@gardening
I wonder what’s going on with these beans? This is a new bed, made last fall with bulk soil and a couple inches of compost. I tried several different seed starts here, but we had such a cold spring, nothing stuck until I planted these bush dry beans in early July. The bed was fertilized for the corn that died of cold in June. Even then, I don’t think I’ve seen as much growth as I should, and what the hell, y’all? Why is half the bed nice and green and the other half all yellow? Any ideas?
There’s buried drip irrigation, 15 minutes a day from a well, and it’s enough for the leeks, squash etc so I don’t think it’s the water.
@donkeyherder@gardening this appears to be a nutrient issue, not likely salt as salt blocks in bedding would be very minimal. If corn was in this soil it tends to be nutrient intensive, when I have planted beans in the same soil with corn, this is what happened, it helped to do mixed plantings of a variety of plants.
@LittleYetFierce@gardening but the corn sprouted to less than 6” and then quit trying and died! Thank you for the reassurance about the salt, that’s a relief at least.
@donkeyherder@gardening you can try adding some organic micro nutrients, it wont hurt.
Just in case if you are worried about the salt blocks -they melt a little when wet- you could try putting a small rubber mat under them and no bedding, unless of course they are in an enclosed box stall.
@LittleYetFierce@gardening the mare is chill, but the donkey sometimes plays with the (big!!) block and rolls it about 😂 its a “sometimes in winter” donkey problem. Please don’t, my dude!
@donkeyherder@gardening haha, silly donkey. My mare is fond of her salt block too, I switched her to the hard Himalayan salt block on a rope and gave the big block to the other mare.
@donkeyherder@gardening That looks like a pH or nutrient issue. Too much nutrient to little nutrients I do not know. Could also be PH. It's one of those two things though, unless of course it's salt.
@gardening GAHHHHH what if it’s the compost?
I make my own compost from my equines’ outputs. I try really hard not to compost the bedding under the salt block, but what if a forkful of salty shavings got in the compost? Aaaggghhhh, inarticulate shrieking continues
You can get soil salinity meters. Not sure such a small amount of salt would cause a problem. If concerned & bed has good drainage, should be able to leach salt out with 2-3 heavy waterings.
I don't know about beans specifically. In general folks water stuff too little, too often. 15min/day seems like that. built in drip emitters are usually 1 gal/hr. I'll have clients run drip for an hour to get water deeper. then wait 3 days or more to water again.
The roots go where the water is. Frequent shallow watering encourages roots near the surface of the soil. Deeper, less frequent watering encourages roots to go deeper. Plants with deeper roots experience less stress and make better use of water and nutrients. A bonus is that deeper roots break up heavier soil for future plants in the same spot.
Have you checked that the drip irrigation works throughout the bed? Emitters can get clogged, lines can accidentally get cut and many other things can go wrong.
Drip irrigation is great but in my experience it needs to be checked at least monthly all along the lines.
@mjausson@gardening every so often I glare at that bed and go dig around the lines and yep, they seem to be working. It’s the kind with 1” rigid piping that’s got rather large, ballpoint-pen-tip sized holes - it’s fairly durable.
I wonder if it’s just the new dirt in general. They haven’t had a lot of time to become really fertile yet.
@gardening oh, and Ive been occasionally irrigating that area with a whirly sprinkler, too. A problem with the fertilizer seems like the most obvious solution, but I do think it’s been washed into the soil pretty evenly.
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