Beans like warm soil, 60 degrees and higher for germination. If you’re planting too early in the Spring, that is 99% of the problem. The other 1% of the problem is chipmunks or squirrels stealing your bean seeds. ;)
You can also pre-sprout beans in wet paper towels inside of a zip-lock, or invest (under $10) in a soil thermometer. But, the great thing about beans is that you can continue to re-seed all through the growing season. :)
I am growing two poles of ‘Saychelles’ (green, pole) this season, but will do a planting of ‘Good Mother Stollard’ drying beans when my cucumbers are done. Cukes are just starting to climb and bloom for me.
How long do you pre-soak them?
I’ve seen seed packages that say *DO NOT PRESOAK*.
I do it with my snow peas since I get that crop in so early. It really makes a big difference with them.
Shucks, my bean post has been sitting out their since this AM and I just came in and sat down and posted, but you had already replied. Should have checked!
Results. I planted 2 year old Contender Bush Bean seed this year. I think I purchased them from Seeds and Such. I had about a 85% germination rate. I have had 5 or 6 pickings and and the next will be the last (probably 2-3 more pounds.) We have been eating the beans at pretty much every dinner, and have been giving bags of fresh beans away, but I also have 12 pounds in the freezer with another another 1 1/2 gallon bucket that should get me to 15 lbs frozen with a total of about 30+ pounds of beans from about 135 sq feet in a bit over 60 days total growing time. If I ever move out to the countryside I will reconsider growing pole beans.
After the next picking (tomorrow or tuesday) I will pull up the plangts, till and replant the area with some sweet potato sprouts which with heat and water should do well. (Baker Creek Korean Gold... Maybe their Carogold S.P. if the ones I had left finally root and kick out some shoots!)
I will probably mound them a bit and run a soaker hose along the ridge. I saw a Chinese youtube where they laid the shoots flat rather than straight up and down because it produced more tubers. I may try that. These S.P.s take 90 to 120 days. I think the heat may speed that up! Replanting in an area that had beans should provide some initial soil nitrogen. Later some P and K fertilizer, but not much N.
Okra is a good heat tolerant plant that I did NOT grow upon direct instructions from Mrs. Pete. She was tired of gumbo.
Homestead report.
Yep, cukes and beans like it warm according to every germination temperature chart I have.
6:20 am, Soil is 77 degrees at seed depth. Water in IBC tank has warmed up to 80 and is half empty. Water run sometime in the next couple of days. Will try and check at 1pm and/or 3pm watering to see how hot the water is that comes out the drip that’s exposed to the sun all day.
I don’t have a controller out there that will read a temp sensor so I nixed the idea of logging soil temp data for now. Some other time.
5 out of 6 squash sprouted.
One Straight 8 and zero Spring Burpless cucumber sprouted.
Three watermelon, 2 of one kind and 1 of another between Sugar Baby and Otome. Can’t tell because something pulled up the Otome marker. It was brittle and is broken up in pieces 2 foot away from the bed.
One Yellow/Cherokee Wax and one Dragon’s Tongue sprouted.
I sowed 3-4 of everything except for the squash.
German Johnson plant finally has several tiny maters forming and it looks like I’m going to be loaded with Rutger’s from the four pack of plants.
Single Shishito plant is loaded with flowers and tiny peppers.
Four Habanero plants are starting to flower.
Celery is not loving the heat of course but hanging in there. Was late to plant them but they had one four pack so I grabbed it to try.
On of my does had her first twins. Saw her laying under a truck by herself yesterday so I guess she was getting ready to birth. Less than a month ago, the other doe had her first successful twins. Twins are the norm for goats but neither of these does had managed to have twins up until now. Went from 6 goats to 10 real quick. Might as well clean out the rest of my automotive/shop stuff and make the shop an official goat shed.
50’ roll of 1/4” drip line with 6” spacing emitters came in — in a 6” coil. Will have to set it in the sun for an hour, uncoil it and string it up to the tunnel sides to straighten it. I also need to make a bunch of drip stakes out of high tensile fence wire.
Waterpump for the truck came in last Thurs afternoon which didn’t help since I work Fri-Mon so I’ll be working on getting that put in this morning. Makes my back ache even more than it already does just thinking about it.
The car still has electrical issues. Been better last couple of days but the truck has nice cold AC anyway and even if I could run AC in the car, it was never great, nor is the heat on a four door economy car.
Need to do laundry, shopping and dishes. All my work jeans have doubled in weight with all the dirt. New IBC tank for the wringer washer needs cleaning to get the original lethicin syrup out. That means putting it in the back of the truck, adding 10-15 gallons of strong purple cleaner or simple green mix and driving it for a few days to agitate and then rinse it out. I need laundry like now so it’s off to the laundromat tomorrow and do shopping while it runs.
Off to play mechanic.