Beans!

So it appears that my bean plants are faring much better this season instead of being completely devoured by slugs. I've been fighting the slugs with as many methods as I can and so far (knock on wood!) I'm winning! The beer traps were working ok, but they were still multiplying too fast and some seemed to be avoiding the traps. Since I was not willing to lose another crop of beans to them I decided to use a non-organic method and sprinkled some Snail and Slug Death powder over the bed to try to control them. But of course even that didn't work...So I turned to copper finally.

I knew that copper tape around the frame of raised beds is a great way to protect the contents of your bed from both snails and slugs, but since I don't have raised beds it never really seemed like an option. Then at the Edible Schoolyard (ESY) Plant Sale I noticed that they use copper collars on some of their plants so I decided to give it a try. Brendan found some inexpensive copper tape (the adhesive side is used to stick the copper to raised beds) at a home improvement store and I created collars for each of my groupings of bean seedlings. So far they are working well, although I’m interested in getting some copper sheets to make more secure collars that can be used from year to year. The sheeting can also be buried slightly in the ground since the key is creating a solid barrier to prevent the slugs from reaching the plants. Since the tape is much more flimsy and only about an inch wide it’s not something that can be buried or easy reused unfortunately, but was a cheap way to experiment with this prevention method.


From the mixed bush bean seeds I started (half the package) only five seedlings actually sprouted. Of those five, one was completely devoured by slugs and another turned out to be a pole bean. The pole beans I purchased from the ESY Plant Sale are also doing well, so I’ve got three bush bean plants and about 11 pole bean plants. The bush beans are still pretty small, but they have already started to flower and put on bean pods. The largest of the pods are lovely light green purple spotted pods, some almost as tall as the plants themselves!

Peas

This spring we had both very successful and incredible pitiful pea varieties. I decided to plant a bush and pole variety in the bed where we planted tomatoes and peppers last summer. I picked out Mammoth Melting Peas (pole) and Sugar Ann Snap Peas (bush) from BHN and planted both in December. The Sugar Anns were almost immediately attacked by the slugs and no amount of beer traps, evening and morning slug hunting could save them. I think we got maybe a dozen peas off 10-12 plants, although the plants kept fighting (futilely) to beat out the slugs.

The Mammoth Melting peas were an entirely different story. The information said they were high-yielding 4-5' tall plants, however apparently our plants didn't get that memo. High-yielding doesn't even begin to describe the prolific and constant harvests once the plants reached maturity. We were easily harvesting 10-15 peas every other day, and they were each about 5-7" long.



The plants themselves also outgrew the tomato cages and if they had more support would have easily been 8-10' tall if they had grown straight up. Without support however they grew into dense bush-like mounds at the top of the tomato cages making it often difficult to harvest the ripe pods. With our odd rain this past month they even fell over and required additional creative supports.





Unfortunately the odd weather brought powdery mildew with it. This fungus appears at first as discrete, usually circular, powdery white spots, but then grows to become a dusty covering on the plants. The heat we had recently activated the fungus causing it to take over the plants. Plants affected by various diseases or pests often then attract new diseases or pests, so aphids also joined the party unfortunately.

Because as the peas grow they become the most concentrated and dense at the top I was able to actually plant my tomato plants in the cages below the peas in April. I also planted pepper seedlings in front of the cages in mid-May since it's the hottest spot in the yard. Unfortunately the combination of powdery mildew, aphids and massive pea plants blocking out the sun started to threaten my other seedlings. So on Sunday I had to take out the peas even though they were still producing so that we don't risk losing our tomato and pepper cops this summer. We also extended the tomato cages up about 3-4' giving the tall tomatoes varieties more support, and in preparation for more peas this winter.