Tips for Growing Great Beans in Your Garden

There are different kinds of beans you can grow in your garden, pole beans, which like to climb and need to be trellised somehow or bush beans which do not climb and do not need a trellis., there are also beans in different colors but green beans are the most popular. All beans have the same basics though when growing. First of all beans are a warm weather crop, make sure you plant them after the last frost, and beans do well planted directly into the garden and not started from seedlings. Beans grow best in rows or blocks and pole beans will usually need some directional help in climbing. Here are my tips and things I try to follow when growing beans:

1. Soil, the beans like a slightly acidic soil, if you have a soil test kit try to get your soil at around 6.0 pH level. Make sure to keep the soil moist and loose too! Beans have shallow roots so I like to lay some mulch around them to help keep them protected and moist.

2. For bush beans, if you plant all the seeds at the same time, they will all grow in at the same time, so I like to "stagger" my planting, planting the seeds 2 weeks apart, this way one crop comes in, when that has been picked and eaten or frozen, the next crop comes in, for a constant cycle of beans to eat!

3. Bugs, bugs loves gardens, but not everyone wants to go out and buy pesticides to spray on their plants, there are many different organic option, one thing that has helped with not only beans but everything in my garden are marigolds, they work great to keep away the aphids. I transplanted some already grown marigolds I bought at the garden store and also started some direct from seeds, both work great in the garden,s o for me I saw no difference in starting it myself as opposed to planting an already established plant.

4. Try companion planting. Another good organic way to keep plants growing good and bugs away. Growing certain veggies, herbs and plants near each other can be beneficial. Corn and beans grow great together since corn uses nitrogen and beans give off nitrogen, chamomile is a wonder herb that can be planted near anything in your garden to help it grow, keep bugs away and attract the good bugs. Onions and beans do not grow well together. I keep eggplant and cucumber growing near my beans and that works great together. Savory is a great herb to plant near your beans, I never knew savory was an herb until I started gardening and always though it was an adjective to describe food, but it is a tasty peppery type of herb!

5. Pick beans when ready, usually they can easily snap, take one off for a taste test, but do not leave beans on the plant longer than necessary because they will turn stringy and lose flavor, and the plant may stop producing. It is also been said that picking them when wet can spread disease to the plant so make sure they are dry.

6. Watch out for powdery mildew, which is a white fuzzy sort of substance on the plant. If you see it starting on any spots, clip it off, even if it has flowered or has growth going on. Powdery mildew can and will spread and it will affect or kill your crop and the mildew will spread to other plants. Some people have sprayed a solution of milk mixed with water on their plants to treat powdery mildew, but I usually buy a spray from the garden store. Both methods seem to be more of a preventative than a cure, so if you see the problem not going away, unfortunately for the sake of the rest of your garden the best bet is to pull the plant before it becomes a bigger problem. If you do try the milk test a spot on your plant first to see how it will react.