Beans

I have never had great success with beans.  I don't know why.  I have tried but what I have gotten from my efforts wouldn't even serve my family of 4 one meal. 
Stupid.
I hate putting major effort into something (not to mention money and water) and not get something out of it.

 

 

So this year I decided to over kill on the beans.

 I started back in April and put beans in my garden window to get an early start. I used last years empty containers from my annuals, a simple planting mix and

Kentucky Pole Beans seeds, um, beans, um, seeds, you get the idea.

Anyway they came up so fast that I was concerned that it wouldn't be warm enough in the garden for them before they out grew the containers. You can see next to them by comparison my heirloom tomatoes that were barely up.

 

 

On to garden prep. I am a 'square footer'. Maybe there is a club for people like me or an institution :) But because I am a 'square footer' my prep is easier that it has been for years. I used to be dragging out the rototiller at this point. But this year I started with putting new compost over the entire bed and working it in. Added a couple of extra squares (planting potatoes in those) and an old garden swing to use for my stringing up the beans.

I love recycling stuff.

 And yup, that's me in the picture

(shades of peter pan, just wish I could lose my shadow for the pictures).

 

 

More of me in the picture - Also cleaned up the planting bed and put in the beans. I planted them with a mix of bone meal/Epsom salts/crushed aspirin/egg shells to give them a boost right off the bat. This was their first day out in the garden by themselves.

'Sleep well little beans'  

See in the back my lettuce/spinach/chard box still going strong.

Just a note here that the box that the beans are going in is one of my part shade boxes. I have a huge apricot tree in the middle of my garden (poor planning but really no where else I could put the planting boxes). So this area of the garden gets only 4 - 5 hours of sun per day. The corner box where the lettuce/spinach/chard is gets maybe 3 hours which is great for them.

They are totally not sun worshipers.

 

 

 

 

Okay so not so good of a shot but you can see the progress. I ran the string around the back bar of the swing and then over the top and then looped it under the grid work for the square foot garden. That's Pippa butt in the picture. My Lab-Hound mix. She's barking at Taco, the chi-weiner, next door.

Are you allowed to say butt on a blog? Butt.

 

 

 More beans. And yes I did put more bean seeds in the front about 2 weeks ago once the one's in the back got rolling. Some 'purple beans' and a breed called 'rattlesnakes'. I'm experimenting.

If I don't get beans this year then I'm going to shoot myself.

Maybe.

The old swing works pretty darn good.  See in the upper left hand corner that blue bottle hanging there.  That's bug spray.  When the little buggers are eating my beans I have recourse at hand. 

'Die you bugs'.

So far I haven't had any bug problems but I am prepared :)

 

I've been fertilizing every two weeks with fish emulsion.

Makes everything stink but doesn't burn my plants.  They seem to be loving it. 

Biggest challenge is Pippa thinks it smells wonderful and tries to eat my dirt or roll in the plants. 

She is now exiled from the garden.

 

 

Just a couple of shots of my potato box hiding in the back.

 

 

Happy Gardening