Sunday 7 June 2015

... all about beans

Hello everybody,

Hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend. The weather here was just about perfect. Sunny, not too hot and a good breeze. Lovely.

We "rented" our neighbours wonderful son Noah to give us a hand for a couple of hours yesterday. He is just a great kid.

Frank, Noah and I got two more veggie beds installed and while I weeded out the location for the next bed, Noah wheeled in barrow after barrow of the triple mix and completely filled bed #2 for me. 

And that brings me to the topic of this post. 

Beans.

I love to grow them and love to eat them. What I do not like is to plant them, find that some of them have not germinated and then have gaps in my planting. I know, picky. What can I say.

I have come up with a way to reduce the chance of that happening.

I pre-germinate the seeds before I plant them.

I simply lay the seeds on a sheet of paper toweling, cover with another sheet, and spray very thoroughly with water. I keep them in a plastic box to keep in the humidity. It usually only takes a few days for the little devils to bust out and send out a little root. Remember all this from grade school when we all grew beans in science class?





 At that point, I plant them. None of them has gone so far as to send up a shoot or seed leaves. I want them in the ground before they do that so there is no chance of sunburn on the new baby leaves.



I plant them all 4 inches apart, marking the bed off with my finger and a ruler.



Then I poke my finger down the depth of the root and gently slide then into the hole. When the entire bed is planted out I simply take my rake and tap hard all along the top of the bed. This sends soil down into each little hole and firms things up. Lastly I water the bed really well.




And then I wait.

With any luck, those little green shoots should be up within a week or so.

Well, that is it for me to tonight. Hope you have a great evening. Thanks for visiting with me. Cheers.

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