Belated Tuesday Tip: This is a great week to plant beans in the garden. Be they pole beans, bush beans or if you want to try growing your own dried beans, beans are great things to plant from seed and do very well in the pacific northwest. One great thing about planting beans is that the seeds are big enough to survive the slug factor: seedlings getting eaten by slugs before they can really establish themselves. Beans are vigorous growers (once the soil is warm enough for them to germinate, about 60 degrees.) If you are planting greens beans, you should make a choice based on size and color of the bean pod, days to harvest from planting, and if you want pole or bush beans. Bush beans dont need trellising which can be nice, but you will be crouching down a lot to harvest the beans as they can hide in the foliage quite well. Pole beans can grow up almost any structure you have around, cages or poles or an open posted fence. This is a great video about how bean plants make the journey up their poles: newyorker/online/blogs/elements/2013/12/video-do-bean-plants-show-intelligence.html Growing your own dried beans can be very rewarding, and will give you a sense of what kind of work goes into getting those pinto, black beans and other dried beans to the bulk aisle at the grocery. Choose a space in your garden where you can keep the bean plants in the ground until the end of the dry season, as long as possible. The beans will grow to maturity, then the plants will begin to die and the bean pods will begin to dry. You want to leave the pods on the plant until they are brittle and very dry. Sometimes in Oregon thats hard! If you have to harvest the beans early, leave them in their pods and place them somewhere dry with some air circulation, your garage or a drafty basement, and have them on screens of another porous surface to promote more drying (and prevent molding of the pods) until the beans are completely dried out. Then you need to thresh and willow the beans...more fun! I actually really have fun threshing and willowing with basic hand tools in the back yard, and kids get into the process too. Here is a good article about threshing and willowing beans by hand: garden.org/foodguide/browse/veggie/beans_harvesting/458 There are many great dried bean varieties, most seed companies have various options to choose from. Chose them for color if you want, Black Turtle beans, Christmas Lima beans, Vermont Cranberry beans are just a few beautiful options. Any way you choose, follow the spacing guidelines, and let us know what you decide to plant.
Posted on: Wed, 28 May 2014 17:12:43 +0000
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