Sean Straw wrote:
songbird wrote:
Steve Peek wrote:

So why not the bugs? I found the first two Mexican bean beetles today. They
met with an untimely end or perhaps that was timely?

[you do know that mentioning the word "bean"
around here is dangerous right? ]

I'd be interested in hearing why.

when the topic of beans comes up i tend to
write a lot. a joke at my own expense...


I've got 60 feet of row in the garden (2 sides of a 30 foot trellis)
planted with beans this year. I expect to give away quite a lot from
it. When I got done stringing the sisal twine, I did some math, and
realized I'd strung a quarter mile of twine.

i only have a few climbers (pinto, pink and
red beans) and they do ok climbing all over
each other well enough that putting up anything
special for them is more than i want to do.
however, i do have a bit of fence that i put a
row of pinto beans along this year to see what
happens.


are these the same beetles that used to be
sold as mexican jumping beans to kids in the
back pages of comic books (along with sea
monkeys )?

Hmm. Magic crystals (salts), electric shocker (wind up thingy), x-ray
vision glasses (cardboard thingies with a wavy pattern printed on
'em). I wonder how many more dissappointments I could recall. Its
depressing to realize just how much all of those companies preyed on
the comic-book reading youth. Where was the consumer protection
agency? "Provide evidence that your 'Sea Monkeys' hold tridents and
build castles or cease adveritising them forthwith."

heh, it was so long ago, but still amusing.


today and tomorrow, finally planting the north
bean patch, beautiful days to be out.

How many plants are in your 'patch' and how large is it (sq feet, or
for the benefit of the people reading this usenet group via that
infernal gardenbanter site, in sq metres)?

i haven't planted any yet, but it is about 1200 sq ft
for the one garden. some areas already planted with other
things. okra will be on the north edge. i've planted
seven other gardens of various sizes (probably another
1500 sq ft).

and after i get this north bean patch planted
i'll be gradually planting the back strawberry patch as
i get it weeded and ready (but no rush as for this patch
i'll consider the beans a cover crop and a soil improver
depending upon how many get eaten by the critters and
how many survive the soil and lack of general concern
they get because they are so far back and i don't get
there as often as i do other places. plus the whole
garden is on the edge of a large ditch that has
horsetail and a very vigorous grass. to keep that all
from making inroads i will have to do an impermiable
barrier down several feet and the edge is already planted
with hollyhocks too, which are a royal PITA to work
with...). um, yes, a fun project for the spare time
i'm not too likely to get. already with the strawberries
coming in and weeding and keeping up with watering
it's already enough to keep me busy enough for what
i like to be doing... beats work though. ha.


My beans, being pole varieties, are all planted along the north side
of my garden this year. Next year, I'll probably put them along the
west side (as part of rotation).

Rancho Gordo isn't too far from where I'm at, and the Seed Bank store
has started carrying some of their packaged beans (though I'm sure
they're intended more as a food product and not seed stock - I sure
don't need a POUND of seed beans of any one variety.

yeah, here even a half pound is more than i'll
likely use this season for several of the
varieties i have. i'll keep some back as a seed
stock for next year in case i have a complete
failure. whatever i don't plant or save is fair
game for cooking.

i'm planting many many different kinds of beans and
peas along with several varieties and different
sourced beans of the same name just to check out how
they do and how they compare. i plant the dry beans
in the middle areas of the patches or the back where
i won't need to get into that often. the edges i
put in the shelling beans, peas/pea pods, lima beans,
butter beans, and fresh beans (wax, green). it's
nice to not have to have pathways to weed in a patch
if i get them planted right, a better use of the
space too.

mapping it all out and keeping track of the dates,
sources, etc. will be fun to see what happens and
how well this year compares to last year for the
beans i am continuing with.


songbird