Beans, Beans Good for Your Heart!
12:00 AM - May 05, 2009
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March may be the busiest month in the vegetable garden. It is when you plant peppers, cucumbers, squash, corn, eggplant, beans, and of course the star of the garden, tomatoes. Before planting you might want to sketch out the layout of your garden. And if you had a vegetable garden there last year, consider it’s layout too. You might want to switch which vegetable goes where. For example this year I am planting tomatoes where last years beans where and beans were the potatoes where. This is my backyard version of crop rotation. Remember that tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and potatoes are all in the same family, so there is no point in rotating them with each other. Beans are a great vegetable to add to your garden rotation because they are nitrogen fixers. Beans have rhizobia bacteria living in nodules on the roots that convert nitrogen in the air (which is in your tilled or aerated soil) into nitrates that can then be used by other plants. If you have a fairly new garden plot you may want to coat the bean seeds with an inoculant first to insure they have plenty of the beneficial bacteria.
Which beans should you plant? Beans; Phaseolus vulgaris (vulgaris meaning common) covers a vast assortment of varieties. There are bush or pole varieties; they come in green, yellow, purple, or spotted. You can choose from snap beans, thin haricots, or flat meatier romanos. Bush beans are easier to grow since they do not require support. They also start producing earlier than pole beans. The Great Outdoors carries about 10 varieties of bush bean seeds, the popular Blue Lake 274, a mixed package of yellow, green and purple, an Italian speckled variety called Borlotto, and Jacob’s Cattle, an heirloom grown as a shell bean. Pole beans have the advantage of producing more in less space. 12-15 pole plants are suggested per person as opposed to 15-45 plants if growing bush varieties. Support can be provided many ways. Last year I used bamboo teepees. This year I am going to try to grow them up the posts of my greenhouse once I take the plastic off. In the past I have used a chain link fence, cattle panels, and an A frame made of 2”X1” laced with twine. You could also make a maypole out of an 8 foot 4”x4” and twine, using a circle of large nails or rebar to secure the twine to the ground. We also carry 5ft x 15ft nylon trellis netting. If you plant pole beans you might want to leave some space to experiment with some more unusual beans like Yard Longs, used in stir fries, or Scarlet Runner, which have showy flowers and can be eaten young or mature. Hyacinth Beans have purple flowers and pods but the seed packet claims they contain toxins and are not to be consumed. This surprised me since some of my vegetable gardening books recommend them and I have eaten them. Heed the seed packet’s advice but still grow them just to enjoy the bright colour they provide. This spring I’m trying Asparagus Pea Tetragonolobus (4 lobed) purpureus (red flowers), a weird shaped bean that is said to be delicious steamed.
Once you have chosen your varieties and planned where to plant them, the rest is easy. The best instructions are on the back of the seed packet. There you will find how deep and far apart to plant the seeds. Some say to place the bean concave side down, but I just plop them in the hole and they always come up. Last year I planted in early March and started harvesting early May continuing picking until the end of May. You can stagger bean planting by seeding every 2 weeks during the growing season to get a longer harvest. Once beans start appearing harvest every couple days. They can be picked young and tender or allowed to fully mature for shell beans but if the pods are allowed to mature the plant will slow down production. By mid to late June production has slowed and spider mites have settled in. This is when I pull them out, or they can be cut down to the roots to keep more of the nitrogen fixing bacteria in the soil. Malabar spinach, okra, or black-eyed peas can be planted in their place. A fall crop of beans can be planted late Aug.-early Sept.
Store bought green beans are machine harvested. They are not bred to be the tastiest, but to be tougher and more fibrous in order to handle being machine picked. My point? Grow some beans, fresh crunch in your mouth beans, beans that are bred to be the tastiest.
