Is this true? "Runner beans twine around their supports in a clockwise direction. Pole beans twine in a counter-clockwise direction." Sounds fishy to me. I ask because my grandmother always called them "runners" instead of pole beans. I doubt she knew the difference.
... so these beans can read clocks? I'm amazed. I wasn't aware that vegetables can be so smart. I do know they can be religious. Never heard of lettuce pray?
I have never observed that so I can't say, but I grow runner beans on a fence and pole beans on a trellis. Pole beans grow taller than runners for me, but that may not always be true. Runner beans seem to be easier to grow in our climate, too. Runner beans are also generally prettier as well.
Beats me. I thought runner beans and pole beans were the same thing. When I was a kid my dad had fields of bush beans because who's going to put up trellises on 20 acres of beans.
My grandfather planted mostly bush beans, even with just a quarter acre garden. At least a couple of times he planted the vining type beans in with the corn. The beans used the corn stalks as poles. Seems like that could be trouble. Is that common? I remember, only because I had to help pick them both ways.
I have seen lots of gardens with corn mingled with "climbing" vegetables. Not sure it makes sense in a farming situation, though.
What makes sense for a garden, does not always make sense for large-scale commercial farming. Pole beans and runner beans have to be harvested manually in most cases, but continue to bear over the entire growing season. That is a benefit for he gardener but not the farmer. Farmers want beans that all "ripen" at once and can be machine harvested. Beans climbing corn stalks is a method of multi-cropping developed by Native Americans centuries ago as the corn stalk provided a trellis upon which the beans could climb. The third of the "Three Sisters" was the vining squash plant that was planted among the corn and beans and which provided a mulch that suppressed weeds and maintained moisture in the soil.
I've seen that recommended. I don't know if it's purely to save space, or if they're complimentary regarding the nutrients each needs and each returns to the soil.
Yeah, it's pretty much to get two crops on the same piece of land. Plus, the bean plants have something to climb on. A lot of people will plant radishes in the same area that they plant other crops as well, because radishes grow so fast that they don't get in the way.
So? Are we all champing at the bit, getting ready to fire up that rototiller or are we groaning about all the cleaning up we didn't do last fall?
I did my annual Tilling of The Garden yesterday for my neighbors and helped do some other stuff since I had my tractor over there. That got me off of my butt to try to clean out my garden spot. It's about 2,400 ft² and got horribly overgrown...mostly with thorny thickets. I hooked up a cultivator to my tractor and pulled up & drug most of them off, but there's still a perimeter of them around the 6 row electric fence. They're unsightly, and the fence won't work with them touching it. It's gonna rain all day tomorrow. I'll go out later this week, roto-till the main area to turn under the remaining thickets, maybe drag the cultivator again, and try to clean up around the perimeter. I may end up removing the strands of electric fence so I can get at things better, and then restring it. *sigh* If I do replant, I'm gonna have to install another single-strand fence around the existing one to keep the deer out...they jump the 6' electric fence I have there now (I've talked about this before.) I'm told that another fence about 3' out from the existing one will make them pause, not realizing that they can easily jump both...apparently they have poor depth-perception. What sucks is my neighbors only have a 4' mesh fence around their garden and it remains unmolested the entire season (except by rabbits.) My starters get eaten within days of planting. This is my garden when I first put it in. It does not look like that now.
I told my daughter I was going to pull the thorny stuff up but she doesn't want me to as they are black raspberry bushes. They can stay in their patch! I don't need them in the garden, much as I like them in pie.
I went by my friend's greenhouse today. We're gonna work out a trade on some seeds & plants. I was walking my creek a while ago and came across this: It's a chicken/hog feeder that's in pretty good shape. When the investor fixed this place up, the contractors drug all sorts of stuff out-of-sight. They left an old oil tank up by the fire trail, left (3) 55 gallon barrels and an old cast stove in the shed, but drug this all the way down the ravine to the creek. Go figger... My friend has chickens and can use this, so we're gonna trade. I just gotta figure out a way to drag it back up the hill and get it into my truck...and I gotta evict the mice that are living in it.