This is so beautiful. I wish I had more time and energy to come out and pick for us and the others, too. And I really need to now since I don't have my beans or peas at all. I'm going to try for the pea harvest, at least. I worked hard to slam my hugel bed together and I should get some stuff. I'm still eye-balling other spaces on the property.

Bon,

Don't worry. We will have plenty to pick. I just bought 200 pounds of PEPH pea seed.

St Francis of the woods has agreed to let us use an acre for potatoes next year. I plan to use PEPH peas as a summer cover crop in advance of potatoes. We will inoculate the peas so they will be very good for the soil. We will pick as many peas as possible too.

Newest garden.

I still have more hand shopping baskets. Would that be big enough for a bean plant or two? I don't have any more permanent space, but lots of dirt that can be thrown in.

It would work if you have a soil-less potting mix that does not contain any actual soil from the ground. Dirt from the ground packs down into a tightly compacted mess and just doesn't work in containers. I heard that all my life, by the way, so never had tried it since I knew better. One year I decided to fill a large container with actual dirt dug right out of the ground and plant something in it just to see how it worked. I figured that at least then I'd be able to discuss the topic with experience behind me. How'd it go? It was horrible. Every time it rained or I watered, that native soil in that pot packed down tighter and tighter and turned brick hard as soon as it was a little bit dry, and the plant roots couldn't grow, and the plant was miserable, horrible and did not grow well or produce well. The soil was slippery and slimey, due to the large clay content and the constant watering needed to try to keep the plant alive. So, I can say with experience that it just does not work.

With a well-drained soil-less mix, you could grow anything in those hand shopping baskets, but I'd line them with some sort of fabric (burlap would work, or those coir basket liners used for hay rack planters or hanging baskets, or even the weedblock fabric---you need something that would keep the soil from washing out of the basket---and then add the soil-less mix.

Remember, though, that beans begin to drop their blossoms without setting beans once the daytime highs are in the 90s, so starting beans now, with DTMs that range from the 40s to the 60s or, for pole beans, even higher than the 60s, means it is likely your beans would not start blooming until the daytime highs already were high enough to cause blossom drop. Generally if the air temperatures are high enough to impede tomato fruit set, they are high enough to impede bean set as well. Southern peas would be a better choice at this point in time since it already is mid-May and the 90s often arrive in June (some years in May, but maybe not that early this year if we stay rainy).

My beans have been in the ground a couple of months now and are producing like mad because they are flowering and setting beans in nice, mild and pleasant weather (well, pleasant except for the river running through the garden). As soon as we get hot, though, they'll quickly be done. Their flowers will bloom and drop, bloom and drop, bloom and drop....and I'll yank them out and replace them with southern peas for a summer harvest.

Dawn

Where is this place?

draej,
Guthrie, Oklahoma USA

Vision Farms, Inc.

Thanks, Dawn. I tried to make the existing potted into mini hugels with leaves and richly rotted twigs. I've decided to begin another hugel. with all this rain and the 3 foot weeds I just chopped down, I've plenty of material to slap into it.

There are a number of potting mix recipes on the net. Mel's mix (square foot gardening) is essentially 1/3 peat, 1/3 compost and 1/3 vermiculite. Some recipes call for perlite instead of vermiculie. I recently read about using DE (diatomaceous earth) instead of vermiculite or perlite. What they were using was an oil absorber from autozone. 100% DE. Supposed to absorb both water and oxygen. Cheaper and larger particle size than the DE used for insecticide. It is not the stuff used in pool filters. I'm trying it in my containers this year.