blue rabbit
gopher
He that hath a good harvest may be content with some thistles - John Ray
Posts: 7
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Post by blue rabbit on May 12, 2010 19:55:49 GMT -5
Last year was my first year growing peas and yard long beans. I planted them in a single row and got a mediocre harvest. I've seen some pictures of folks growing beans on various support systems and it looks like a solid wall of green leaves! How do you do that?
We just finished building an arch over two beds using cattle panels. The beds are 17' long. I'd like to grow beans along the edge of these beds, but I don't know how dense to plant them to create a similar effect and increase yield. Do I plant them in double rows to increase foliage density? If I plant so dense, will their roots compete with each other?
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Post by grunt on May 13, 2010 1:14:24 GMT -5
Liat: I generally plant beans or peas 3 to 4 inches apart (7 to 10 cm). If you aren't getting good growth out of yours, perhaps you need to apply inoculant to the soil. You will need different types for peas and beans, and you will only have to do it once. Unless you really overcrowd them, they will spread their roots out away from their neighbors to find nutrients.
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Post by rockguy on May 13, 2010 8:30:35 GMT -5
I plant beans and peas in a staggered double row with 3-4 inch spacing. It seems like they produce more when they're crowded.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 13, 2010 9:53:26 GMT -5
Do I plant them in double rows to increase foliage density? If I plant so dense, will their roots compete with each other? I used to plant everything densely... The older I get the further apart I space things. I really love being able to weed with a hoe. (8" spacing is incredible.) That hand weeding and hand thinning is for someone other than me to do. I believe that I get bigger better looking plants and higher yields by giving the plants more space. Regards, Joseph |
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blue rabbit
gopher
He that hath a good harvest may be content with some thistles - John Ray
Posts: 7
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Post by blue rabbit on May 13, 2010 18:51:56 GMT -5
Thanks Dan, rockguy and Joseph for your quick responses! I'll plant them about 4" apart, in double rows, and give an offering to the Bean & Pea gods to be kind to me this year. Dan - The small amount of microbial life in the new beds might explain the lack in productivity. I did the lasagna method in my beds in the Fall and then planted my peas and beans the following Spring. I'll be planting peas and beans again this year in the same beds. I'm hoping to see an improvement in production. Joseph - I'm one of those who weeds by hand  My beds are covered with 6" leaf mulch, which makes it difficult to weed with a hoe. We have a lot of perennial weeds: bull thistle, bindweed (my nemesis), sorrel, wild strawberry (not the kind you want to eat), etc. We let some thistles grow last year and they reach over 6' tall magnificent towers of prickly beauty - but those in the veggie beds get pulled by hand. The number of pollinators and insects that these giant thistles attract is unbelievable. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 13, 2010 23:35:43 GMT -5
My beds are covered with 6" leaf mulch, which makes it difficult to weed with a hoe. Lucky you! When I gardened in Ohio I gathered leafs from all over and always had lots of wonderful mulch, so weeding was much easier. I couldn't stand to be outside weeding with all the mosquitoes that wanted to eat me alive.... Guess that's what I get for trying to garden after working a day job. Now in the desert I don't have mosquitoes, and I garden in the daytime, but by 11 AM the sun is getting way too burning for my Scandinavian genes, and getting enough mulch to cover my garden is not something that I can reasonably aspire too, so I minimize weeding my making it something I can do mostly while standing up. I just got to thinking... Dangerous I know... But I'm wondering if peas/beans are something that likes growing through 6" of mulch? I mostly see legumes thriving in poor soils. Regards, Joseph |
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Post by grunt on May 14, 2010 0:08:08 GMT -5
Vinegar makes a perfectly safe, organically approved herbicide that breaks down totally in the soil. Take a hand spritzer and spray directly on the weed you want rid of. Use a piece of cardboard to keep the spray from getting on your nearby "good" plants. It will even take out burdock and thistle, although burdock usually requires two treatments, and occasionally three. Spritz to runoff. It doesn't acidify the soil, and doesn't bother any of the soil micro-organisms.
Not very useful for your scale of things Joseph, but if you have a small kitchen garden or flower garden....
I plant my beans in a thin layer of mulch (to hold in a little soil moisture), then add several inches and tuck it around the roots as soon as the plants are tall enough. Keeps the roots from getting too hot, although that doesn't seem to slow down beans in a desert environment.
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Post by robertb on May 14, 2010 5:36:42 GMT -5
I plant peas and beans through a few inches of mulch, usually grass cuttings. They do fine. I've got some this year which are being grown through autumn-planted onions, and I've left them unmulched. If anything, they're growing less well.
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Post by Rebsie on May 14, 2010 15:44:52 GMT -5
I do exactly what Robert does - mulch my peas and beans with grass cuttings. Particularly peas, because they have such spindly little stems at ground level and it's all too easy to damage them while weeding, so mulching minimises the amount of weeding I have to do. The only problem I've ever had with this is if the mulch is packed too tightly around the plants and rots the stems. Dan's method of starting them off in a small amount of mulch and building it up later is a good way to prevent this.
For me, the thing that makes the most difference is adding plenty of organic matter to the soil before planting them. It doesn't really matter whether it's compost, manure, leaf mould or last year's mulch ... they always seem to be more lush and vigorous when I put some effort into enriching the soil before planting.
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blue rabbit
gopher
He that hath a good harvest may be content with some thistles - John Ray
Posts: 7
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Post by blue rabbit on May 14, 2010 18:25:05 GMT -5
...getting enough mulch to cover my garden is not something that I can reasonably aspire too I'm curious, Joseph - what does one use as mulch in the desert? I have one maple tree in front of my property and it doesn't amount to much in terms of leaves. We picked over 60 bags of leaves last Fall from neighbors. The first thing we built when we moved here 2 years ago was a 3-bin storage unit made of shipping pallets JUST for storing leaves. I'm often being reminded that nature doesn't leave bare soil - be it winter or summer. I'm wondering if peas/beans are something that likes growing through 6" of mulch? I mostly see legumes thriving in poor soils. I push aside the leaves until I reach soil level to plant and then secure an empty pop bottle around the seed/seedling. The neighbor behind us feeds the squirrels peanuts on a daily basis and with no predators, we have an explosion in population. The dig up everything I plant, so I have no choice but to use the bottles. It's not an ideal solution because it can't scale up, but it works for now. My husband experimented last year in sowing broad/fava beans all over the lawn (read meadow). For each bean, he used a chisel to open a crack in the clay, and stuck it in about 5" deep. Didn't water them; he even ran over them by mistake with the lawn mower a couple of times. They were up in a couple of weeks - despite having to compete with weeds - and we would have had some beans but the squirrels ate them all. The clay soil on our property has been neglected for 15 years - no organic matter has EVER been added, some areas are compacted and possibly have salt run-off. Those were tough broad beans! |
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blue rabbit
gopher
He that hath a good harvest may be content with some thistles - John Ray
Posts: 7
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Post by blue rabbit on May 14, 2010 18:29:06 GMT -5
Vinegar makes a perfectly safe, organically approved herbicide that breaks down totally in the soil. I used it last year on weeds that were growing in the cracks in the driveway. It seemed to work well for most weeds - except bindweed. I even have bindweed in some of my vegetable beds, so it's a tough one to deal with. I spent countless hours last year hand weeding the new beds. This year it paid off - I noticed less than half a dozen perennial weeds in each bed. We have about 6,000 sq ft of what used to be lawn 15 years ago - it's now mostly weeds - and that would be a lot of work to try and spray with vinegar. I learnt to let the weeds be - they serve a purpose after all and give us clues as to what's wrong with our soil. My plan is to add 2-3 beds a year until the entire lawn disappears. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 14, 2010 19:18:29 GMT -5
I'm curious, Joseph - what does one use as mulch in the desert? A layer of dust about 3/8" thick... Organic material is so hard to come by around here. [And so full of germs... and molds... and slime... and it's so smelly... ugh! shuddering....  ] Actually I collected like 3 heaping truckloads of compacted leafs last fall and put them on one tiny little corner of my garden and you wouldn't even know this spring that anything had been added. And I'm only slightly exaggerating how glad I am that I don't have to deal with mulch on a regular basis. More shuddering... The clay soil on our property has been neglected for 15 years - no organic matter has EVER been added, some areas are compacted and possibly have salt run-off. I love planting in freshly tilled ground that has just finished accumulating 10 or 60 years worth of organic matter in the form of dead weeds. Regards, Joseph |
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Post by grunt on May 15, 2010 0:52:53 GMT -5
I hand weed the soil in all of my beds. I have a Honda version of the Mantis tiller (4 stroke, very quiet, and never seems to need maintenance), but rarely used it. Almost everything is done with shovel or fork. Since I have couch grass, I spend most of my days this time of year on my knees praying to the garden goddess, weeding (and digging in manure, and mulching, and...) Getting close to the soil that way, I notice moreof what is happening in my soil - wire worms get taken care of, and June bugs, and rose chafers, and anything I can't identify as beneficial. Since I beat the soil out of all of the weed roots as I go through the bed, I get a close look at all of the mycorrhizae that I am re-inoculating the beds with before the mulch goes on. Nature does abhor naked soil.
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Post by WesTex on Jul 11, 2010 17:13:36 GMT -5
Just thought I'd put my two cents in.
I plant my beans up a wire fence instead of netting. That's how i get a wall of beans. Plus it's easy to pick. I space 'em about five inches apart on either side of the fence about two inches from the fence and i stagger the two rows. Fence can be found at home depot or lowes and T-Posts to hold 'em up. I've also had luck with teepees out of bamboo without using string.
I live in West Texas and it's hot and dry. I use two to three inches of finely cut straw. The light color keeps things cooler and the thickness keeps the moisture in. My beans need a little help getting up if the straw's too packed down, but otherwise they take off and go crazy.
My first year, my beans were an epic failure. I found some southwestern heirlooms and life is gooooood now. Just look for varieties that work for your area, use the innoculant if you've never grown legumes in that part of the garden before, and grass/straw mulched in the year before helps with the nitrogen they seem to like.
Hope this helps.
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My beds are covered with 6" leaf mulch, which makes it difficult to weed with a hoe. We have a lot of perennial weeds: bull thistle, bindweed (my nemesis), sorrel, wild strawberry (not the kind you want to eat), etc. We let some thistles grow last year and they reach over 6' tall magnificent towers of prickly beauty - but those in the veggie beds get pulled by hand. The number of pollinators and insects that these giant thistles attract is unbelievable.
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