GardenPole Bean variety
Blue Lake Pole Bean
✓ In your garden
Blue Lake is a snap bean (pole), ready in about 66 days. Pick the pods young and tender and eat them whole — steamed, sautéed, or raw. Beans are easy warm-season crops — sow the seed straight in the ground after frost (they hate being transplanted), and give it a tall trellis or poles to climb.
“A snap bean you eat pod and all, picked young and tender.”
Growing basics — shared by every pole bean
Blue Lake grows like any other pole bean. The full picture — how deep to plant, spacing, feeding, pests, harvest — lives on the Pole Bean page so it's maintained in one place.
- Sun
- Full Sun
- Spacing (in row)
- 4–8 in
- Row spacing
- 24–36 in
- Planting depth
- 1 in
- Soil pH
- 5.8–6.5
- Water
- Moderate
What is Blue Lake good for?
- Fresh eating (pods)Steamed, sautéed, or raw — pick young. Great
- Freezing / canningBlanch and freeze the surplus. Great
- Dried beansGrown for tender pods, not dry seed. Skip it
From how it grows — kitchens vary.
What Blue Lake is known for
Botanical Interests describes this as:
- no strings
That is the company selling the seed, describing its own product. True, and worth weighing as such.
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Want the full 10/50/90% odds + nearest stations? Open the frost tool →When to plant Blue Lake in your zone
Zone 6bGreenhouse or cover on: your start slides ~4 weeks earlier and your harvest stretches ~3 weeks later (shown striped).
Planting seeds straight in the ground only works where the season's long and warm — most gardeners start seeds indoors or buy young plants, or you'd pick your first tomato right as frost hits.
Comfortable — first ripe fruit lands around late Jun, well before your typical frost (~late Oct).
- Plant seeds outside
- late Apr – early May
- Growing
- early May – late Jun
- Picking
- late Jun until frost (~late Oct)
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
What to plant near Blue Lake — and what to keep away
-
Cabbage familyTraditional
Chart canon says no. Nobody's proven why. Cheap to respect.
-
Onions & garlicTraditional
The most consistent 'no' in companion planting. Unproven, unanimous.
The badge is the honesty. Trialed = a published field trial · Practical = a real mechanism · Traditional = companion-chart lore. These pairings hold for every pole bean.
Pairings compiled from West Virginia University Extension.
Growing Blue Lake — the things that trip people up
- Pick the pods young, before the seeds bulge them, and pick every couple of days — the more you pick, the more the plant makes.
- A pole bean: put up the trellis or poles at planting. It climbs 6–8 feet and crops over a long season.
Blue Lake pole bean at a glance
| Type | Snap |
|---|---|
| Grows as | Tall vine (indeterminate) |
| Days to ripe | 66 days after you plant it outside |
| Color | Green |
Extra fields from seed-catalog listings and university growing guides. Days to ripe and disease resistance shift with your climate and seed source — double-check with your local extension office before you buy.
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Common questions about Blue Lake
How long does Blue Lake take to grow?
About 66 days from sowing to the first tender pods.
Is Blue Lake a bush or pole bean?
A pole bean — it climbs, so give it a trellis or poles, and it crops over a long season.
Can I start Blue Lake indoors?
Better not — beans resent transplanting. Sow the seed straight in warm soil after your last frost.
Browse more pole bean varieties →