My Summer Project

Apart from a more commercial take to gardening, I had a space in the yard near the house that we had tried to grow grape vines in.  It seemed to be good for the first two years until winter got the upper hand on things and the vines died.  To be honest, they had not gotten very large, the weeds had tried to choke them out on more than one occasion and there was only three plants to begin with.

I decided to take the little area and re-use it for something else.  I ran the roto-tiller through the area, creating a spot about 4 feet by 10 feet.  I added some peat moss to loosen this soil being it was high clay content and then planned out 3 rows.  The two outer rows for pole beans, the center for a row of corn.  I built 2 frames on which to string up some twine for the pole beans, assembled them and set them in the ground.  The frames are about 6 feet high and 8 feet long.

So the one row is a specialty heritage bean called and Annie Jackson.  It is the type of bean that you let dry on the vine then hull the pods and save the bean seed for making baked beans.  They are a mottled beige and burgundy bean so they even look nice as a kitchen display when put in a sealer jar or the like.  The other pole beans are a purple pole bean, good for eating as a string bean, but they grow quite large, almost ten inches!  They don't seem to get tough and being the purple variety, they turn green when you cook them.  Also, I filled in the last few spots with the Sadie's Horse Bean, a Hummingbird attractor with white and red flowers that makes huge pods at maturity.

In the middle, we ran a row of ornamental corn from a leftover seed packet.  It is going well, with the tallest stalk being about 8 feet high!  Since the beans can fix nitrogen into the soil they are a complimentary crop for corn which is a high nitrogen consumer.  I think this is what has caused the enormous growth for the most part, though it is all close to the house and that may be boosting the daily heat levels.  Well enough write-up, I will add some photos to help explain our project that anyone can do with any number of pole bean and corn varieties.  Happy gardening!

Our son at 5'11" picking the purple beans.

Annie Jackson side.

Purple beans and Sadie's Horse Bean side with the corn towering over!

 

Sadie's flower and pod.

Purple bean!

Early pod and white flower of the Annie Jackson.