Growing Beans

(Page 3 of 3)

June/July 2009
By Barbara Pleasant 
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Be stingy with fertilizer. Beans benefit from fertile soil with a slightly acid pH (between 6.0 and 6.5), but once they are up and growing, beans make most of the nitrogen they need (which they use to nurture their crop of seeds). When growing beans in a new garden site, inoculating seeds with nitrogen-fixing bacteria before planting can help kick-start this process. Even simpler, scatter a few spadefuls of soil from last year’s bean patch into new planting sites.

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Use bush beans as a cover crop in warm summer weather. You can turn the plants under, or pull them up and compost them.

In the Kitchen: Cooking Beans

Kids of all ages love to munch garden-fresh green beans, especially sweet and tender filet types. Extra green beans are easy to blanch and freeze, and rehydrated dried snap beans taste almost as good as fresh ones. Gather some of your soup beans at the mature green stage to use in succotash and other summer dishes, and dry the rest for winter. Green beans are a good source of fiber and vitamins A and C, while dry beans are rich in B vitamins and minerals. Team up beans with grains (such as rice or corn) to get prime protein from both foods, as beans and grains contain complementary essential amino acids.

See also: Discover Real Green Beans, Three’s Not a Crowd and Savoring Bean Gleaning Season.

Barbara Pleasant is a veteran MOTHER EARTH NEWS contributing editor, award-winning book author and one of America’s most trusted garden writers.
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