2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[meadow]

4 inches between plants in the row, about 8 inches between rows. In a dry year, it is insanely productive. In a wet year, you're in trouble!

...and in a dark year, only the plants on the outermost edges will reach anywhere near full potential.

@jbosmith I followed the Square Foot Gardening model for beans I wanted to sample (no seed saving) with pretty much the spacing heirloomgal mentioned. Well, actually I did 4 inch spacing all around for smaller beans and 4 inch with 8 inch rows for larger beans. This worked well for green beans that bordered a major walkway. The dry beans on the interior of the bed (planted in 'block rows' that were 1 foot wide with 1 foot walkways in between) did okay, but I will be giving them more space next year.

Another drawback to what I did: as the bushes drop leaves there is too little air circulation and they are prone to mildew/mold like @heirloomgal mentioned.

 

[heirloomgal]

Of all the beans I planted this year, network bean Fissole Rassacher is the only one with curled pods. Usually I find curled pods on the late side, but these are really drying down now (mind you, I gave them a headstart with transplants). It's a neat little pod type.

The Yer Fasuli bush beans are rolling in too. Milk chocolate beans.

I blinked and these started going to seed! These are so different from P. Vulgaris which takes its sweet time getting to maturity. I hope rodents don't like them. Some of the plants seem suspiciously short on pods.

Weather is looking great, in the upper 70's for the next week, dry and sunny. Yay!

 

[flowerbug]

I'd say first work out your width/girth. You'll want there to be room enough between the rows you can walk between them without knocking things over (unless you plant to bend over plants to harvest them). I suppose that also means having a rough idea of the final girth of the plants as well, are they really bushy and are going to be as big around or more than they are tall, or with most of their growth be upwards?

One real problem you might have with soybeans is that, in my experience (@Zeedman correct me if I'm wrong) most soybeans are pretty short, so you are going to be doing a LOT of bending over for harvest. The real fact is, that, while you certainly CAN grow any soybean on a small garden scale, once you leave the Edamame types, you aren't going to find many DESIGNED for that, for the same reason you won't find a lot of wheat or oats specifically designed for the small patch gardener. These are all field crops, and so have been selected for field growth. A lot of the things one might find advantageous for a garden crop (like staggered ripening and multiple flushes) just aren't going to be easy to find (that's part of WHY I go on these seed searches, in the stuff that is less important is a lot of the genes that got left behind during breeding selection.)

normally when i'm harvesting soybeans i'm pulling the plants and then plucking pods off the stems. i don't bend over for each plant, but as many plants as i can grab and then stand up and pluck. if they are dry enough and i don't have enough time to stand there i will put them in large paper bags to finish plucking and shelling another time. if i have a lot of pods and a big enough harvest i've used pillow cases and large chunks of cardboard to roll the beans away from the chaff.

i've run into trouble with molds mostly when i've interplanted and some plants have finished earlier than the others. today i noticed more of that had happened. yet i still had good results from other interplantings (like adzuki and lavender).

 

[flowerbug]

Opinion time: If you were going to block-plant hobby scale quantities of either bush P. vulgaris or soy beans, what spacing(s) would you use? I feel like most of the spacing online and in books has more to do with harvesting equipment in farm fields than actual plant needs.

i've tried all sorts of things. so far my best lessons are that block planting works but spacing varies by variety.

do not intermix until you know they will mature and dry down at about the same time.

i'm always experimenting and often learn something but a lot of the time what i learn is that i shouldn't do it that ways again.

this year i tried double rows slightly raised in some gardens and even much more raised in gardens where the soil is often too moist. i'm going to be checking one of those gardens tomorrow for the first time in about six weeks so it will be interesting to see how they're doing.

the double rows i've ended up not liking how they've gone. the plants mostly just flopped off to the sides into the row spaces between. so not doing what i was hoping (supporting each other). so next year i'm going to block plant even more than i have this year and go six or eight rows together for the bulk beans plantings. i think that will be a better use of the space and the plants will better support each other and i'll have less flopping into the spaces between (because there won't be spaces between other than between the blocks).

my smaller beans that are shorter i'll plant closer together and the bigger plants and semi-runners i'll give more spaces so they can sprawl more.

in some cases the Purple Dove beans i planted intermixed did provide shade for other plants and i had some really nice rows growing when i didn't expect a lot of the seeds to sprout at all (they were old but did well anyways). during the hot and dry spells we had those rows were growing pretty well and i got a nice return from them, but it is more complicated and i think i'd have done well just block planting instead.

with an unknown variety of bush beans i'd start at six inch spacing and see how it goes.

 

[Blue-Jay]

cooking a pot of beans up right now - a mix of Purple Dove and Navy Pea beans. they smell good - wish they were done i'd have some for breakfast...

Monday I made up my 5 quart stock pot of my Chicken and bean soup recipe with onion, celery, carrots, 5 crock potted chicken breasts, 2.5 cups of worchester sauce, and of course a pound and a half of home grown beans. That is my dinner around 2 to 3 pm everyday.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Opinion time: If you were going to block-plant hobby scale quantities of either bush P. vulgaris or soy beans, what spacing(s) would you use? I feel like most of the spacing online and in books has more to do with harvesting equipment in farm fields than actual plant needs.

I can't tell you about soy bean spacing but bush P. Vulgaris. My seeds in the row are spaced at 8 inches apart and rows are 40 inches apart.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Opinion time: If you were going to block-plant hobby scale quantities of either bush P. vulgaris or soy beans, what spacing(s) would you use? I feel like most of the spacing online and in books has more to do with harvesting equipment in farm fields than actual plant needs.

The only "block planting: I've done was with bush green beans in a 4' x 8' bed. I planted rows 12" apart with 8" spacing. No real science or plant needs behind that. With the bed 4' wide I could reach in from the sides. With that spacing I could search individual plants for beans when harvesting. I'd typically leave three plants on one corner to produce dried seeds and harvest the rest as green beans. Mold and mildew wasn't usually a problem unless the weather was really wet.

One year I tried a 12" between rows and 12" spacing in half the bed and did not see any improvement in harvest.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

normally when i'm harvesting soybeans i'm pulling the plants and then plucking pods off the stems. i don't bend over for each plant, but as many plants as i can grab and then stand up and pluck. if they are dry enough and i don't have enough time to stand there i will put them in large paper bags to finish plucking and shelling another time. if i have a lot of pods and a big enough harvest i've used pillow cases and large chunks of cardboard to roll the beans away from the chaff.

i've run into trouble with molds mostly when i've interplanted and some plants have finished earlier than the others. today i noticed more of that had happened. yet i still had good results from other interplantings (like adzuki and lavender).

Well, as I mentioned, you can do that because soybeans are a field crop and have been bred so that the ripe pods will just stay there until the later ones catch up. If what you are working with still hasn't gotten the shattering gene bred out of it (like my wild soybeans) you don't have that luxury (though, to be fair I don't KNOW my wild soybeans have the shattering gene; I was so sure they would I hand plucked each pod as it ripened so it WOULDN'T shatter. So I never found out if it actually did.) And then it's a question of pick as you go or lose a decent chunk of the crop.

 

[flowerbug]

next year i'm going to do some block planting because while on the whole i'm happy with my current production levels for bulk bush beans - i'd still like to see if i can get enough uniform varieties of plants to support each other and keep more pods out of the dirt until i can get them picked.


Smalls:

Adzuki, Sunset, Sunrise and Red Ryder will probably be ok at 6 inches.

Mediums:

Appaloosa, Painted Pony, Lavender, Purple Dove and the Lima beans are good candidates for 6-8 inch spacing.

Sprawlers and Larger plants:

Yellow Eye (and any other semi-runners) will probably work better with more space so 8-10 inches for those.

the most important thing is for me to keep my network small plantings of beans away from other beans. i did ok this year with most of them, but a few almost got overrun by neighboring beans i didn't know the precise habits.

i also need to remember which plants are later and which are earlier and no more mixed plantings. while the mixed plantings do give me extra results in production the efforts of going through and finding the early beans and getting them picked isn't really time-effectively spent. i could have some areas already cleaned up and turned under but i have mixed plants that are still going in there so i can't do that.

 

[meadow]

Next year I plan to follow Adaptive Seeds' model for bush dry beans and plant in 44" wide beds with 3 rows at 1 foot apart. I was going to do 6" spacing, but will change that to @Bluejay77's and @Ridgerunner's 8" spacing instead.

Hanging the beans in the sun is a great way to dry them down! We've had several full days of sunshine and what a difference it makes!! Even the still-producing plants are noticeably progressing every day. Even some of the (cherry) tomatoes are beginning to ripen. Maybe there is hope for the regular tomatoes too. 🤞