Gardening in a different climate makes one call into question the accumulated wisdom and practices of the past. For instance, I was taught to soak beans and peas for 24 hours before planting them. I don’t remember if that was before planting them in modules or planting seed in the ground once the bed was warm enough. If you’re planting in modules, does it make a difference? I don’t know, so we’re going to find out. I have three bean varieties for the keyhole raised bed veg garden outside my studio. Right now, the middle bed just has garlic and red onion… nothing going down the middle. It’s a good spot for a line of peas flanked by dwarf green beans. But I don’t want these to be decimated by slugs and snails so I’m going to grow them in the greenhouse until they are strong enough to survive those pests.
I have a module tray and I’m sowing eight seeds of three varieties, two of which are dwarf beans (‘Helios’ and ‘Maxi’) and one is a runner bean (‘Enorma’) that will get planted elsewhere using bamboo stick supports. Yesterday, I took 4 of each variety and soaked it on a cardboard tray in wet paper towel. These I left for 24 hours. Then I sowed dry beans every other row. Today, I planted the empty cells with the soaked beans. It was handy that each variety was a different color!
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Should the control seeds (planted yesterday) germinate at the same time as the soaked seeds, I will conclude that there’s no advantage to soaking the beans before sowing. However, if the soaked seeds germinate and show their first leaves BEFORE the control seeds, I will know that there is a germination advantage to soaking. I will continue to see if there is any other effect by marking the soaked seed plants when I plant them out into the garden.
IN OTHER NEWS!
The tomato and basil seeds have sprouted!! And I spotted some corn shoots this afternoon. What a joy it is to have a greenhouse!!
