In this video, we are going to learn how to grow likeJack and the beanstalk and grow green beans in a vertical system.
Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it's my goal to helpyou grow a greener thumb.
And the world of beans is reallyinteresting and you can go deep into this world.
Trust me, I've been deep inthe bean world for a long time now, but we're bringing it backto basics.
Green beans, bush beans grown in a vertical system, which means it's basically applicableto anyone watching this video, whether you're in a large ruralspace or a small apartment garden, you can do it and I willshow you how to do it.
So we're going to go back intime to when these beans were, but simple seeds and honestly there's alot of them here and go through exactly how I grew them.
So before we get into it, cultivate that like button and I willpersonally bless you with bushels and bushels of beans on your very firstharvest.
And let's get into the video.
So if you've grown beans before oryou have any familiarity with it, you might be wondering why I've actuallystarted the beans in seed starting trays instead of just direct sowing.
Well, partially because I seed start almosteverything unless I have to direct so at like a carrot or something like thatjust really does really well when it's direct sown, I find that beans transplant perfectlyfine and it allows me a continuous harvest and allows me to plan my gardenbetter when I'm continually starting and transplanting.
So I will say thatyou don't have to direct sow beans, although it certainlycan work perfectly fine.
Another thing that I will say is youdon't even actually have to soak beans.
Beans will germinate completely fineif you put them in a nice moist seed starting mix and just waita little bit longer.
For me, instead of going through theprocess of soaking and starting, I prefer to just put them in myseed starting tray, moisten them up.
And I like to put in two beans per cell.
And you can see if you look closely, some of these have been chopped at theroot level and that's because both came up and I chose the more viableseed and we're going from there.
So I just want to guaranteesomething comes up.
That's how I do all my seed starting.
Uh, and you can see every single one ofthese tray inserts except for these which are a different plant.
All of these have come up and thenthe ones that haven't are about to.
So perfect germination, really healthy looking and you want totransplant them relatively early because beans have kind of a weird settling inperiod where they start to yellow until they kind of connect to I guess theoverall soil structure and really start pulling nitrogen from the soil.
So when you transplant your beans, you can often find that they yellowlike maybe for the first week or so afterwards.
And I findthat to be somewhat normal.
And then once their root systemreally establishes in the new home, then they're going to be completely fine, especially if that soil hasa decent amount of nitrogen.
So what we're going to do is popthese out and transplant them into our GreenStalk garden.
So in this phase, what you want to do is you want to justthink about it as if you're plugging it in, you're not transplanting per se, it's like plugging it into the matrixof the soil life that's already going on in here.
And so whatI've got here is beans.
I do prefer some sort ofmycorrhizal inoculant.
I'm not 100% sure onexactly how effective it is.
I know that generally just anecdotally, my results have been better.
So I'm using a little Mykos, which is a mycorrhizal inoculant.
And what we're going to do is I comethrough with like a thin knife into a moistened seed cell insert and let'sjust inspect the root system of this very first bean that we're going to pop outhere.
So we're not rootbound.
Nice, healthy white roots.
Looks very, verynice.
And when it comes to beans, I like to transplant them a little deep.
So if I've got the stem comingout of the soil right here, but the seed leaves are right there, I'm going to transplant them to thepoint at which the seed leaves start.
So we're going to go ahead and dig alittle bit deeper here and come in and really just plug thisin and then cover it up.
And we've left maybe, maybe a centimeter or sobefore the seed leaf and voila, we've transplanted that in perfectly fine.
More beans are on the way.
But for now we have a couple of tiers ofthis planted out now we just gotta wait and see how they settle in and wewill be back in maybe a week or so to troubleshoot if there are any issues.
Alright, it's been abouttwo weeks now guys.
And honestly these are coming in so well.
We haven't had any of the usual settlingin problems that you normally have with beans where you have yellowingon these lower leaves, had some really good growth.
And asyou can see a nice vibrant green, which is what you're looking for whenyou're growing beans, bush beans, you want it to have thisnice beautiful green color.
So that's what we'relooking at.
And honestly, every single one of theselooks pretty much perfect.
At this point we are still letting themput on a bunch more vegetative growth.
You can see the leaves are coming outlike crazy here and we're going to be back in maybe another week or two and seeif we've got some flowers and early, early pods.
It's been about 30 days since welast talked here on the video.
Let's check in on our beans.
Might be time to harvest, but the first thing I want you to dois use your eyes.
Look at this tower.
What do you see? Observation isthe number one skill in the garden.
If you notice things, you can then fix them.
Now I will say we did have somespider mite problems up top, which I prevented pretty quickly early on, but some of these plants did get somedamage that they've struggled to come back from.
But what I see is I see that the bottombean plants are much darker green than the top ones almost in a perfectgradient.
Now we move it around, we see that's pretty consistentacross the entire tower.
Why would that be? Well the number one problem you'rerunning into when you're growing in most container gardens is you have drainageand then you have runoff of soluble nutrients.
So what I'm thinking is happeninghere is that the nitrogen specifically probably the nitrogen is running offand settling down here in the bottom, which is causing these to be nice andgreen and causing these to be a little lighter.
Now I can compensate there by manuallywatering some of these top ones with a little bit of liquid soluble nitrogen.
Adding that in to counteract that.
That's just something I noticed.
But now let's go ahead andtake a look at our beans.
We still have great bean formation andthis is a younger plant but we've got some good beans here as we spin it around.
Nice beans over here as well.
So there's a lot here and it's timeto harvest some of these cause as you harvest these beans you're going to spurthe growth of further bean production and that's what you want.
You wantto maximize your harvest, right? So we've got some really good ones likelook at this.
This is really nice here.
This is just quality so I'm allabout it.
Let's start harvesting.
Before we start harvesting.
Everyone check out this apron.
I designed it in partnership with thiscompany that makes like high end barista gear but it has the coolest stuff Iput everything I would ever want as a gardener on here.
So I'vegot my pocket for two tools.
You've got your cuttingspouch right here, microfiber.
You have a double sided harvest pocketthat you can like snap open and snap shut.
Super high quality materials.
But anyways, I'm obsessed with it.
I think it's epic and it's timeto harvest our first bean crop.
Drop a comment down below.
How many beans do you think I'm goingto get in my first flush of beans? Drop one down below.
Who knows? I mightgive away some seeds to the winner.
[inaudible] First bean crop pretty small.
But this is like the earliest you couldever take these beans off and there's quite a few left, like at least seven times as many ofthese still developing on the plants.
For those of you who guessed in thecomments, 33 is the amount in my hand.
It's probably about aquarter pound of beans.
It's going to be a nice little dinner, but we'll come back and we'll harvestthis again in a couple of days.
Well, it's been more than a few days sinceour last harvest.
As you can see, I've just got one of many handfulsof beans in this little satchel here, but those beans in the front yard, they're kind of comingto the end of their life.
So what I thought I would do is leaveyou with a couple of top tips for successfully growing beans.
Some things that I think might helpyou in your first journey through.
So number one, a lot of people will say you shoulddirect sow your beans and you shouldn't transplant them.
You certainly can.
And honestly you may want to trythat if it's your very first time.
The reason I specifically transplantedearlier in this video is because I'm always replacing stuff inmy garden all the time.
And so I didn't want to direct sow becausethat meant I would have had to clear that whole GreenStalk vertical gardenout and then wait for them to germinate.
What I decided to do was grow somethingelse in there and then harvest that immediately and put my transplants in.
But if it's your first time oryou're growing in a container, then maybe soak the beanseed overnight, 12ish hours, plop that in the soil and you're goingto have really successful germination.
So that's tip number one.
Tip number two is to watch out for thatearly stage of life because you can start to see that yellowing, especially on those lower leaves.
Don't stress unless you really startto see it go up the rest of the plant.
Then you know you probably have some kindof nutrient deficiency or some sort of watering issue at play.
Butat the beginning it's okay.
It kind of has to get its sea legs, ifyou will, or its soil legs, I guess, uh, and, and really getestablished.
The next tip, and the final one I'll leave you with isonce you start to see your bean plants, certainly when they are putting on pods, but even around the timethey're putting on flowers, you can take a little bit of extra compostor some organic granular fertilizer, even a liquid soluble fertilizer.
And you can give it a little bit offertility because as soon as it goes from flowering into producing pods, it'spulling energy like crazy out of the soil.
And it might start sucking the soil drya little bit so you can give it just a little bit of extra fertilizer.
And Ithink that will really help.
But guys, beans are absolutely fantastic.
I have, let's just say I've got a meal tomake and more than one meal actually.
So I'm going to go ahead and get to that.
I encourage you guys to experimentwith the world of beans.
It's again, a very wide world.
Good luck inthe garden and keep on growing.
.
