2021 Little Easy Bean Network - Bean Lovers Come Discover Something New !

[heirloomgal]

Pole bean progress. I will start these in pots from now on! Very impressed with transplant results, quite a bit ahead of seed starts and more resilient.

@Bluejay77 The pole beans seem to like the trees more than my wire mesh for growing. Well, I think so. If I had known I would have planted all my network beans on them, instead of a bit of both. But we'll see which method matures the pods faster. I'll be curious to see if there is any difference

One of the raised beds.

Some of the bush bean rows.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@heirloomgal,

Can you give us a photo of the plots you started your pole beans in. I'm curious to see what they are. I think If I would have started mine that way this year I would probably be meeting with success now instead of a failed pole bean grow out.

 

[heirloomgal]

@heirloomgal,

Can you give us a photo of the plots you started your pole beans in. I'm curious to see what they are. I think If I would have started mine that way this year I would probably be meeting with success now instead of a failed pole bean grow out.

The starter pots I used were 4 inch standards, but I can post a picture if you'd like @Bluejay77. The Piekny Jas beans were put into bigger transplant pots, about triple the size. I found the beans transplanted very, very well. All the transplants handled the heat and then prolonged rain much better than the seed starts.

 

[Artorius]

*bounce bounce with happiness!*

how many seeds did you plant? LS would not surprise me if it were semi-runner and some climbers, but i don't expect Huey to be that strong of a climber. so interesting for sure as H may run a bit here but have not been strong runners. we'll see what happens.

i would expect H to be an early profuse bean as both parents were early and profuse which is why i kept growing them until they crossed. the thing is, both parents are bush beans or at most semi-runner. 1 meter is the max i would expect from them too.

now, if your soil is so much better than mine perhaps they'll go all gonzo and i've created monsters? haha. thanks for pictures and letting me know how the adopted babies are doing. i just hope you get seeds back that look as good as what i've seen here. like any parent i'm always sure my babies are the prettiest beans ever so i hope you get to enjoy them too.

@flowerbug ,
I have 5 Lemon Slice and 11 Huey. I received them as part of the network. I will return some of the seeds to Russ in late fall. I hope there will be no disaster until harvest time.

 

[Blue-Jay]

The starter pots I used were 4 inch standards, but I can post a picture if you'd like @Bluejay77. The Piekny Jas beans were put into bigger transplant pots, about triple the size. I found the beans transplanted very, very well. All the transplants handled the heat and then prolonged rain much better than the seed starts.

I might try something similar next year. You can start the beans growing under ideal conditions. Good temperatures and not too much or too little water. Then when you transplant them they are already emerged and up and growing. You can put them out in the sun during the day and take them in at night until your ready to plant them. Probably a better formula for success with the pole beans.

I found something a little smaller online. These plastic solo cups. 3 oz. 4 inches deep 2.25 inches at the top and 1.50 inch diameter at the bottom. I wonder how long you could keep and emerged bean in something like this until it developed a good root ball inside a cup that size and held the growing medium together with it's roots when you decided to dump the root and plant out of the cup to plant? I would probably use miracle gro that I use on my tomatoes for the starting medium for the beans. I would like something small with a smaller diameter so when I planted it I could get it close to the pole that it's going to grow on. I don't want something that has such a wide mass of growing medium and have to dig open such a large hole when planting near it's pole.

 

[heirloomgal]

I might try something similar next year. You can start the beans growing under ideal conditions. Good temperatures and not too much or too little water. Then when you transplant them they are already emerged and up and growing. You can put them out in the sun during the day and take them in at night until your ready to plant them. Probably a better formula for success with the pole beans.

I found something a little smaller online. These plastic solo cups. 3 oz. 4 inches deep 2.25 inches at the top and 1.50 inch diameter at the bottom. I wonder how long you could keep and emerged bean in something like this until it developed a good root ball inside a cup that size and held the growing medium together with it's roots when you decided to dump the root and plant out of the cup to plant? I would probably use miracle gro that I use on my tomatoes for the starting medium for the beans. I would like something small with a smaller diameter so when I planted it I could get it close to the pole that it's going to grow on. I don't want something that has such a wide mass of growing medium and have to dig open such a large hole when planting near it's pole.

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There are probably many options that would work. In my experience with starter pots, there are a few things to consider. The plant will always have vigorous growth in a starter pot because of the way they are able to heat up, and having ideal potting soil. Tapered bottoms can be tricky, depending on how tapered they are because they get tippy. I've snapped tomato transplants in the red cups, even in trays, because they fall over so easily. The cup in your picture doesn't look too tapered though. Seems a bit small though; beans grow quickly in pots and might outgrow those too soon. Having said that, I had backup transplants sitting in my pots for a month, and they transplanted just as well as 2 week old transplants. If you go with any kind of disposable cup, stiff is a good choice because you can stack a dozen at a time together and easily drill holes through the pile all at one time. You can put drainage holes in a hundred cups in no time this way.

Potting mix - miracle grow is one of the more expensive options if doing all your pole seeds, and you'd need multiple bags. I buy a professional starter mix bale for $30 and that will fill several hundred pots. There is a tiny amount of fertilizer in the starter mix but it won't harm small seedlings as some mixes do.

One of the great things about bean transplants I found was if they get too wet in a rain, if I wasn't home for the afternoon for example to move them in, they are dry the next day in the sun. It takes no time at all to dry in a small pot, and that young period is when they seem most fragile to any extremes in temperature and weather- especially moisture. If I didn't have transplants this year I may have lost a lot in all that rain and high heat we had. You can truly wait for frost dangers to end (or excessive heat) too before planting, and not feel pressure to hurry and get them in the ground to get going - especially for longer season pole beans. BIG plus I found with transplants. They will grow just fine in the pots if you still have to wait for better weather before planting. This was where I used to really lose time, and where seed maturity can gain advantage by that few extra weeks. Also, if a seed doesn't germinate there is still PLENTY of time to replant the pot(s) and you are still not really losing time like you would with a seed start because you are already ahead of the game. Another BIG plus.

As for the size of the transplant, I placed mine several inches (maybe 6 or 8) from each tree - my thinking was they will grow a long, searching runner and find it even at a distance of a foot. Many so far have, and the ones that haven't climbed on yet just don't have quite long enough runners to start climbing yet. They are bushing out a little first. The last thing about the transplants, which is a little surprising, is that I find it WAY faster to put in plants vs. seeds. It is not even comparable. And if you have pretty good soil it's nothing to dig back a handful and drop a transplant in. A yogurt size container took less than maybe 1/2 minute to dig out, and then fill in around the transplant. The seeds took much longer in total time to put in. If you do transplants next year, you'll see what I mean. Transplants are the cats meow when it comes to beans! It's like good insurance!

 

[flowerbug]

@flowerbug ,
I have 5 Lemon Slice and 11 Huey. I received them as part of the network. I will return some of the seeds to Russ in late fall. I hope there will be no disaster until harvest time.

i hope things turn out ok there too. i have plenty enough seeds of either of those to replenish a supply or to send another sample so no worries from this end of things. i'm hoping my own grow outs of these this year also work out. i'm glad i put some of them inside the fenced gardens because the deer have been wandering around and sampling the gardens.

 

[Artorius]

I have no problems with large animals. I have a mole problem that has worsened since a pair of storks that had a nest nearby did not return from migration.

 

[Artorius]

If you go with any kind of disposable cup, stiff is a good choice because you can stack a dozen at a time together and easily drill holes through the pile all at one time. You can put drainage holes in a hundred cups in no time this way.

If I can add anything. The drainage holes must not be too large so that the roots of the seedlings do not come out of the cup. They are very brittle and easily damaged when transplanted. I prick the bottoms of the yoghurt cups with the tip of a knife.

 

[Triffid]

To get the most out of our season, the majority of gardeners here start at least their first sowing of beans as transplants.
I've started to use 9cm square pots like these for tomatoes and beans. For beans I've used everything from cardboard loo paper cores to Rootrainers and round plastic pots, and the square type have been marvellous; the best by far. They fit together neatly on a tray with no wasted space. Two beans per pot are quite comfortable together. They do use up a decent amount of potting compost, but this just adds more organic matter to the bed, plus you can dose the mixture with amendments to keep them going until the ideal time to plant them out. There's enough space and nourishment there for them to form a good rootball without slowing down.

Last year when I had a quantity of dwarf beans to grow, more than I cared to transplant, I still soaked them overnight and let them just start to sprout. They wouldn't have germinated otherwise - the ground was so dry for months. I even had to soak the yellow trefoil seed that I was using as a cover crop. I couldn't get the two previous sowings to germinate, even watering daily.

Another method that may work well, if you grow your beans up trellis, is sowing in plastic rain guttering. Peas do fantastically well with this form of transplanting; more importantly, I retain my sanity, as it's extremely quick and easy.
I don't see why it wouldn't work for beans, too. You just slide the whole lot out into a shallow trench next to the trellis. Get the size right and you don't even have to backfill soil. No faffing around with seed trays, small pots or broken stems. The base of the gutter may be over-run with roots but the plants don't seem to mind the journey out, and they establish very quickly.