Planting Double Rows of Blue Lake Beans
Growing Blue Lake & Green Crop Beans
On this week's episode, Travis is planting two different varieties of beans on double rows in the vegetable garden. The first variety of bush bean is Blue Lake which is great for canning and eating fresh from the garden. The second variety is known as Green Crop Bush Bean which contains a flattened appearance with heavy yields of stringless pods. The best time to plant beans is in the spring after the last frost date has occurred. Depending on the soil temperatures, seeds can typically germinate between 8 to 16 days. To get more production, beans can be succession planted every couple of weeks throughout the spring and early summer. Succession planting allows for a steady amount of production throughout the entire growing season and maximizes our space in a small garden area.
Planting Double Rows
Planting on drip tape has many benefits for the garden area. A couple of these benefits is the reduction of soil erosion, improved plant health, less water waste, and saves time in the vegetable garden. Unlike overhead watering, drip tape penetrates directly to plant roots where the water and nutrients are needed the most which in return produces healthier plants. As well as, save water because you are not wasting water on unnecessary areas in the vegetable garden like the walkways where plants are not planted. Another benefit of drip irrigation is you are able to maintain weeds from taking over your entire garden area. To set up drip tape irrigation in the garden we recommend using our Double Wheel Hoe with the Drip Tape Layer Attachment. This attachment makes laying drip tape easier and turns a two-person job into a one-person job. We also highly recommend burying drip tape to ensure the emitters stay upright and prevent animals from ruining the tape in the garden. To easily bury the drip tape, you can attach the plow set attachment on the double wheel hoe to bury the drip tape and make furrows along the garden row. When planting on double rows, we place the drip tape buried in the middle of the crops to equally distribute water and fertilizer to plants. Planting on double rows allows us to maximize yield in the limited space we have in the garden area. We suggest planting double rows with 3-inch spacing and as close to 6 inches apart along the garden row. If you prefer single row spacing instead you can plant them with 2 to 3 inch spacing in the vegetable garden. Travis recommends direct seeding beans, but you can use the garden seeder with the #6 seed plate adjusted to fit the seed size. When planting beans they should be planted thick along the garden row and thinned to the desired spacing.
Other Bush Bean Varieties
The other bush bean variety we offer is known as the Provider. The Provider variety has heavy-yields that can be planted earlier than traditional bush bean varieties. It makes uniform-sized pods that are normally 5 to 5 1/2 inches long and round. Unlike other bush bean varieties, this provider variety produces better in cooler soils and tends to continue production into the warmer months. This ensures that we have a longer harvesting window that maximizes production in the vegetable garden throughout the growing season as well. Another benefit of planting this provider variety is the disease tolerant characteristics it contains especially for downy mildew, powdery mildew, pod mottle virus, and common bean mosaic virus. Having a disease tolerant plant variety helps us control diseases/pests and allows us to have healthier plants in the vegetable garden.