Planting Bush Beans

Warmer weather is on it's way, though you wouldn't know it if you went outside today.  We are supposed to have one more cold night here and then things should start to warm up.  I decided it was a good time to get another crop planted so I choose to plant a bed with bush beans.  The variety that I am trying this year is called Calima.  They are a filet type of green bean that are supposed to hold their pods at the top of the bush so I am hoping they are easy to pick.

For the actual planting process I used my hoe to make three trenches about 8 inches apart in the bed.  Each row gets it's own drip line and I punched extra holes in each line to make sure that the bed would be well irrigated.  Next I planted the seeds in each row at four inch spacing.  The planting directions call for planting them every six to twelve inches, but I expect that not every seed will germinate, so I can thin them later if I need to.

After I covered the bean seeds with about an inch of soil I turned on the water to make sure that the bed would be getting enough water.  Everything looked good, so I moved on to the final step of mulching the bed in.  I used grass clippings again since they are what I had on hand.  I spread them in a layer about an inch thick and then gave the bed a good soaking.  The mulch should protect the newly planted seeds from the next few cold nights and once they germinate they shouldn't have any trouble pushing through the thin layer to find sunlight.