Monday, May 11, 2009

Beans are not musical, nor are they a fruit

I planted the beans over the weekend. I have three varieties this year: Provider bush beans and two pole beans Trionfo Violetto and Molly Frazier White. I soaked them all for a few hours, then mixed them up with some innoculant.

Last year I let my pole beans climb on the fence supports, but it wasn't user-friendly. This year we had to do something else.

Hmmm. What to do....what to do....

Hey, how about those 15' bamboo poles we keep tripping over in the garage?


So, Saturday I cut them down to about 10', tied them into tripods with bungee cords, and ta-da! Pole bean supports are born!

I propped them all up on the bank and climbed up there, which made it easier to do the bungee cords.


I climbed back down and dug a fairly deep hole for each pole, then set them up, tamped down the dirt around them, and planted the beans.


So, up they went.

And when the wind blew, down they came.

Hmm....

I carefully picked the beans back out of the dirt, dug around the bases of the poles and put a pretty big rock at each one, put the dirt back and replanted. So far that's done the trick, hopefully they won't blow over again.


I think they look quite nice. You can see the pieces that I cut in the background, we're probably going to use them for....uh....

2 comments:

Little Ant said...

I have been experimenting with various trellis ideas. It is so difficult finding what works best. I am going to try trellis netting for the first time. Fingers crossed. :)

inadvertent farmer said...

LOL...having 4 boys I know that rhyme by heart...love it as a post title! I'm going to try experimenting with bean support this year too. Kim