ABOUT SHELL BEANS

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Discourage aphids with garlic or soap sprays, sticky traps, diatomaceous earth, and wood ashes. Handpicking, Bacillus thuringiensis, and trichogramma wasps can control cabbage loopers and corn earworms. Handpicking, braconid wasps, tachinid flies, and ladybugs are good defenses against corn borers. Catnip, tansy, nasturtiums, radishes, and goldenrod repel striped cucumber beetles.

Heavy mulching helps, too, since the beetles lay their orange eggs in the soil near the plants. Handpick adults (a one-fourth-inch-long, yellowish orange bug with a black head and three black stripes running down its back) from the undersides of leaves. Soldier beetles, tachinid flies, braconid wasps, and certain nematodes prey on this beetle, which spreads bacterial wilt and cucumber mosaic. Planting later in the season may help avoid infestations.

The same preventive measure can be applied to Mexican bean beetles. Find out when the heaviest outbreaks are likely to occur in your area, and try to plant your crop so as to avoid them. Also, check the plants daily for the one-third-inch-long, yellow, spiny-looking but soft-bodied grubs and destroy them, as well as any little clusters of yellow eggs hidden under leaves. Alternate rows of potatoes and beans to reduce pest populations on both crops. (This intercropping, along with handpicking the adults, larvae, and egg clusters, is also effective against leaf miners.) Assassin bugs and the tiny wasp Pediobius foveolatus prey on Mexican bean beetles, but for out-of-control infestations, you'll most likely have to resort to rotenone or pyrethrum.

Most beans, limas in particular, are susceptible to anthracnose, bacterial blight, mosaic, and rust. Combat these problems by buying disease-free seeds and disease-resistant varieties, by rotating the crop every one to two years, and by spacing plants far enough apart to provide for air circulation. Should a disease attack, destroy the infected plant immediately, don't touch other plants with unwashed hands or clippers, and don't sow beans in problem areas of the garden for at least five years following an outbreak. In addition, remember that wet soil not only can rot seeds but also can subject seedlings to damping-off.

How to Harvest and Store

As mentioned above, you should stay out of the bean patch when it's wet with rain or a heavy dew. Instead, choose a sunny, dry day for harvesting. Pick shell beans for eating fresh when the pods are plump but still tender. The more you pick, the more the vines will produce. If even a few beans are left to mature fully, the plants bearing them will take this as a signal to quit.

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