Will the Pea Beans Make It Before the Frost?

I took these pictures Wednesday afternoon when I was out at the farm. These are my second crop beans after peas or, as we call them, pea beans. I planted them July 15, which is quite late in the growing season to plant beans. They are a very short-season bean variety in the maturity group point 08. I was fortunate as there was a nice rain the day after I planted them so they all got started and emerged about the same time.

At this point I am still hopeful they might make it. There is nice growth and you can see in one of the pictures they have pods and are starting to develop beans. At the same time they are still flowering so there might be even more pods. We are now in the part of the growing season where we could see a frost. My grandfather always said that if you can get through September 10-15 without a frost you usually are safe until well into October.

There is no question that I am going to need a lot of warm fall days through most of October, but at this point I still have a chance. Even if the beans do not mature there is at least a cover crop growing and there will be some residue to protect the soil. In case you are wondering about the brown spots on some of the leaves, that was caused by a herbicide I used called UltraBlazer. I had to try and kill some waterhemp that survived generic roundup. UltraBlazer causes the "burning" of some bean leaves but the new growth on top of the plants are normal.