"wait, wait...are you saying I can put six HUNDRED plants in a 10x10 plot???" Those yields are based upon a degree of soil conditioning that is very labor-intensive... and while I have read of such recommendations, I have yet to see photos, or hear first-hand observations, proving that they would work for most gardeners. All of the digging aside, in my area, I'd be flirting with disaster if I crowded my beans that closely. Personally, I wouldn't recommend it. Most bush beans - when healthy & mature - have a footprint of 1/2 - 1 sq. ft. or larger. 100 plants (1 per sq. ft.) should be a safe bet; I've successfully used 6" between plants w/ 2-foot spacing between rows, which is close to the same thing. You might be able to get away with 2-3 plants per sq. ft. for the more compact varieties. Crowding more closely than that may work in the warm dry climate of California; but in the cooler, wetter Northern climes, it could lead to severe disease problems. I'm not saying that it wouldn't work... just that I wouldn't put all my eggs in that one basket, unless/until small-scale trials proved it to be successful. In a post above, I had mentioned "seed efficiency". To put that in perspective, large kidney beans are somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-60 seeds per ounce. If planted at the recommended bio-intensive density of 600+ for a 10' X 10' plot, you would need between 10-16 ounces of seed to plant... so you would need to buy (or save from the previous season) a pound of seed. Assuming you harvest 24 pounds of dry seed (which is, keep in mind, the best case scenario), it would represent a return of between 24/1 & 38/1, depending upon seed size. Most gardeners would get much less than that, since the maximum is for experienced gardeners, on well amended soil. In contrast, my observations are that large-seeded bush beans, given the 6" plant/2' row spacing I mentioned above, are easily capable of a seed increase of between 50/1 - 100/1. Small-seeded types will tend to yield about the same weight/plant, but at an even higher ratio of increase, well over 100/1... so in terms of cost effectiveness (if purchasing seed) small is often better. Pole beans can do better still; the "Striped Cornfield" I grew this year (@45 seeds/oz.) produced a return of over 500/1! My results were obtained by mechanical tilling, with leaves & mulch turned under each season. Using these numbers, the same kidney beans - if grown in 5 rows in the same 10' X 10' plot - would be 100 plants. This would produce between 5 & 10 pounds of seed minimum... with only 2 ounces of seed required for planting, the average in a packet of beans. Also, at this spacing, the plants have sufficient air flow through the foliage to minimize the chances of disease during prolonged periods of rainfall. Having tested that theory in some very bad years recently (such as in 2008) I consider these yields to be realistically attainable, year after year. I don't doubt that my spacings could be improved upon; it is something that I often experiment with. Most likely, there is a happy medium somewhere between row spacing & high-density plantings which will produce the best yield, for a given area, with the littlest possible seed. That "happy medium" should take into account the expected annual variations in climate, since what works well one year, might not work the next. With soybeans, I have had some success with closely-spaced double rows, with standard row spacing between the pairs... so that may work for bush beans as well. Given the observations I have made on over 100 bean varieties over the years, I expect the optimal spacing will vary widely, depending upon variety, climate, and soil fertility. So there is really no "one correct answer" for bean spacing... just starting points for personal experimentation. Keep in mind, John Jeavons' bio-intensive recommendations mentioned above pertain to bush beans only. Pole beans are not suitable for wide bed planting, due to shading. However, you can have the best of both worlds using pole beans. Planted in a single row on the North side of the bed (where they would not shade shorter crops), they take up a relatively small footprint. A high-yielding pole variety could give you 3-4 pounds of dry seed from one row in that same 10' X 10' bed. You could use the majority of the bed(s) for other things, and still get a good crop of beans. My apologies for all of the long (and probably dry) posts, but as an amateur researcher, I just wanted to share some "bean science". Just wish this was on the Bean Forum.

Welcome to Arizona gardening. Its not required but recommended that your tomatoes either get afternoon shade or be protected from the afternoon sun with 50% shade cloth. I'm not sure how many bean plants you will need. I have not been as successful with them as some other members have been. I started a thread about tomatoes in the tomato forum that may be of help to you. The link is below. Peppers grow well here but do better with afternoon shade. From time to time a farmer will stop by and say they grow in Arizona without shade or shade cloth. Farming is different than vegetable gardening though. I drive by some farms on occasion that are not far from my home. Each time I do the temps drop as much as 5-10 degrees, sometimes more at night. A field full of peppers or tomatoes is evaporating massive amounts of water over a large area which drops the temperature and increases relative humidity. In my garden I can have 8 percent relative humidity at 110 degrees with a 15 mile an hour wind speed. At the same time in the farmers field its 99 degrees with 50 percent humidity with a 15 mile an hour wind. That dryer wind in the home garden in full afternoon sun can suck the life out of a plant. My main crops are squash, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and a few melons during the summer. If you click on the photo it will take you to my photobucket page where you can see more pictures. Here is a link that might be useful: What varieties will continue to produce through hot weather?

Bon, The world of beans and southern peas is incredibly diverse and many of them are multipurpose and can be eaten as snap beans/peas, shelly beans/peas or dried beans/peas. An old southern method of drying them in the pods gives you "leather britches" to store and cook later. Some varieties make better leather britches than others. You'll have a ball exploring the world of legumes. We almost always only eat our home-grown beans and southern peas in the green stage, whether frozen or fresh. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of us sitting on the porch, snapping beans or shelling peas, with glasses of lemonade or kool-aid sitting beside us, while big luna moths flailed around, beating their wings against the screen door beneath the porch light. Now...that is a great childhood memory! Forget Disneyland or Carlsbad Caverns, which were fun in their own way. I treasure simpler memories a lot more. I normally do not dry the beans I raise. Dried beans are as cheap as can be at the store, especially black-eyed peas (although the commercial varieties sold usually are inferior to the pinkeye purple hulls) and pinto beans. I'd rather use the ones we raise as snaps or shellies, which are a lot more expensive at the store than dry beans. A couple of weeks ago we were at Central Market in Southlake and they had shelled fresh pink eye purplehull peas in a container that might have had 10-12 oz. in it and cost either $5 or $6. I tried to imagine what it would cost to buy all the peas I raise annually, and couldn't even imagine it. I grow tons of beans and tons of southern peas. I like diversity so plant many varieties of each. Just in the southern pea category, you have pinkeye purple hulls, crowders, black-eyed peas, zipper peas, lady peas and cream peas, with many named varieties of each. One thing to remember is that heat has the same effect on bean (but not southern pea) blooms that it has on tomato blossoms, so you have to plant them at the right time in spring (April) for a summer harvest, and keep your fingers crossed that the weather won't heat up too early. If you plant late, most varieties won't produce well because they'll be blooming when temperatures are over 90 degrees and a lot of the blossoms will drop without forming beans. You can, however, plant beans again in the mid-summer for a fall harvest. We call those October beans here, with October not being a variety, but rather being the main time you're generally harvesting them. With southern peas, there's tons of varieties and I'm not happy unless I plant at least six kinds every year, but it is okay with me if most of those six varieties are some form of pink eye purplehull. So far I have planted the following southern peas: CT Pinkeye Purple Hull, Pinkeye Purple Hull BVR, Big Boy Pinkeye Purple Hull, Quick Pick Pinkeye Purple Hull, Red Ripper and Mackey (said to be a family selection of PEPH from Louisiana). Still waiting for a spot in the garden? Whippoorwill and Tohono O'odham, The latter is a southern pea from the native people of the southwestern part of the USA. This bean has the black and white markings like a holstein cow and is very drought-tolerant and heat-tolerant. To see a great selection of plants from the Native peoples of this county, check out Native Seed/SEARCH at the link below. With green beans, we eat most of them as snap beans but every now and then I'll grow a variety or two to use as shelly beans. Of course, Lima Beans always are shelled for cooking. I grow 6 to 10 varieties of snap beans every year, but mostly in the fall if the cold weather hangs on deeply into late spring like it did this year. The late cold is too often followed by a quick warm-up that makes bean blossoms fall. We were in the upper 90s today, so with that sort of weather already arriving, I do not have high hopes for my FM1K pole beans that I have growing on the garden fence. They might be able to hang on all summer and produce in the fall though. Regardless, I can plant more in July for a fall harvest if these look too tired from fighting the heat, pests and diseases by then. Your general fall planting dates for legumes here are: Southern peas and Pole Snap Peas July 15-30, Bush Snap Beans and Lima Beans August 10-20. If you plant later than that, you run the risk of losing the peas and beans to frost before they mature. If you plant earlier (and sometimes I risk it in a rainy and cooler-than-average summer), your plants will be subjected to the stress of a lot of extra heat and pests but won't produce earlier unless the weather cools down early (sure, like that is ever gonna happen). You just have to experiment with both beans and southern peas and figure out what types of each your family likes to eat. Experimenting with the different tastes and textures is as much fun as growing them. My family likes to eat the broad/wide Romano-type snap beans, which are a good, meaty bean with a strong beany flavor. A more colorful diet is a more healthy diet, so I grow beans in a huge variety of colors. For this fall I have Tanya's Pink Pod (pink, obviously), and Puriat (purple), Capitano (yellow), as well as Garrafal d'oro (green), and also Purple Dove (purple). Then, in the haricot verts category, I'm growing Slenderette (green), Purple Queen (purple) and Golden Roc d'Or (yellow). I've got Contender and Provider for plain old green snap beans, and Purple Velour for tasty and tender purple snaps for fresh eating only. (They don't freeze well). I've also got Tenderstar for fall, and some Insuk's Wang Kong. Some years I grow some cutshorts and some greasy beans, and I may plant some odds and ends I have left over from previous years for fall, if it manages to rain between now and planting time in July. Pole beans are beautiful and very productive and you don't have to bend or stoop over to pick them, and there's tons of good ones. I usually grow some of the following most years: Rattlesnake, Louisiana Purple Pole, Blue Coco, Jeminez, Cherokee Greasy, Cherokee Cornfield, Garrafal d'Or, Musica, Red-Striped Greasy and sometimes McCaslan or Potomac or other cutshort or greasy bean varieties. Scarlet Runner Beans do not produce well in heat, so are better for fall harvest than summer harvest, and Insuk's Wang Kong is the one I've grown for several years now. I never get a great many beans from them, but usually plant them to climb my 12-foot-tall ornamental windmill and the hummingbirds love their blossoms. Don't forget Lima Beans. There is so much more to Lima Beans than just plain old green ones. I like to grow all kinds of butterbeans, include Violet's Multicolored Beans, Worcester Indian Red, Henderson Bush Bean and Christmas. While most snap beans are either bush form or vining form, there's some that are somewhere in between and they usually are called half-runners. Some half-runners I've grown get taller than bush beans but not quite as tall as pole beans if they have nothing to climb. Give them something to climb, though, and some of the half-runners climb almost as tall as traditional pole beans. In this category I usually grow State Half-Runner or Mountaineer Half-Runner. We haven't even discussed yardlong (asparagus) beans (which are more like southern peas than traditional beans), or dried beans. I usually grow the red asparagus beans. With dried beans, I like to grow Borlotto Tongue of Fire or Signora della Campagna. And we haven't touched on moth beans, tepary beans, fava beans or Edamame (soybeans). All the talk of pinkeye purplehull jelly makes me smile and brings back fond memories. As with tomatoes, there's thousands of bean varieties and at least a few dozen varieties of southern peas, so you can explore them forever and never run out of new varieties to try. John Withee collected and save just under 1,200 bean varieties. I cannot even imagine all the work it took to raise them and save the seeds and keep all those varieties pure. Oh, and there's rice beans too. The bean world is endlessly fascinating, and my favorite bean varieties change constantly depending on which ones had the best flavor and productivity in any given year. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: NativeSeeds/SEARCH

Well, I received Gary's HUGE package today! I felt like it was Christmas! LOL! He shared so many beans, you should all thank him for his generousity! And please GARY, let me know of some varieties that you DONT have so I can send you back some good ones in return! sugarshane, gardenmom2, and Zebraman, if you do not mind, could you just send me an email or post to let me know that you are still in this and if your beans are sent out yet? No problems, just wanted to double check with the people who I have not seen active on the thead lately. Christy ***bonechickchris~Christy ***dirtdiggin~Toni ***booberry85~Becky sunnyk~Donna ***highalttransplant~Bonnie gardenmom2~Nichol ***grymntl~Bruce ***tormato~Gary sugarshane1313~Jim sassybutterfly 2008~Wendy ***dem pa~Don zebraman ***Daniel aka dirtdiggin Jr. luvgardening2/Nancy ***remy ***arroyogardener/Jamie ***reynal/Danny (*** seeds Received)