Tips of Planting good Bean in any Soil

Beans have been the most important vegetable crop through the ages. They are the best vegetable source of life-giving protein, and today in many societies, beans are still the staple of life. Beans are also the one protein source you can keep for a long time without processing. And you can get a heavy harvest from a small amount of work.

Our family relied on dry beans when Iwas young. Every Saturday night (if not more often), the heart of our family meal, like the traditional New England Saturday supper, was baked beans.

Today, with so many bean varieties available, they certainly get the “most versatile” award for the home garden. No matter what kind of bean you grow, you’re bound to be happy with the harvest.

I divide the bean family into four groups.

• Green and yellow snap beans: These beans used to be called “string” beans because they had fibrous strings that ran the length of the pods. The string has been bred out of most varieties. Snap beans come in bush and pole varieties. They are harvested when the pods are young and tender, when they still “snap” into pieces easily.

Beans yield high rewards for little work. Planted in wide rows there is little or no weeding.

• Shell beans: Lima beans, southern peas, and horticultural beans are the best examples of shell beans. To harvest, you have to open the pods or shells, and collect the soft beans inside.

• Dry beans: Here’s where all the protein is. Dry beans come from plants that have completed their growth and produced hard, dry seeds inside their pods. When mature, they are packed with protein. All you have to do is separate the beans from their hulls and store them.

There’s quite a bit of overlap among these first three groups of beans. For example, Red Kidney beans (usually thought of as a dry bean) and French Horticultural beans (usually considered a shell variety) can be eaten first as a snap bean, later as a shell bean, and even as a dry bean at the end of the season.

• Soybeans: Soybeans are in a class by themselves. These beans contain about three times more protein than other beans and are an important crop in many states. Most home gardeners don’t grow them. I grow only a small patch of soybeans because I haven’t found much flavor to them. It’s hard for me to give space to soybeans when I could be growing tasty lima beans. Better-tasting varieties will be introduced before too long, I bet, and then we’ll probably all be growing more protein-rich soybeans.

Beans are warm weather vegetables. I plant almost all my beans when the danger of frost is past and the soil has warmed up. However, I always gamble and plant a few rows of snap beans early, 2 or 3 weeks before the average last frost date. Since even the lightest frost will kill them, I sometimes have to cover the small plants with newspapers to protect them on cold nights. It’s easier work than it sounds— and worth it. Back in my market- gardening days I was usually first with early beans. I remember days when the cars lined up in front of the house and people waited for Jan and me to finish picking them.

Beans are not too choosy about where they’ll sink their roots as long as it’s sunny. They’ll give you a good crop in soil that’s loamy, sandy, rocky, rich, or poor. Beans don’t like wet soil though, but if you grow them on raised beds, they’ll probably do fine.

Beans don’t need much fertilizer to produce abundantly. They are legumes, able to take nitrogen from the air and fix it on their roots. Since they can make some of their own fertilizer, I only add 2 pounds of 5-10-10 or other balanced fertilizer for each 100 square feet of beans.

Inoculate your beans just before planting to help them gather as much nitrogen from the air as they can. Bean-seed inoculant is available at most garden stores.

Beans belong in wide rows. It takes extra seed to plant beans in wide rows, but for a few extra seeds you can grow enough plants to shade out weeds and hold in lots of moisture.

A wide row, 16 or 18 inches, is easy to plant, care for, and harvest. I drop the seeds for snap beans about 3 or 4 inches apart. Lima beans need more room than snap beans so I plant them 4 or 6 inches apart.

Beans do well in single and double rows too, but I’ve found they need more weeding. Put the seeds 3 or 4 inches apart in the row. Sow double rows 6 to 8 inches apart.

Try block plantings of beans if you have the room and want a big harvest. Block planting is good for growing dry beans because they are a “plant and pick” crop. You don’t have to do much while they’re growing, just harvest them when the seasons’s over.

Have a Healthy Bean Crop

Here is how to prevent disease problems in your bean patch:

Anthracnose, bacterial blights, common bean mosaic, and rust are the most common bean diseases. Try to grow varieties resistant to these diseases. A good seed catalog will point these out.

Before planting, use a seed protectant on your beans, especially those you plant early when the soil is a little cool.

Stay out of the garden when plants are wet, because water is often the carrier of diseases.

Rotate the bean crop each year to avoid soil-borne diseases.

Well-drained soil is important for growing beans. If soil stays wet, raised beds are your best bet.

Use mulch for walkways and wide-row growing to prevent raindrops from splashing soil and disease spores on the plants.

Bean insects

The Mexican bean beetle, a 16-spotted ladybug type, is one of the most common bean pests. The adult and the orange-to-yellow larvae feed on bean leaves, often working from underneath.

The bean leaf beetle, a yellowish bug with six spots, feeds on leaves, too, but it’s not as common.

Many people find Japanese beetles on bean plants, but they can be brushed into a can and destroyed before doing much damage.

Bean plants can withstand a lot of damage before the yield is affected, so be careful about spraying them. Many times you can wait until the first big harvest is over.

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