2015 Little Easy Bean Network - Old Beans Should Never Die !

[Blue-Jay]

Sounds like everyone's beans are arriving quickly. That's great ! Just want to thank you all for your participation in saving these beans. Hope everyone has little or no problems with animals and the weather.

 

[baymule]

Russ, I got my beans and planted them this morning. I put them at opposite ends of my small isolation garden. That's where I plant varieties I don't want to cross pollinate. I will keep a log of their growing habits for you.

 

[flowerweaver]

I planted three of the Nyimo beans today in a large landscaper's tree pot near my greenhouse as a control. After they sprout I will cover and uncover these so they get only 12 hours of daylight, to imitate their growing condition on the equator as Russ suggested, and if they don't make by end of season I can take them into the greenhouse. From what I've been reading groundnuts take up to 170 days and I still have 190 growing days outside, so I am hopeful. I'll get the other Nyimo's into the ground soon.

The Imbotyi Chaphaza was planted five days ago and has not yet sprouted, but I expect to see them any day now.

Here is my field of bush, half runner, and pole beans. I was able to get 10' t-posts earlier this week and will put in an 8' trellis this weekend for the extra tall pole beans. The low fence is to keep rabbits and armadillos out. All our property is high fenced to keep out the deer. Field mice are our biggest nemesis.

Here's my Lima bean field. I still have another section of 4' fence to put on top to complete the trellis. It had been ripped off by last summer's tornado. I am experimenting this year with cardboard as mulch. Straw is basically unobtainable and hay is Bermuda which would create a weeding nightmare if introduced. I will likely cover the cardboard with used pine bedding from the coops.

Since our growing conditions are probably very different than most folks here, I thought I'd explain how we grow things. Here in the Southwest we have around 240 growing days, from March into November. Our rain mostly falls during the winter, and then becomes sporadic and often torrential (or even non-existent) in the spring and summer. Although we continue improving the soil with cover crops, there's not a lot of organic matter to help retain moisture.

We must irrigate all our fields daily. We usually do this at night, everything is on timers. Since we have been in extreme drought for several years, water is precious, and our pioneer dug well is slow to recharge. The mineral water clogs soaker and drip lines so we make our own by hand punching larger holes into half inch black tubing every six inches. Seeds are often planted in furrows rather than hills to channel rainfall towards roots. In the heat of summer if something malfunctions in the irrigation system and one or two waterings are missed the plants are likely to die. We must walk the irrigation lines twice a day to make sure there are no leaks or geysers. During summer the water sitting in the lines can become scaldingly hot, which is another reason we water at night. One day we hope to bury the main lines but it's a daunting task through alluvial gravel and rock.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Can you get wood chips for mulch? I've used fresh wood chips in a landscaping beds then the next spring rake them out and replace them. The old wood chips then go on tomatoes and such over newspaper. By the end of the second season, they are normally gone.

Sometimes utility companies clearing trees from power or phone lines will dump a load of wood chips instead of hauling them to a far away dumping place.

 

[journey11]

I planted three of the Nyimo beans today in a large landscaper's tree pot near my greenhouse as a control. After they sprout I will cover and uncover these so they get only 12 hours of daylight, to imitate their growing condition on the equator as Russ suggested, and if they don't make by end of season I can take them into the greenhouse. From what I've been reading groundnuts take up to 170 days and I still have 190 growing days outside, so I am hopeful. I'll get the other Nyimo's into the ground soon.

The Imbotyi Chaphaza was planted five days ago and has not yet sprouted, but I expect to see them any day now.

Here is my field of bush, half runner, and pole beans. I was able to get 10' t-posts earlier this week and will put in an 8' trellis this weekend for the extra tall pole beans. The low fence is to keep rabbits and armadillos out. All our property is high fenced to keep out the deer. Field mice are our biggest nemesis.

View attachment 7026

Here's my Lima bean field. I still have another section of 4' fence to put on top to complete the trellis. It had been ripped off by last summer's tornado. I am experimenting this year with cardboard as mulch. Straw is basically unobtainable and hay is Bermuda which would create a weeding nightmare if introduced. I will likely cover the cardboard with used pine bedding from the coops.

View attachment 7027

Since our growing conditions are probably very different than most folks here, I thought I'd explain how we grow things. Here in the Southwest we have around 240 growing days, from March into November. Our rain mostly falls during the winter, and then becomes sporadic and often torrential (or even non-existent) in the spring and summer. Although we continue improving the soil with cover crops, there's not a lot of organic matter to help retain moisture.

We must irrigate all our fields daily. We usually do this at night, everything is on timers. Since we have been in extreme drought for several years, water is precious, and our pioneer dug well is slow to recharge. The mineral water clogs soaker and drip lines so we make our own by hand punching larger holes into half inch black tubing every six inches. Seeds are often planted in furrows rather than hills to channel rainfall towards roots. In the heat of summer if something malfunctions in the irrigation system and one or two waterings are missed the plants are likely to die. We must walk the irrigation lines twice a day to make sure there are no leaks or geysers. During summer the water sitting in the lines can become scaldingly hot, which is another reason we water at night. One day we hope to bury the main lines but it's a daunting task through alluvial gravel and rock.

Great post, Flowerweaver! I really enjoy hearing how others do things and what challenges they face in the garden. Your part of the world is so different from mine. I end up having to hill things to get them UP out of the water! I have a hunch your are right about the day length for your Nyimo beans. That makes so much sense.

Here's hoping your hard work and ingenuity pay off for a bountiful season! Keep us posted.

 

[flowerweaver]

@Ridgerunner wood mulch and chips take a very, very long time to break down in an arid climate, we even have to water our compost piles! Our utility company hires a local contractor who sells the mulch. We had to fight them to keep our own. We have tons of mulch from all the trees we lost in the tornado, but I'm using that for the flower beds, because I won't have to haul it far. One of my chicken coops is not too far from these fields.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Sounds like some of our gardeners. We keep two mulch piles, one on the side (mostly kitchen scraps) and one in the back (mostly lawn stuff) Our gardeners kept trying to sell us mulch, but we said we had our own. So one day we came home and discovered that after one of their weekly visits, someone had carried both our mulch piles away. Sure enough the next day they came back with a load of their mulch and tried to sell it to us again (this time at an even higher price). To top it off, when we still turned them down, they proceeded to dump the mulch in front of our front path, so as to block road access to our house (and, theoretically, get us in trouble with the Village, since the pile was also blocking anyone from using the road there)! That was basically the last straw with those guys, we fired them and got another company.

 

[Blue-Jay]

That looks neat growing pole beans inside your homemade wire cages attached to steel T posts. I'm going to grow my tomatoes on metal T posts from now on. When we had some heavy rainy days last summer and the soil got a little soft the weight of the tomatoes pulled over my 1x2 pine poles I cut out of furing strips. I might try a couple of pole beans that way this summer if I can find the square fencing wire like that just to see how that would work out for me. Trouble is storing everything in the winter. I only have a two car garage and it's already pushed for space. It will be neat to see more photos of your pole beans as they grow.

 

[teamneu]

I've been reading the prior years' Easy Bean threads and have learned that beans shouldn't be soaked before planting as it might kill the seed. Would it be helpful to wrap them in wet paper towels for a day before planting?

My gardening experience is limited to what I remember my Dad doing when I was a kid. When I was first married in 1981, I tried a fall garden, which drowned in October when we had 20+ inches of rain in a freak occurrence. After that, I didn't have enough sun or space or energy until now, although we tried growing flowers & veggies in cattle water troughs on our concrete driveway, which did get a lot of sun. This wasn't overly successful as I'd forget to water, until last year when my 16yo daughter took an interest. This is my second year with a garden on a small farm we have in OK, and I am loving it!

 

[Blue-Jay]

I've always had the best success with beans just direct seeding the dry seed to the soil. If your soil has a decent moisture content when you plant you would be surprised how fast and how much water your bean seed will pull from the soil. If after planting your soil is bone dry like it might be during a drought you can water a little to allow the seed to have some moisture. Small bean plants usually will emerge from your soil in about 7 to 10 days. Well worked soil for a garden planting contains about 1/4 air. I'm not sure but there might even be some exchange of gases from the air that's in the soil with the seed during the germination process. flowerweaver might know more about seeds when planted in soil in this respect. One thing about germinating bean seed. They just need to be damp. They don't need to be sitting in a flood of water.