How Many Beans Per Square Foot?

Do you know how many beans to expect to harvest from one square foot of a square foot garden? I didn’t, so I grew some this year to find out.

I decided to plant painted pony beans because I enjoy making bean soup using dry beans. I selected them from the seed savers exchange catalog because they were described as making a good dry bean.

Painted pony beans are a bush variety as opposed to a pole bean. I followed the recommended spacing in Mel Bartholomew’s book of nine bush beans per square foot.

Harvest Time

I harvested the beans yesterday after they dried out in the garden. I was happy to see that they filled my basket nicely.

I shelled the beans and then weighed them. They weighed 12.75 ounces or about 3/4 of a pound. Most of the recipes I have for bean soup call for either 1 pound or a half a pound.

I could make a recipe that calls for a half a pound of dry beans and save the rest for planting next year. Next year I can plant three square feet and hopefully harvest 18 ounces. That would give me 1 pound of dry beans plus some to save for planting.

Conclusion

I obtained a yield of 6 ounces per square foot of the bush variety of painted pony beans. I will use this as a baseline for planning purposes for next year’s garden.

Related Pages

• Painted Pony Bean Soup Recipe
• 2012 Dry Bean Harvest