divaqs's Blog

Overlapping Succession Planting
May 22, 2007 | 9:19 AM PST
Tags: succession planting , garlic , edamame , beans , soil fertility , intensive gardening

I’ve read books and information on intensive gardening techniques. Many talk about succession planting, in which you grow one thing after another as a way to increase the productivity of your garden through utilizing that space more efficiently over a season by not letting the space stand idle.

Succession planting is a great idea and something I sometimes do, though personally I try to follow something a little more intensive, which I believe further increases my yield. I try to overlap my plantings. So, while some of my garden finishes their season I have other garden plants sprouting and getting ready to fill in to take their place.

You can see an example of this in this picture I took this weekend.

 

In the picture you can see garlic plants that I overwintered, which will be ready to harvest near the start of June. A couple of weeks ago I planted edamame beans interlaced in-between the garlic.  The edamame beans are still small sprouts. By the time I harvest the garlic, the beans will be medium sized plants.

By overlapping my plantings I don’t feel like I impair my plants growth since the initial stages of growth of the new plants have very little impact on the previous plants.

The challenge with using overlapping succession planting as part of intensive gardening is the strain it puts on the garden fertility and difficulty in amending the soil. In true sequential succession planting it is easy to amend the soil in-between plantings with compost or some sort of fertilizer, however if there are always plants present in that location, you don’t want to be dumping compost on top of them. I assure you that lettuce and compost don’t make for good salads.

I’ve come up with a couple of solutions to the challenge of maintaining or restoring soil fertility. The first one being that I tend to use some sort of beans as one of my overlapping plantings, since they are nitrogen fixing and increase the fertility of the garden soil for the next plants. In the picture and example above, the edamame beans are a kind of sweet soybean, which have the nitrogen fixing quality to them. I also tend to stop overlapping my plantings for at least one harvest of the year, so I can top dress with compost before continuing. Due to plants being harvested at different times, I have to do this in a patchwork way in my garden. Winter tends to be the best time for me to do this.

From an aesthetics perspective, I think something growing in my garden is a much more pleasing sight than empty areas of dirt, so if I can keep things visibly present in my garden I feel my garden is more beautiful and more of a personal delight.

I have probably more than 1000 square feet of vegetable and herb garden space, so it is a real challenge for me to maintain truly intensive and overlapping planting regimes throughout my garden, but it is something I continue to work on and keep in mind.

Runner Beans on an Arbor
Apr 13, 2007 | 7:56 AM PST
Tags: beans , arbor , edible , landscaping

Sometimes edible landscaping experiments don't work out, and sometimes they do. The fun is in trying something new, which adds an extra layer of excitement to gardening.

A couple of years ago, I tried something new. Something which I was so pleased with, I am planning on trying it again this year. To be specific, I planted runner beans on an arbor in my front yard.

In the picture you will notice that one side of the arbor the beans vines are much more full, while the other side, the vines are a bit more sparse. The difference was in the soil. I tried planting the left side in a rich mixture of compost and the right side in unamended, rocky, and compacted dirt. I was surprised by how well the vines on the right side did, figuring in the bad soil they were planted in.

Runner beans are described in this manner at the seed company, Territorial Seeds, that I purchase my seeds from:
"Phaseolus coccineus: Native to Mexico, runner beans tolerate cool, partially shaded areas better than other beans and make a gorgeous annual landscaping ornamental. For fresh eating pick when the beans are just starting to form in the pod. "

From another source, I learned that runner beans are not self-pollinating and that you need more then one variety for them to produce beans. So, I planted the "Scarlet Emperor" on one side of the arbor and the "Painted Lady" on the other side. Both produced a lovely display of flowers, which were followed by a real bounty of beans.

I found the beans to be really tasty and often enjoyed them as a daily snack when I got home from work. My dog and kids had a real fondness for them as well.

The plants are heavy producers. From this single arbor, in spite of everyone snacking on them every day straight off the vines, I still got so many beans that I froze probably half a dozen large freezer bags of them in the pods, cut to about 1 inch lengths, and canned another 20 quarts. It was a challenge to try to keep up with the amount of beans being produced every few days. I discovered that you do not want to let the bean pods get to full development, which can be a foot long in pod size, since the pods get tough and stringy, unless you are planning on shelling the beans and drying them. I think this is definitely an option, since the beans once dried look a lot like a showy dried bean with swirls of red or pink on them. I am planning on exploring this option more this year.

If you are in to edible flowers, like me, you will find that the runner bean flowers have a nice sweet bean taste to them.