How Beans Grow
If you've ever walked by containers of bulk seed in a garden store, you may have been surprised by the many different colors, sizes and shapes of the beans -- even by the variety of designs on the seed coats and their descriptive names: 'Soldier', 'Wren's Egg', 'Yellow Eye', 'Black Eye', and others.
Maybe you were impressed, too, with how big some of these seeds are. Underneath the large, hard seed coat is an embryo, a tiny plant ready to spring to life. When you plant a bean seed, the right amount of water, oxygen and a warm temperature (65oF to 75oF) will help it break through its seed coat and push its way up through the soil.
The Seed of Life
Most of the energy the young plant needs is stored within the seed. In fact, there's enough food to nourish bean plants until the first true leaves appear without using any fertilizer at all.
As the tender, young beans come up, they must push pairs of folded seed leaves (or cotyledons) through the soil and spread them above the ground. Beans also quickly send down a tap root, the first of a network of roots that will anchor the plants as they grow. Most of the roots are in the top eight inches of soil, and many are quite close to the surface.
What Beans Need
Beans need plenty of sunlight to develop properly. If the plants are shaded for an extended part of the day, they'll be tall and weak. They'll be forced to stretch upward for more light, and they won't have the energy to produce as many beans.
The bean plant produces nice, showy flowers, and within each one is everything that's necessary for pollination, fertilization and beans. Pollination of bean flowers doesn't require much outside assistance -- a bit of wind, the occasional visit from a bee, and the job is done. After fertilization occurs, the slender bean pods emerge and quickly expand. Once this happens, the harvest isn't far off.
Although beans love sun, too much heat reduces production. Bean plants, like all other vegetables, have a temperature range that suits them best: They prefer 70oF to 80oF after germinating. When the daytime temperature is consistently over 85oF, most beans tend to lose their blossoms. That's why many types of beans don't thrive in the South or Southwest in the middle of the summer -- it's simply too hot.
Beans don't take to cold weather very well, either. Only Broad or Fava beans can take any frost at all. Other types must be planted when the danger of frost has passed and the soil has warmed up.
Wide Row Planting for Beans
For years, many gardeners have planted their bush bean seeds in single-file, straight-line rows with lots of room between the rows. However, some gardeners consider this method a waste of valuable growing space and not the most productive way to grow beans.
Instead, these gardeners use a wide-row technique that allows them to double and sometimes even triple their bean crops. With this method, you simply spread seeds over a wide seedbed, instead of putting one seed behind another in a row. The wide area contains many more plants than a single row of the same length, so you can harvest much more from the same area.
A row 16 to 18 inches across - about the width of a rake head - is very easy to plant, care for and harvest. With a little wide-row experience, you may want to try even wider rows.
Why Wide-Row?
The advantages to wide-row growing are many.
* You can grow two to four times as many beans in the same amount of space.
* Weeding is reduced to a minimum. As the beans grow, their leaves group together and form a "living mulch," which blocks the sun, inhibiting weed growth.
* Many gardeners spread mulch - organic matter such as hay, pine needles or leaves - around all their plants in the garden to fight weeds and retain moisture in the soil. Wide rows mulch themselves, so you only need to use small amounts of mulch to keep weeds down in the walkways and to help retain moisture. You'll also have fewer walkways using wide rows, so you really can save a lot of space, effort and mulch.
* Moisture is conserved by the shade because the sun can't scorch the soil and dry it out as much. Moist soil stays cooler, so beans in very hot climates don't wither as much or stop producing as quickly.
* The plants in the middle of the rows are protected from the full effects of hot, drying winds. They don't dry out rapidly like those in a single row. This can be especially important in water-short areas of the country.
* Harvesting is easier with wide rows. You can pick much more without having to continually get up and move down the row. It's pleasant to take a stool into the garden, sit down and enjoy picking beans by the bushel.
How to Plant Wide-Row Bush Beans
Prepare the soil. Using a steel garden rake, smooth out the seedbed. Be careful not to pack the seedbed down by stepping on it. Do all your work from the walkway beside the row. If the soil is dry, wait to water until after planting. If you water before, you pack the soil down.
Stake out a row 15 to 18 inches wide (or wider if you like) and whatever length you want. Drop the seeds three to four inches apart from each other in all directions in the row. One two-ounce package of snap beans covers roughly 10 feet of rake-width row. Firm the seeds into the soil with the back of a hoe, and cover the seeds with about an inch of soil. Using a rake, pull the soil from the side of the row and smooth it evenly over the seeds. Firm the soil again with the back of a hoe.
Leave a path or walkway wide enough to walk on once the plants have grown and spread out. You'll need at least 16 inches, and more if your cultivator or tiller is wider.
Remember, wide rows work well for all beans except the pole varieties.
Single Row Method
Single row is another planting method to use. The best way to plant a single row is to make a shallow furrow with a hoe. Drop in a bean seed every three to four inches, cover the furrow with one inch of soil and then firm it. A two-ounce packet of bush snap bean seeds sows a single row 30 to 40 feet long.
Double Row Method
Make two shallow furrows four to five inches apart, and plant in the same manner as for a single row. This arrangement is especially handy if you need to irrigate regularly. You can put a soaker hose - a kind of garden hose with tiny holes in it - between the two rows and water the plants quite efficiently.
Another easy irrigating system with the double-row system is to dig an additional shallow furrow in between the two seed rows. Make this channel when you're planting the beans. To water the beans, simply run water down the channel between the two rows of plants.
Using Raised Beds
If you garden where it's very rainy, if your soil stays damp or if you have clay soil, planting in raised beds is a good idea because the soil drains better. Good drainage helps to prevent diseases and warms the soil more quickly early in the season.
Try to build up the seedbed four to six inches above the walkway. To get the most for your extra effort, plant a wide row or at least a double row to guarantee a plentiful harvest.
Caring For & Harvesting Beans
Once you've planted beans, you can relax because growing them is easy. They grow very well all by themselves, and that's one of the prime reasons they're so popular with home gardeners. To have a satisfactory bean harvest the two most important things are to stay out of the garden when it's wet to avoid spreading diseases, and to keep picking snap beans when they're young for a continuous harvest.
Weeding Fundamentals
The third important thing is to be careful when weeding. Beans grow quickly and shade out weeds, particularly if the beans are grown in wide rows. If you've prepared the soil well, your weed worries will be few. The only time to be concerned is when beans are very young, before they've developed their leafy shade.
If you're working around young bean plants with a hoe or other weeding tool, or if you're cultivating between rows, remember to stay near the surface. Weed seeds are tiny and must be very close to the surface to germinate -- not like beans, which are planted at least one inch deep. A gentle stirring of the top 1/4 inch of soil every 4 to 5 days pulls the germinating weeds out of the soil and exposes their roots to the sun, which kills them.
Shallow is Better
Deep cultivation is bad for two reasons: It injures the roots of the beans, and it brings more weeds up near the surface of the soil where they'll germinate. A good time to cultivate is after a rain but when the plants are completely dry and the soil has dried out a little. This is when many weeds start to germinate.
Once the bean leaves grow enough to shade the ground, there shouldn't be any weed problem within the row, and a good heavy mulch or regular cultivation in the pathways should take care of weeds there.
Harvest Time
It's best to harvest snap beans when they're just about the diameter of a pencil or even a bit smaller. Simply snap them off the plant - take care, though, because hard jerking may tear the vines, reducing later harvests.
Pick'em Young
For the best flavor and nutritional value pick snap beans when they're young and tender. You really can't overharvest snap beans. When you pick the pods, you encourage more blossoms and more pods. That's because the plant is trying to produce large, mature seeds to complete its life cycle. When it succeeds in producing seeds, the plant will stop blossoming and making pods, so keep picking.
After your first picking, you can probably pick again three to five days later. Just pick, pick, pick, and in order to keep the harvest going as long as possible, don't let any seeds develop inside the pods.
Picking Green Shell Beans
When shell beans are young, they're greenish. They begin turning color when they're ready for picking at the green shell stage. 'Horticultural' beans turn a strawberry roan color, 'Kidney' beans become red and limas mature to a creamy white color. When you pick them, pick only the pods without damaging the plants.
Picking Dried Shell Beans
By: the Editors of National Gardening
It's easy to produce dry, mature shell beans for winter storage. In warm parts of the country, the beans and pods will mature and dry very well right in the garden. In the North, it's cool and sometimes wet in fall, so the beans often require additional drying. Pull up the plants and pile them around a fence post, roots to the post (like spokes in a wheel), to dry them some more. If you're having a wet fall, hang the plants from rafters in your garage or your attic. Anywhere that's airy and relatively dry will do. You can hang the plants themselves or put them in burlap or mesh bags. It's easy to tell when the beans are dry: They're so hard, biting into one won't even make a dent.
Threshing
Threshing by hand sounds like an old-fashioned chore, but it's simply the removal of the beans from the pods once the beans are dry. To thresh, take some of the plants by the roots - pods, beans and all - and whack them back and forth inside a clean trash can. The dry pods shatter, and the beans drop into the can. Toss the threshed plants aside and pick up the next bunch.
There are other ways to thresh beans, too. A fun method is to put the plants, again pods and all, in a big burlap or cloth bag. Then get a bunch of kids to walk and jump on the bag for a few minutes. Roll the bag over, and let them jump some more. Because the beans are dry and hard, the kids won't hurt them a bit. You can also let them have a good time hitting the bag with a baseball bat. Then open the bag, vigorously shake the plants to make sure all the beans are out of the pods, and remove the plants. You'll just have beans and small bits of debris, or chaff, in the bag. Alternately, you can cut off a small corner of the bag and let the beans drop out, leaving the plants inside.
Old-timers used to thresh beans with a homemade bean flail. The flail was made of two wooden sticks (one short, one long) hitched together at one end by a leather strap. They gripped the long stick and whirled the short one against a pile of dried bean plants laid out on a sheet of canvas on the floor of a barn. It was important to hold onto the long handle and use the shorter one to flail. The short stick couldn't whirl back and rap one's knuckles. After flailing awhile, you lifted the plants with a hay fork, shook them and then tossed them aside for the compost heap, leaving behind a pile of beans and chaff.
Winnowing
Once you've threshed the beans, you need to separate out the chaff, and that's called winnowing.
On a windy day, take a basket of beans - chaff and all - and, holding it up high, pour the beans slowly into an empty basket on the ground. Repeat this a few times. The wind will blow all the chaff away as the beans fall. (It's a good idea to put a sheet under the basket on the ground to catch any beans that miss or bounce out.)
If you have a friend to help you winnow, spread the beans and chaff on a spare window screen outside on a windy day. When the two of you lightly jiggle and shake the frame, the chaff will blow away, leaving only the beans.
Sorting
The final step before storing shell beans is sorting. It's important to remove the discolored, immature and misshapen beans from the good ones, because the bad ones could affect the taste.
An easy way to sort beans is to spread a white sheet over the kitchen table and pour the beans onto the sheet. The sheet makes it easy to roll the beans around, allowing you to check them carefully. Using this technique it's especially easy to spot bad white beans. Sorting is a chore, but if you enlist a friend to help, it can also be a time for a chat.
Dry beans will keep well in tightly capped, airtight containers, stored in a cool, dry, dark spot.
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