Natural Gardening Tips for Growing More Beans - Intensively and Fast

Try this fast and simple gardening tip for growing beans in vast quantity - without erecting a clumsy conventional bean typee out of canes. Climbing beans will grow in a tiny root space so why not exploit that?

You merely need an Ultra-Intensive Trellis. First,erect a frame out of PVC pipe. It is often available in 10ft strips, which is a perfect size. Use three uprights so you don't get sagging in the midpoint and sink some 18in deep, with a crosspiece at the top.

Along the top piece, tie degradable cord every few inches. That way at summer's end, the whole thing can be hauled away to the compost bin. Tie another cord at soil level, between one upright stake and the next. Then tie the hanging strings to the stake.

Another idea, often seen in Europe is to put another piece of pipe along the bottom - and double-loop the cord around it. And run the cords up and down. It's less work than knotting each cord individually.

You then sow three rows of climbing peas or beans along the bottom strut. Each seed goes on either side of the vertical string, 4in from the string. Your next step is to sow another seed right below the bottom string, centred between each vertical cord.

Add more seeds to the front and back of the vertical pipes. And you sow your seeds at just two-inch intervals. It's true, no more than two inches apart.

You'll end up with 30 foot of row equivalent in merely ten feet of growing area. As your vines flourish, you'll soon have a massive fence of beans. A true wall o'beans!

Intensive bean growing in temperate climes

It's easy to do this in a warm southern zone where you have good light and the summer days are extensive, sunny and warm. In fact, in the tropics, climbing beans are productively sown a mere one inch from each other. So long as the beans get enough light on their leaves, and ample food and water, climbing legumes will grow together as tightly as radishes.

However, if you live in more temperate climes, sow your seed a prudent distance of three inches apart and line your rows in a North/South direction so they have the most light.

Amazingly, a trellis with three rows of beans very close together works well even in a cool zone given ample watering, say, from a leaky hose. So thickly do the plants grow, annual weeds are almost entirely suppressed.

Indeed, don't bother weeding between the beanwalls, except in the early days, because the beans mulch each other. Weeds don't harm a well-started legume.

To have your plants suppress weeds is one of the principles of natural gardening. It's a key tenet of bio-intensive gardening. However, if you're growing heirloom varieties do erect your trellises three foot apart. And confine each trellis to a single variety.

That's far enough so that your climbing beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), the 'common' bean, will not easily cross-pollinate. So the resulting seed at end of season stays pure.

Don't grow more than one variety of runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus) in your garden, however, if you need to save the seed and preserve its integrity. Or especially, if your neighbor is raising a different strain. Runners need an isolation distance of at least one mile.

What's the easiest answer? Give your neighbor some of your own rare runner bean seed. So it won't be a problem if the plants cross-pollinate. Better still if your crop fails you can borrow back some seed!


------

Dr John Yeoman PhD is chairman of the information network for natural gardening ideas, the Gardening Guild. Discover hundreds of clever plans to get more fun, food and profit in your garden with less cost and work in his big manual Lazy Secrets for Natural Gardening Success. Get it for free at:
http://www.gardeningguild.org/lazy