Green beans

Beans are tender, so the whole question is warmth: sow into cold soil and the seed rots, sow a fortnight later into warm soil and the plants overtake anything sown early. In the north that means late spring, and in most of the southern hemisphere it means spring and again in late summer for a second crop. Climbing varieties give far more from the same ground than dwarf ones and are easier to pick, but they need a solid support, because a wigwam of canes carrying two metres of leaf in a summer gale comes down. Water heavily from the first flower, and pick every few days: a bean left to swell and set seed tells the plant to stop, and a row picked hard keeps cropping for two months.