Natural trellis idea

Hi folks,
I'm new to this site and have a question. What do you all think of the feasibility of using a large heavy stemmed plant as a natural trellis for pole beans? I'm trying it out with mammoth sunflowers and purple pole beans. I planted the sunflowers about 3 weeks ahead of the beans. So far the pair seems to be putting up with it ok. The sunflowers even provided a canopy to keep humidity up for the sprouts. Let me know if any of you have tried something similar. Thanks

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Hi! I haven't tried this, but the Native Americans would apparently grow beans amidst their corn crops, and the corn stalk would provide the support, while the beans enriched the soil by fixing nitrogen in the soil. They would also plant squash too, and the squash would form a sort of living mulch. This is frequently called a "three sisters garden" though I'm not sure if that is a real translation or just made up after the fact! :) I've also seen pics of morning glories growing on sunflower stalks, and they seemed to be doing quite nicely together. Hope this helps! :) Sounds like fun.

Welcome!

I've done this with sunflowers and morning glories. The spent stalks seemed to hold up ok even after the morning glories climbed a few feet taller than the sunflowers - the vines start leaning off the top of the stalks, but they didn't fall over (of course, they were in a fairly sheltered area and didn't get exposed to much wind). Since the rate of growth for morning glories here is way faster than sunflowers, I waited until the sunflowers were over 5 feet tall before I planted the morning glories.

Good luck! Let us know how it turns out.

Karla