You're not doomed. Innoculant is good but some amount of the correct microlife are present in just about any soil already.

You can buy it at the farm supply store or by mail order.

I didn't use innoculant this year because my local feed and seed store
wanted 5.99 for a small bag. I had plenty of bush beans anyway. Don't
know if it would have produced more with the innoculant, but I was
happy with my harvest.

Ever notice how many products at the garden store have a price point right around seven dollars?

I resist buying most of these things. There aren't too many things which are essential to gardening and most of those are cheap. Six dollars worth of inoculant won't produce an additional six dollars worth of beans in my little garden.

Jim

You should never grow beans without inoculant; beans grown under such conditions can develop photo-toxicity.

?????

Hey, I'm just kidding! ;-) This question comes up so often, I couldn't resist rattling the cage.

I concur with previous comments. If you search this forum, you will find many references to the use of inoculant... not many of them favorable. In an experiment several years ago, I found no difference in yield between treated & untreated pole beans. Of several bean species tested that year, only cowpeas (and yardlongs, which are a sub-species) showed noticeable improvement when treated.

The effectiveness of inoculant may be dependent upon the soil fertility, and the method of treatment; it's possible that on poor soils, treatment could be effective. It couldn't hurt to try it, especially on first-year ground. But if anyone has had success with inoculant, and could demonstrate that the inoculant was responsible (say, in a side-by-side comparison of treated vs. untreated) they have yet to post here.