Vertical trellis vs single stake, the pole beans made the call for me

I've got a 4 foot wide balcony rail planter that gets maybe 6 hours of sun, and for two seasons I used one stake per bean plant. Everything flopped over by late July, tangled, and half the pods rotted on the railing. Then my neighbor across the hall, the one with the tomato jungle, loaned me her old A-frame trellis she wasn't using. I planted the same bush bean variety, same potting mix, same watering schedule, but trained them up the trellis instead. The difference was night and day, the airflow kept the leaves dry, I could actually see the pods to pick them, and I got maybe 40% more beans off the same 3 pots. Now I'm kicking myself for not building a simple bamboo trellis back in April for $12 instead of wasting the whole season fighting floppy stems. Has anyone else had a cheap structure fix a recurring balcony problem instead of just buying new plants?

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