French fillet is a type of bean (long and thin) rather than indicating if it's a bush or pole variety.

There must be at least a variety name on the package somewhere, isn't there? Anything that says 'bush' or 'pole'? Anything indicating if support is required?

Do you have a few weeks yet before outdoor planting? If so, stick half a dozen in a small container and see how they grow. Doesn't take long after they germinate to see if they are a pole bean or not.

I've never grown any pole beans. What sorts of beans are pole beans? The point of planting them with the corn is to provide nitrogen for the corn. The beans can grow up the corn stalks. I'm thinking they must be pintos, or some type of bean which is normally dried. Planting the squash with the beans and the corn is supposed to create shade to help retain moisture in the soil.

Spring seems early this year, at least in central New Mexico. The forecast for the coming week is mid-60s for the entire week. So, yes, you are right, justaguy, I could do a little experimenting. If I don't plant the squash with the corn, I could use bush beans. Thanks for the idea!
Lorna

There is no way to tell if your filet beans are bush or pole type until you grow them because I have grown some that were supposed to be "French pole" beans and they turned out to be bush type.

Traditionally most "French" type beans would be pole beans but modern farming methods that use machinery to harvest means that bush beans have taken over.

I would suggest that you don't worry what type this time around, if you plant them next to the corn they will fix the nitrogen and help the corn no matter what type bean they are and you should be able to harvest the beans, it'll just be harder if they're on the ground :-)

even if the beans turn out to be bush variety, you can kinda do the three sisters thing. you may just need to space the squash a little further away so the beans and squash don't crowd too much.

Here is a link that might be useful: My Garden

Oh, mystery solved, thanks naplesgardener. A few years ago, when I began to grow beans I was surprised that I never had to provide supports for any of them. Machinery requires bush beans, of course! I heard that is how Roma tomatoes came about,so machines could pick tomatoes.

Thanks everybody! Comments and advice much appreicated.
Lorna

Not to rain on your parade or anything, but the 3 sisters method doesn't really work the way most think it works.

It is true that beans will add nitrogen to the soil, but it is not true that they add nitrogen to the soil while they are growing.

Beans and other legumes have the ability to remove atmospheric nitrogen. In other words they take nitrogen out of the air. They form a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria that takes the nitrogen secreted from their roots and nodules are built on the roots containing this stored nitrogen (pull up a plant at the end of the season and these nodules are easily visible on the roots). While the beans grow, they use this nitrogen and do not release it to the soil for use by other plants.

Once the beans die those nodules remain in the soil (assuming the grower doesn't pull the plants out by the roots) and as they decompose they release the nitrogen.

I am not saying to not do the three sisters thing as it's a cool way to plant in it's own right. What I am saying is the corn is going to require supplemental nitrogen as it won't get what it needs from the beans until the next season.

I have tried growing the 3 together and its a mess & pain in the butt actually, maybe not for a small gardener.

I do grow some varieties of pole typr beans, mostly as ornamentals, the beans are good eating if picked young before getting hairy, or used as leather britches at a more mature stage or even as shelled beans.
Scarlet Runner have a nice red flower, Painted Lady are red & white in bloom,Sunset Runner have a pretty pink bloosm. The flowers attract Hummers and can be used as edible salad decorations. Kentucky Wonder is probably one of the most common pole types.

'Vermont Bean Seed' has in the neighnorhood of 100 varieties of beans.

Yea, fancifowl, I was astonished to realize how much room would be required to do the Three Sisters method. I do have enough space to do it. The idea of using beans as ornamentals is appealing. Thanks for the suggestion.

I don't even like green beans very much. I'm just doing them for the nitrogen thing. Thanks for the explanation, justaguy. I do know that it is the cover crop sort of scenario which makes beans good for the garden. (Although the way I phrased it would make it seem otherwise!) I usually just grow limas and a few peas. I do like limas. I don't pull the dead plants until the following spring.

I tried applying rabbit pellets as fertilizer today. That was an exercise in frustration. My two youngest dogs followed around trying to eat the pellets. So I stuck some pellets in my blender and added water. They still tried to eat the pulverized pellets.

I've got laryngitis. I couldn't even holler at them! I gave up on the pellets for the time-being. One of the dogs is a fifteen month old Samoyed, heeler cross. I should change her name to Conan the Destroyer. I sure hope she will outgrow this need to be constantly trying to eat everything. All of my other Sams have been purebred males. I never had this problem with any of them, even though Samoyeds have the reputation of being chewers.

I think her previous owners reinforced her chewing/eating everything behavior by giving her blocks of wood rather than teaching her not to destroy things. They gave up on her, and foisted her off on me when she was a year old. The other pup is a ten month old mixed breed. Thankfully she pays attention when I tell her NO. Except today I couldn't say NO, because my voice isn't working. Wish I had a police whistle!

Lorna

Sorry to throw a dash of cold water on this party. The maximum availability of fixed nitrogen corresponds to early flowering stage. Flower and fruiting of legumes use up the fixed nitrogen. So, plant is largely nutrient neutral unless you till in the plant at early flowering.

There are many kinds of beans of many species of bush, semi-runner and running/climbing beans.

A three sisters garden is not for small spots.

The general scheme is: corn planted first in clusters separated by distances determined by available water and nutrition. Beans seed around the corn when the corn reached a foot or so. Squash planted after the beans have started up the corn stalks. T

The beans used were different in different cultures. Back east the early farmers developed shade-tolerant beans whose pods did not shatter open easily. Our lush modern varieties do not do very well in sister gardens.

The Pueblo and Hopi peoples farmed differently than did the forest dwellers of the early colonial times back east.

Justaguy is correct. I had the bright idea of planting tomatoes at the base of my 2 month old peas, thinking the nitrogen fix would feed the tomatoes and double cropping one space.

Wrong.

Those tomatoes were the puniest in the garden. The fruiting peas competed with the tomatoes for soil nutrient. I wish Justaguy had wisened my up before I did that. Won't do it again.

You could have at least handed out umbrellas before you threw that bucket of cold water, Marshallz. Just kidding... Companion plant lists claim that beans are a beneficial growing companion to nitrogen loving plants. I believe that both you, and justaguy, are not incorrect in your statements.

I live in the Chihuahuan desert, so it seems appropriate to give Three Sisters a try. I will have to surround the area with naturtiums and radishes to try to ward off the horrid squash beetles.

I'm guessing the Native Americans weren't growing summer squash, so I'll be using winter squash seeds. I don't care if the green beans produce well, don't much like them anyway. Seed Savers offers a very nice array of beans of the type Southwestern Indians would have used.

Lorna

Native Seed/SEARCH of Tucson is a wonderful resource for traditional variety collected and saved from different tribal peoples of the SW and Mexico. The old method, used prior to extensive impoundments and canal irrigation, relied on knowing where groundwater was close enough to the surface to support cropping. Pits would be dug to moisture. Corn and beans and squashes and other crops would be seeded to this moisture. Individual plantings might be many yards apart if moisture was known to be short. Squash, melons, and native chilis and tomatoes are deep-rooting where soils allow, so can reach moisture at depth.

They grew squashes for seeds, squashes for "meat", and squashes to other uses. Any young "winter squash" can be eaten as "summer squash". Some of the traditional squashes are resistant to squash borers. They also prepared squash flowers and terminal growth for meals.

Marshallz, what does terminal growth mean? Melons grow really well here.

Lorna

It's the little tiny proto-squash that peeks out of the blossom. Marshall, I agree that it makes sense that a legume cover crop would have peak nitrogen in the plants themselves when green and lush and just flowering (I suppose that goes for most any crop), but do you mean that the nitrogen fxed in the root nodules is also at peak and then is entirely exhuasted by the time the plants are completely dried out? I know some recommend cutting off old pea-vines at ground level and letting the roots rot in the ground because supposedly the fixed nitrogen is in the roots......

Pat, There remains some nitrogen fixed as well as nitrogen in the tissue of the old plant. In a sense a legume with active nitrogen-fixing phase is a net-neutral player, leaving soil nitrogen reserves reasonably the same as before growth, given the same temperature, moisture and soil environments. I agree with leaving the root systems in although tillage accelerates denitrification and the value of leaving the roots behind.

The use of legumes for improving soil nutrition presupposes that the crop with be tilled into the soil at early-flowering stage at the time of maximum nitrogen fixing and green biomass.

I ran a test last year using alternate rows of pole beans and summer squash and sweet peppers. During the vigorous growth of the beans, I saw suppression of the peppers but no easily observed effects on the squashes. Toward the end of bean harvest cycle, the sweet peppers picked up and grew more vigorously than rows of the same sweet pepper varieties planted at a distance. Pepper harvest lasted two weeks longer but was delayed by three weeks. Total production between the two groups of peppers were about the same.

I see, so the food-mass taken from a legume crop does not reduce the fertility of the soil, but a matured legume crop used for food does not raise it much either.

This researcher measured the excretion of nitrogen compounds from legume root nodules and stated it varies depending on the media.

Letters to Editor
nature 138, 880-881 (21 November 1936) : doi:10.1038/138880a0

Nature of the Excretion of Nitrogen Compounds from Legume Nodules

ARTTURI I. VIRTANEN

Top of page
Abstract
FURTHER to our earlier communications concerning the excretion of nitrogen compounds from the nodules of leguminous species, I wish to add the following : a distinct excretion occurs only in media capable of absorbing the excreted amino acids.

Here is a link that might be useful: Nature of the Excretion of Nitrogen Compounds from Legume Nodules

Thank you Marshall for launching further arrows into this gardening myth that is propagated by writers who know nothing of the biology involved. I was going to respond to the thread with a similar post, but you have said it admirably.

The only thing I would add is that legume roots tend to be more shallow than most plants, and thus when left in the ground, they leave the crucial topsoil in wonderful condition. Many times I have grown innoculated bush peas as a green manure crop, cutting it down just as flowering begins. Not sure about the Nitrogen (can't easily measure) but the soil conditioning is worth it.

Michael