When to Plant Beans (bush)

Planting time for beans (bush) is set by your frost dates, not by the calendar month. Sow directly in the garden around your last frost, once the soil has warmed. From there it takes roughly 55 days to the first harvest. Beans (bush) is a tender crop, and a single light frost ends it, so both ends of its season are hard boundaries. Pick your zone below for exact dates, or find your zone by ZIP if you are not sure which one you are in.

Bush beans mature fast enough for a second sowing almost anywhere with a frost-free window into October. Because it is a tender crop, the fall sowing has to finish before the first frost with no margin for error, so the sow-by dates in the table above are hard deadlines rather than suggestions.

Fall dates are counted backward from your first frost, not forward from a sowing date. Take the 55 days beans (bush) needs, add about two weeks because growth slows once days shorten after the equinox, then add two more weeks of margin because frost kills it outright. That is 83 days before your first frost. The coldest zone where this still works on the averages is Zone 4a.

For the whole-garden version of this arithmetic, see the fall planting calendar by zone, and how to read and stretch your first frost date.

Beans (bush) grows well next to corn, squash (winter) and carrots. Keep it away from onions, garlic and sunflowers. Alliums measurably suppress the rhizobia bacteria beans need to fix nitrogen at the root. The full grid for all 24 crops is in the companion planting chart.