That's really interesting - I've never heard of doing that! Methinks some experimenting is called for this year
I grow tons of beans, as we eat lots of green 'snap' beans, as well as drying them for soups and chillis. I'm definitely going to try the multiple planting thing - does it work with climbing beans too? Maybe they'd get a bit too tangled. Would be worth trying with drying only beans, so I didn't have to hunt through masses of foliage for green beans.