will damage the plant yield.
Bean plant can grow in partial shade but will produce less yield.