I having trouble posting on this site. I am going to use square foot style spacing of my plants in a row garden. I plan on spacing the pinto bush plants 6" apart, and have several rows together spaced at 6".

I'm going to let the beans dry before harvesting. Is there any reason this wouldn't work? Will they dry properly with plants all around?

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

I can't quite picture your planting style, but that's probably just me, as I'm "spatially challenged." I suspect that the Pinto Beans have a somewhat viney bush form. You can probably plant them 6" apart, maybe even two or three abreast. But then they're going to need a bit of space on either side, perhaps 2-3', to give the plants some room to sprawl.

I bet commercial pinto beans will dry down pretty uniformly. So this should work.

I apologize for the lack of detail. I was posting from my smartphone, and the app is a pain in the app.

My plan is to do a pseudo-square foot planting. Bush beans have a 4" spacing in SFG, but that is for green beans, not dry. I was thinking of doing 6" spacing in the row, with 3 rows 1 foot apart (a little more than I originally posted), then 2 feet between the groups of rows. I figure this will give enough room for air flow and drying. They are 18-24" bush plants.

I did some searching before posting this, and I was surprised to find a discussion about planting pintos using the full-bore SFG method. My experience with SFG is that it's great for small quantities: fresh veggies available for daily meals. That's how Mel B. describes it in his books. For large quantities, for canning, etc., it's a bit of a pain, especially if you're doing it with raised beds (which those in the above referenced discussion were doing).

I think your three rows will appear as one really wide row, by the end of the season. But, it might produce a lot of beans for you. If you can, post pictures later in the season!

Well, another change of plans. A neighbor gardener mentioned the weed problems he's had, especially in pasture-type land that's being turned into a garden. I'm now going to basically do it as a traditional row garden so I can weed with a lawnmower. I'm going to be planting 2 pounds of pintos, so hand weeding is out of the question.

Where are you gardening? Are you in the South? Here in Oklahoma we have Bermuda and Johnson grass. My garden normally turns pretty weedy by mid summer.

Okay, I have a pretty good idea of what you're dealing with. I live in Eastern Oklahoma. I believe we have the same weeds. One approach which has worked pretty well for me is to plant "chunks" of the garden, very thickly with crops which will shade out those weeds. I have used dent corn (Mesquakie Indian Corn), Cherokee Squaw Corn, extremely vigorous squash of the c. moschata family, cornfield beans on the corn, and a number of varieties of cowpeas. Here's a link to Three Sisters Gardening/Green Country Seed Savers .

I've had excellent results using Seminole Pumpkin, Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin, and a white cushaw. These kinds of squash grow wildly in our heat and smother weeds. Here's a picture of some Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkins I planted in my front yard, under some fruit trees. The vines were starting to decline at the end of the season. My wife wasn't happy about her lawn.