The mung bean bed at the Mid-levels got too overgrown. It was lush but crowded, and the plants were spindly and falling over each other in a tangle. What’s more, there didn’t seem an end to the flowering, with old pods spilling while new ones formed.
So I figured it was time to treat it like the cover crop it was, pull it up, pick the pods, and dig the plants in. I ended up with a decent haul of beans, which the chickens loved in two feedings.
Just like with the sunflowers, I learnt the lesson over over-sowing. A few plants that grew apart from the bed (from seed that got away) grew sturdy and produced big pods that were easy to find and pick. Some of the plants from the middle of the bed, by comparison, could only manage a single stem and a few pods, and weren’t really worth harvesting.
I turned the bed over, left it to sit for a few weeks, then sowed with lettuce, which have started well. This is following a crop rotation system where legumes are followed with a leafy crop, to take advantage of any nitrogen they added to the soil.
My row of mung bean in the no-dig bed down in the Low-levels started well after a late (February) sowing. I sowed them as a single line, on the soil surface in a row pulled apart in the hay. Now in April they are finishing, but the difference, compared with the dug bed, is stark. The plants were all very small and bore a few pods. There are just too many differences with the dug bed to come up with a reason, it could be to sowing was too late, or the ground was infertile, too hard, or too shaded. But I’ll try another row in Spring as I’m keen to get the no-dig beds to work.