Can You Grow Beans in Partial Sun?

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Green beans growing up poles in a garden.

When you look at most gardening advice for growing beans you will often hear that beans need to be grown in full sun. But if you don't have an area of your yard with full sun or if most of your garden space is in partial shade instead of in full sun then the question is whether or not you can still grow beans in partial sun?

Partial sun usually refers to areas of your garden that get somewhere between 4-6 hours of sunlight a day. Full sun is usually six or more hours of sunlight. And if you're curious to know more about the difference between partial sun, partial shade, full sun, etc. this website gives some good descriptions of the different types of sun density.

Beans are usually described as a crop that likes the sun and needs to be grown in full sun to do well. And while it's probably true that beans do better in full sun and might produce better, that doesn't mean that you can't still grow beans in partial sun if that's all the light you have in your garden.

My Personal Experience Growing Beans Without Full Sun

Quite a bit of my garden space is actually in partial shade rather than in full sun because there are so many trees that shade the garden at different times of the day, but I've still been growing beans in my garden for the last fifteen years or so even in partial sunlight with no more than five hours of sunlight at the most in the areas where I've grown beans. (And for most of the growing season with leaves from trees shading the garden it's probably more like four to four and a half hours.)

Some years my beans have done better than other years, but there were other factors involved like differences in the weather, insect pressure, and a groundhog snacking on the leaves of the bean plants. On the years when I didn't have those issues, though, my beans actually did pretty well even with getting no more than five hours of sunlight a day.

I'm sure that if they had had more sun I might have gotten a bigger harvest than I did, but on the years when my beans have done well I have been able to grow enough beans to have some to eat (either for eating fresh or for drying to use for baked beans depending on the variety), and I've also been able to save seeds to plant again the next year. I've never been able to grow enough beans to produce large amounts of them, but I've definitely been able to enjoy having some fresh and some dry beans even with less sunlight.

The past couple of years I have had issues with insects eating my bean plants before they have much of a chance to grow, so this year I am putting my beans in a different area of my garden and I also planted them a bit later in the season than I've done other years, so I'm hoping that this year will be a good bean year again for me.

I've had some years when my beans have been like in this picture below where my bean plants were doing really well and the vines were climbing all over the place, and I could barely even get through them to harvest the ones further in because I hadn't planned well when I was planting them to give myself enough space to walk in between them.

Bean plants with lots of leaves growing up poles in garden.

Is It Worth Growing Beans With Less Sunlight?

I don't necessarily recommend growing beans in an area that doesn't get full sun if you have other options because I do think that you can probably get a better harvest planting in full sun. But if partial sun is all that you have then I think it's still worth it to grow beans if beans are a vegetable that you enjoy.

For me personally, the taste of a freshly picked green bean isn't something that you can get anywhere else other than from your own garden. Beans have a unique flavor when you pick one off of the plant and eat it right then (or within a very short time of picking the bean.) After more time has passed, even beans that are still fresh that were picked the day or two before lose that special "fresh-picked" bean flavor. So, for me, because I really enjoy that unique straight-off-the-plant taste I feel like it's worth it to grow beans even if I don't get as many of them as I could with more sunlight.

If one of your main goals for your garden is to grow the largest amount of food and get the biggest harvest possible then you might be better off growing some other vegetables that do better with less sunlight (like lettuces, greens, etc.) But if you like growing a variety of vegetables or you enjoy trying some historic heirloom varieties then growing beans in partial sun is definitely do-able in my experience. You just have to scale back your expectations a bit for how many beans you will be able to harvest.

Tips for Growing Beans in Partial Sun

Just like with growing tomatoes in partial sun there are things that you can do to try to have more success with growing beans even if you don't have full sun in your garden space. Here are some tips that might be helpful:

Pick an Early Maturing Variety of Beans

Since having only partial sun will mean that the total number of hours of sunlight your garden will get during the growing season will be less than they would be if you had full sun, it's best to pick a variety of beans that will mature quickly. Having partial sun is essentially like having a shorter growing season, so the faster your beans will mature the better your chance of having a good harvest of beans will be. You should be able to find out the days until maturity on the seed packet of beans or in seed catalogs. The shorter the number of days until maturity the better.

That being said, though, if you have a bean variety you really want to try and it has a longer date until maturity, it's still possible to try growing it. You might just have a smaller harvest of beans than you would have had with a variety that matured faster. I like to grow some heirloom bean varieties that take longer to mature, and I also like to save seeds from my plants for the next year, so that means that I have to let those beans fully mature on the plant to be able to harvest the seeds (which is also the case if you are harvesting dry beans like for soup or baked beans). I've still been able to get a harvest from some later maturing varieties, but I'm sure my harvest probably would have been larger if I had been growing a variety that matured faster.

Make Sure Your Soil is Healthy

Since beans grown in just partial sun will be at a bit of a disadvantage with not having quite as much sunlight as they would be ideal, it's important to at least try to grow them in as healthy a soil as possible. If your soil tends to be too sandy (like my garden typically is) or if you have clay-like soil then you can add compost to your soil to help improve the structure of your soil.

You can also add a small amount of fertilizer, too, but adding too much nitrogen might end up backfiring because your bean plants could focus all of their energy on growing leaves rather than producing fruit. Beans are nitrogen fixing plants, so they will actually produce a little bit nitrogen as they grow, so they don't need as much fertilizer as some other vegetables that really like a lot of fertilizer. A moderate amount of a balanced fertilizer can help, though, if your soil is lacking in nutrients. My personal preference is to use a natural, slower-release fertilizer like composted chicken manure. I've been using some of the composted manure from my own chickens (after learning from my mistake with using chicken manure in my garden), and since I haven't had enough of that yet for my whole garden area I've also used some store bought composted chicken manure from a local garden center.

Ideally, it would probably be best to get a soil test done so see what the nutrient levels of your soil are before you do too much amending of your soil so you don't end up adding too much of anything. But if you aren't able to do a soil test or if you are too late in the growing season to wait for a soil test before you need to get planting, then you might want to stick with just adding compost and maybe a small amount of fertilizer. Many fertilizers give nutrient percentages on the label, so if you aren't sure what you soil actually needs it might be best to stick to a fertilizer with lower percentages and ones that's pretty well balanced (meaning one that isn't too high in any one nutrient.) The ratio is sometimes called the N-P-K ratio (for Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium.)

Try Growing Snap Beans Rather Than Dry Beans

Another way to try to get a larger harvest from beans grown in partial sun is to focus on growing snap beans for fresh eating rather than growing dry beans to shell to use for soups or baked beans, etc. It takes less time for beans to grow to the stage where you would want to eat them fresh as green beans then it does to wait for the beans to fully mature to the point where you would let them dry out on the vines and harvest them for the seeds inside of the dried pods.

If you really wanted to grow dry beans, though, or if you wanted to be able to save your own seeds from some heirloom beans you could still do that with most varieties of beans in partial sun unless you live in a climate with a very short growing season. I've grown beans in a part of my garden that gets on average about four and a half hours of sunlight a day for most of the growing season, and I usually have about four to four and a half months of growing season from the time the soil is warm enough for beans to be planted in the ground (usually near the end of May for me) until it's cold enough for the first frost (usually some time around the beginning of October). With that low amount of sunlight and that amount of time for a growing season I've been able to harvest dry beans to save as seeds from several different heirloom varieties.

Plant Extra Beans

Since having less sunlight could reduce the overall amount of beans that each plant will be able to produce, another way to still get a decent harvest from your bean plants would be to plant some extras to help make up the difference. So, if you think ten beans plants might be enough to produce the amount of beans that you would want to have then if you're growing them in an area with partial shade maybe you might want to grow fifteen plants instead.

Basically, whatever amount you think you might want to plant (or whatever amount you might have seen recommended for how many plants for each person in your household, etc.) you would want to increase the amount since having less sunlight will reduce your overall harvest. I always like to plant as many seeds as I can fit into the area of my garden allotted to the beans because there are always some seeds that don't germinate and some that get eaten by insects. You don't want to crowd them too close together, of course, and you don't want to make the mistake I've made before by not even giving myself enough room to walk though the beans to harvest them. But the more bean plants that you can reasonably fit into your garden space the better your chances of having a good harvest.