In my last post I wrote some generalities about Potatoes. Perhaps it is my favorite thing to grow because it is so very easy and Ann can mash a potato like a professional. But the Victory Garden is not about seeing how many carbs you can feed yourself and your family, it is about feeding everyone a healthy diet for a year. This requires a lot of calories, potatoes have loads, but you also need sufficient protein and nutrients to keep everyone healthy on a limited diet. In this article I will discuss the proteins.
In a normal American diet, meat is the protein of choice. Meat usually comes with a lot of fat and unnecessary chemical content which the body must absorb or eliminate. In most third world diets protein is often eggs or fish. Eggs also come with a good fat content in the yoke and few down-sides. But raising enough protein derived solely from eggs to feed a family of four requires keeping four hens per person and this is expensive. True, you can eat the birds themselves, but chickens and eggs are a good supplemental protein or a fair cash crop if you have space and enough insects and seeds to stave off buying feed. Fish is a wonderful protein source, but again you have to eliminate the chemical content. Fishing is expensive, but it can be a cheap protein source if done regularly and with some skill learned of doing. Flesh derived protein is expensive and we are trying to eat well for little cash money and little work time in the garden. Physicians usually try to limit flesh protein to about four ounces a day in prescribed diets. So if we follow their lead we can seriously cut the food budget and be healthier by replacing flesh proteins with a better source, like beans.
There are an enormous range of beans varieties, each is distinctive in flavor, so a few varieties in your garden will open up quite a few culinary choices. Like potatoes, beans are usually fairly easy to grow, deliver many more minerals and other nutrients, and offer a wonderfully clean protein source without animal proteins down-sides. You can grow most beans varieties in fairly poor soils, using natural fertilizers, with very little work, and minimal water.
The basic set of truths about growing a sufficient amount of bean proteins are few.
- Truth number one is that beans love to congregate. The love company. So growing beans in the same rows as your potato crop allows two crops with the single footprint. This means better water distribution and less weeding work.
- Truth number two is that harvesting beans twice each day will deliver more beans per plant than harvesting once per day and they are better to eat whole with their pods. Harvesting just once a day means better size of fruits, but missing a few each day happens easily. And harvesting a few times a week will give you a variety of bean sizes and storage products for Winter eating and much wider the cooking choices, but none of the qualities for eating whole with their pods.
- Rule number one is that you will need to add nitrogen to the bean crop regularly. This is done by making "mulch tea" (we'll get into this later) and delivering it directly to the roots of the plants. If you combine growing potatoes and beans in the same spaces you need to avoid delivering too much mulch tea to the potatoes or they will get enormous without adding very much more fruit. You want low potatoes and tall (pole) beans to share the sunlight better.
- Rule number two is that you will have some insect damage to the leaves, but not the fruits, and this is not at all avoidable. These same insects tend to eat potato leaves as well, but not the fruit. Getting rid of these insects will mean better crops, but chemical insecticides are expensive and really hard to get out of the fruits of both plants, so they must not be used. (Read down the page a bit and I'll try to give some ideas on how to keep the insect populations down without hurting yourself or your wallet.)
- Rule three is that Beans are a serious commitment, much more so than potatoes. You will certainly have to put more time into the project and, depending on the type of beans you are growing, may have to construct supports or they will climb all over anything they can reach the sunlight.
Growing beans is very easy to do, harvesting is fun and usually this can be delegated without a lot of hassle. The seeds are widely available and the fruits of your labor can be dried and saved for planting next year. Beans are a really sustainable crop which offers a great source of protein in abundance.
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| The chief difference between Bush and Pole Beans is the thickness of the main stem. |
Laying out your rows is perhaps the most important step.
There are two basic types of bean plants. Pole beans are vine-like and climb. Bush beans are bush like and support themselves like a shrub might. The fruit of both types is roughly the same, though not all varieties come in both types. Choosing the beans you want to try means understanding the differences prior to picking your seeds,For me the choice comes down to deciding what type of light will be available to the plant and whether I want to build support systems for the pole beans. Once I have the garden laid out on paper I can see where the plants will shade others, retarding their growth. The sun shines directly downward only a few hours of the day and caused few shadows, for much of the day the sun either shade one side of the plant or the other. So some care ought to be used when laying out the garden to maximize available light to all of the plants.
Some Victory Gardens will have few choices, but all of them are choices about how the sunlight will work with the plants.
- For smaller spaces, like buckets or pots. a single bean plant can often be added to the top of the planter and moved to gain the best light as it comes to different places.
- If your garden space doesn't really lend itself to rows then the best choice is to use mounds of soil distributed into the spaces you have. This allows the maximum space utilization while working around existing plantings. Simply work your beans into the mounds as space permits, more is not always better. Square foot garden schemes are a form of mound gardening, but in a frame.
- If you have space for rows, then things are easier. If you have a lawn, this is prime space for putting in rows. Laying the rows out is a matter of choice too.
- You might run your rows directly from east to west. This allows sunlight running down the rows from sun-up to sun-down, but shades other plants equally depending on the time of season and the angle of the sun.
- You might run your rows from south to north as well. This shades other plants differently early in the day than it does late in the day, but might be better as the season changes and the sun's angle increases or decreases.
Once you have some idea of what your garden plan might look like, you can move on to picking seeds.
Picking Seeds
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| Blue Lake Bush Beans The use a lot of sunlight and don't share space well. |
"Green Bean", but this is misleading since all beans make "green beans" that you can eat with their pods,. You can just as easily grow Pinto, Red, Navy, Black, or White beans, and call them "green beans" if you pick them when they are very young and eat the with their pods.
The Blue Lake bean is simple to grow, easy to care for and, depending on how you harvest it, can deliver a wide variety of bean products.
- New beans are wonderful for quick blanching and serving on a plate in-season.
- If you let the bean gain some size it can be cooked longer to make it more tender. This is what people usually pressure can as Green Beans for off season eating.
- The pods of mature beans can be opened and the beans removed to serve (like peas), or hot bath canned for serving out of season.
- If you let the beans ripen on the vine until the pod turns brown, you will arrive with a very thick bean which is too large for simply serving on a plate. The fully formed beans can be shucked from their pods and air dried to allow for re-hydration in the off season.
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| Blue Lake Pole Beans More structure, but they share space well. |
There are quite a few variations on the Blue Lake Bean, both pole and bush types are readily available nearly anywhere you find seed for sale. There are many variations, but generally the fruits are roughly the same.If you can only choose one bean to grow, the Blue Lake 247, either bush or pole variety, is a solid choice for a robust and tasty bean that has many good uses. But there a so many others worthy of some space. Just remember, the Victory Garden is about feeding people all year around, not necessarily eating well all of the time in a world with a wide range of culinary choices.
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Each variety has it's own particular needs in the garden and the yields vary widely. Most are easy to grow and require little daily care other than harvesting throughout the season as they become the size you desire or the color they are supposed to become.
Peas are often considered beans since they grow in a similar way, harvest the same way, and cook in the same way. The chief difference is that peas have hollow stems, which makes them a bit more fussy and demanding of water. Peas and beans are usually shucked from their pods and dried for later use. Both are canned easily but require a pressure canner whether in or out of the pods. There is some nutritional difference, but this is mostly about variety and growing conditions. Beans like it hot, the hotter the better in most cases. Peas work better in cooler climates so they grow and ripen a bit slower.
Whether you wish to call them peas or not, you will treat both just the same. Daily picking is a must if you want your plants to keep growing new pods, you will want to check for insects every time that you go to harvest, and you'll want to keep watering on the roots and not the leaves. If you do all of this, and follow just a few more suggestions, you will have an abundant harvest all Summer long and into the Fall.
Fertilizers and Pest controls
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| The Japanese Beetle |
Picking them off with your fingers is a good way to keep their populations down but removing individuals only goes so far.
Adults eat leaves in a pattern known as "skeletonization" (they eat the tender bits between the veins in the leaf). Seeing leaves eaten away until they look like lace is a sure sign of Japanese beetles. Adults are voracious eaters and happy propagators when well fed. The leaves they remove put the plant under stress and a colony of Japanese Beetles can empty whole plants of their leaves pretty quickly. If you find the Japanese Beetle in your garden, and it is likely that you will, picking them off of the plants in the early going is vital to your success.
The only good way to spray your plants without harmful chemicals, should the beetle be well established, is to spray with a mixture of detergent soap and water. Simply mix two or three tablespoons of detergent soap into a gallon of water and spray it on both sides of every leaf. The beetle's breathing apparatus is on the outside and the soap covers up the gills, suffocating the beetles. The solution also kills other insects as well, so staying on top of things to avoid spraying even this nearly harmless solution will preserve helpful propagators and predator insects. You might want to keep a jar of this soap solution in the garden so that you can drop beetle into it when you find one and pick it off the plants.
The Japanese Beetle lays its eggs in the soil which hatch larvae that eat the roots of grass plants. It is hard to keep all grasses out of the ground in a garden, especially a Victory Garden which is often surrounded by lawn. Depriving the larvae of its food will help to keep the populations lower, but if you see patches of crass dying off there is a good possibility that the beetle may be trying to establish itself. Treating the ground with chemical pesticides is the only way out of the larvae problem, so it is far better to control the adults to death than to fight with their kids.
This beetle eats a wide range of plants, but some plants actually work to block Japanese and other beetles.
- If you plant garlic, chives, leeks, or onions, in and around your crops the smell drives the beetle off. Just remember that ripe onions and garlic can effect the taste of root vegetables like carrots radishes and potatoes. Harvesting these crops at the time they are full mature will keep things tasting right.
- There are a few really good flowering species that block many beetle types, including the Japanese Beetle. Planting Chrysanthemums and Marigolds in a hedge shape which surrounds you garden, and perhaps in on the margins of your walking paths, will keep beetles away naturally. These flowering plants are hardy growers, even from seed, and make fantastically colored hedges at the margins of your garden, a double bonus. We often find Bumble Bees living in our Marigolds, another double bonus of having happy pollinators supported by beautiful flowers. Our Marigolds produce a tone of seeds, so if you want them to remain neat, you ought to cut the flowers off as the die back. Planting Mums and Marigolds is highly recommended, but the Japanese Beetle will probably make it into the garden none the less.
This is not the only beetle to look out for.
Cucumber Beetles are death to a large number of crops. Their favorite foods are cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins, and melons. All of these can be inter-planted with potatoes and beans so take care to keep a wary eye on the garden for these yellow beasties.
Cucumber Beetles are death to a large number of crops. Their favorite foods are cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins, and melons. All of these can be inter-planted with potatoes and beans so take care to keep a wary eye on the garden for these yellow beasties.
We have a real problem here at Creekside Farm with these yellow beetles. There are some good sticky traps you can hang out in the garden. Most have a hormone bait which hangs inside the trap. The biggest problem with these traps is keeping them dry and free of dirt that blows around. They are expensive, but also work well. Hanging traps, about one for three, thirty foot rows, catches a huge amount of beetles. For the most part it is better to catch these things and drown them in a detergent soap mixture bucket than to fight off the larvae. But if you get infested you can use the soap mixture described above or buy some Neem oil to spray. Neem oil is a natural curative, but prevention is worth many pounds of cure.
There are a myriad of other problematic bugs out there, but beetles are by far the most destructive.
Fertilizers
For natural fertilizer you cannot beat Mulch Tea for effectiveness and low costs. You can mulch nearly anything, put a few scoops of the mulch into a bucket with some water, and pour out the water at the base of your plants, for a quick boost in plant nutrition. Remember than not all plants like a lot of nitrogen and most mulches are usually high in nitrogen. Nitrogen makes leaves very healthy, but also encourages root growth. In root vegetables you really only want the nitrogen at the top of the plant where leaves grow, not at the roots. So judiciously putting Mulch Tea only at the base of plants (not on the leaves themselves) will do very much good, but over fertilizing might negatively effect root crops.
Leaf mold, the leftovers from piling up disiduous tree leaves and waiting out the Winter, does a great job of slowly releasing nutrients, and it also blocks weed seed germination too. We build a pile of garden and yard debris from cleaning up at the end of Fall. By time early Spring arrives we can till it into the soil to quick start the next garden. (Corn stalks mulch down slowly, so cut up the stalks to get them to break down quicker.)
Straw also blocks weeds while slowly releasing nitrogen and water. We use Straw on all of our dirt paths in Winter to keep the mud off of our shoes and then scrape it up to start the new mulch pile in late Spring. In a Ruth Stout Garden, straw becomes a deep mulch bed over years of putting new layers of straw down. This may be the best method, but we are only trying it out this year for the first time.
Nutrient poor soils, those lacking potassium in particular, can be fertilized by putting grass clippings around the base of the plants. This works especially well with fruit trees because making fruit uses a lot of potassium. Finding a professional gardener with a truck load of grass clippings he is willing to dump in a pile for you is not difficult. A word of warning about this: Grass clippings pack tightly and rot quickly, if they are not given enough oxygen will grow anaerobic bacteria which stink like elephant manure and make the mulch completely useless. Better to put the clippings out right away if you get them making sure not to put the clippings against the plants themselves. Also, grass clipping piles produce high internal temperatures, creating steam, which also smell like elephant dung. So use the clippings or turn the pile regularly to keep things fresh. Never try to make mulch tea solely using grass clipping mulch because it is a mess.
We use mulched horse manure and straw on the beds at Creekside Farm. Our beds are too numerous to use grass clippings. Manure is nutrient and nitrogen rich, but it must be at least a year in the mulch pile before it is decomposed enough to be useful. If the manure is too new there will be far too many plant eating bacteria in to for safe use on live plants, and Horse urine has entirely too much ammonia. So be sure your horse manure smells pleasant when handled before deploying it into the garden. We put out a great amount of this stuff at the onset of bed preparation for tilling into the top one inch of soil. The worms just love it and help out by pulling it down into the garden soils. Cow manure works exactly the same way, if you can get it cheaply enough. As I write this I have three truckloads of Horse manure out in piles to be distributed onto the beds to prepare for planting in a month. If the manure has been properly composted the job is really very pleasant. If the manure is too new, or there are a lot of other things mixed into it, the job can be unpleasant and difficult.
Leaf mold, the leftovers from piling up disiduous tree leaves and waiting out the Winter, does a great job of slowly releasing nutrients, and it also blocks weed seed germination too. We build a pile of garden and yard debris from cleaning up at the end of Fall. By time early Spring arrives we can till it into the soil to quick start the next garden. (Corn stalks mulch down slowly, so cut up the stalks to get them to break down quicker.)
Straw also blocks weeds while slowly releasing nitrogen and water. We use Straw on all of our dirt paths in Winter to keep the mud off of our shoes and then scrape it up to start the new mulch pile in late Spring. In a Ruth Stout Garden, straw becomes a deep mulch bed over years of putting new layers of straw down. This may be the best method, but we are only trying it out this year for the first time.
Nutrient poor soils, those lacking potassium in particular, can be fertilized by putting grass clippings around the base of the plants. This works especially well with fruit trees because making fruit uses a lot of potassium. Finding a professional gardener with a truck load of grass clippings he is willing to dump in a pile for you is not difficult. A word of warning about this: Grass clippings pack tightly and rot quickly, if they are not given enough oxygen will grow anaerobic bacteria which stink like elephant manure and make the mulch completely useless. Better to put the clippings out right away if you get them making sure not to put the clippings against the plants themselves. Also, grass clipping piles produce high internal temperatures, creating steam, which also smell like elephant dung. So use the clippings or turn the pile regularly to keep things fresh. Never try to make mulch tea solely using grass clipping mulch because it is a mess.
We use mulched horse manure and straw on the beds at Creekside Farm. Our beds are too numerous to use grass clippings. Manure is nutrient and nitrogen rich, but it must be at least a year in the mulch pile before it is decomposed enough to be useful. If the manure is too new there will be far too many plant eating bacteria in to for safe use on live plants, and Horse urine has entirely too much ammonia. So be sure your horse manure smells pleasant when handled before deploying it into the garden. We put out a great amount of this stuff at the onset of bed preparation for tilling into the top one inch of soil. The worms just love it and help out by pulling it down into the garden soils. Cow manure works exactly the same way, if you can get it cheaply enough. As I write this I have three truckloads of Horse manure out in piles to be distributed onto the beds to prepare for planting in a month. If the manure has been properly composted the job is really very pleasant. If the manure is too new, or there are a lot of other things mixed into it, the job can be unpleasant and difficult.
Organic chemical fertilizers are okay to use, but expensive. Try to find rotting plant solutions to feed your garden to save money and keep you food clean.
Trellising pole beans and peas
Pole beans and peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, and some melons, all benefit from trellising to keep the vines off of the ground. Water on the leaves of these plants is generally a bad idea. Water promotes fungus, bad for plants and definitely bad for the fruits of plants dependent on healthy plants for energy to store. A proper trellising scheme makes harvesting much easier and promotes healthy plants. There are a number of ways to do this well. Most use Bamboo as the basis for good support. If you look at the free section of Craig's List once in a while you will find someone trying to give away Bamboo stakes for free because you cannot mulch it and it is hard to burn. |
| The Tee-Pee Shape is good for Mounds and for Pots. The Tent shape is better for rows. |
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| Weaving whips and canes also works very well. |
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| String makes a good trellis material. But use stuff that will rot away in a year. |
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| Simple stakes with string is wonderfully efficient. You add more string, higher up the stakes, and the season progresses. |
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| This is wonderful to look at, but hard to harvest in the middle. |
Drying and Canning Beans and Peas for Storage.
Preserving beans for later use is why you do a Victory Garden. Eating well in Winter is your goal. Dehydrating or preserving beans in glass jars is how this is done.
I am not an expert in canning beans. I do know that you will need a pressure canner to do the job, but search around find better sources of information before attempting to do this. Improperly canned foods can make you sick or kill you outright.
Dehydrating can be done safely in a few different ways. It is relatively easy to do also, since beans and peas are fairly low water content. Nature's plan was always to allow beans and peas to dry on the vine in late Summer so that they are hardened against the Winter. When Spring arrives, the beans which have fallen from the dry pods to the ground can sprout into new plants. This natural means of preserving beans and peas is why dehydrating is the preferred means of bringing Summer crops to Winter plates.
It is all so easy to do.
- Harvest you pods and let them sit out in a cool dry place for a day or so.
- Open the pods and push the beans out into a clean bowl and leave them on the counter in your house for two weeks, stirring the bowl daily.
- Put the beans into paper lunch sacks, or roll them up in newspaper and close them up with tape. Paper sacks release any residual water into the atmosphere while protecting from other spoilage.
That is all there is to it. When needed you can simply re-hydrate them in about and hour of cooking in a pot with water or broth, or in a pot without cooking by soaking your beans overnight in water.
Beans provide a good source of proteins which can last for years when dried and kept dry. A wonderful component of the Victory Garden that will feed you and your family well no matter the conditions in the outside world. Beans and Potatoes are two of the three things a body can easily use to sustain itself. Neither are expensive at the grocery store, but you can't always count on outside suppliers for quality, or local economies for the cash needed to buy things. In tough times, it is better to grow your beans and potatoes, and save the cash for new shoes.
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