Fothergill's RHS Climbing French Bean Golden Gate Seeds

Details:

• Botanical Name: Phaseolus vulgaris 'Golden Gate', a highly refined, premium-grade climbing cultivar within the legume family.
• Plant Class: Half-Hardy Annual, exhibiting exceptional seedling vigour to rapidly establish a tall, productive vertical framework from a spring sowing.
• Vigorous Climbing Framework: Naturally develops strong, climbing vines that adapt perfectly to tall bamboo canes, teepees, or netting, making it an elite selection for maximising food output in smaller plots and raised beds.
• Stringless Flat Pods: Bears a prolific abundance of wide, flat pods with a tender texture and high natural sugar content, ensuring they remain succulent and completely stringless even when mature.
• Highly Attractive Golden Colour: Produces striking, bright yellow pods that contrast beautifully against the green foliage, making them incredibly easy to spot and harvest among the dense vines.
• Advanced Disease Resistance: Bred with robust modern genetics to feature excellent natural tolerance against common bean viruses, ensuring the plants remain healthy, productive, and resilient in the ground.
• Nutritional Value: A highly rewarding, health-boosting crop to cultivate at home, serving as a fantastic natural source of plant-based dietary fibre, Vitamin C, and essential antioxidants.

Care Instructions:

• Sowing Position: Choose a sheltered location with rich, moisture-retentive, and well-drained soil in full sun. For an early crop, sow seeds individually indoors in deep pots from April to May, or sow directly outdoors into a finely prepared seedbed from May to July once all danger of frost has passed.
• Sowing and Support Method: Erect sturdy 2.4-metre bamboo canes in double rows, spacing the canes 45cm apart with 60cm between the rows. Sow two seeds 5cm deep at the base of each cane, later thinning to leave the strongest single seedling to climb the support naturally.
• Moisture and Maintenance: Keep the soil consistently and evenly moist throughout the growing season. Providing a steady supply of water is essential once the flowers appear, as regular moisture encourages successful pod setting and prevents the crisp beans from turning tough.
• Harvesting Technique: Pick the pods regularly when they are roughly 15 to 20cm long and before the seeds begin to swell noticeably inside. Staggered, continuous picking stimulates the climbing vines to produce a non-stop flush of fresh, sweet pods from July through to October.