Gardeni: Have you contacted the Master Gardener's in Santa Clara County? They are a fabulous resource. Bitter melon will be a challenge in San Jose. I live nearby and had wanted to do the same but a Fresno grower at my farmer's market talked me out of it. He said we don't have enough night heat in the summer. Nor is our summer hot long enough for the melons to grow. He suggested trying choyote melons instead, which did well. Okras also need LOTS of heat and full sun. And here in our region, each plant bears one pod at a time, at least it did for me. You need to grow many plants to harvest enough to cook with for one meal. Assuming you'll need at least 20 pods to cook a decent meal with, that's about 20 plants. We were dumb enough to grow only two okra plants this year, and--yup, you guessed it -- we got to harvest two okras about every two to three weeks during the really, really hot part of the summer. If space is limited, then I would grow pole beans. They love our weather and keep putting out and putting out. Can you tell me more about moringa? Can they be successfully grown in SJ area outside all year round? Where did you buy your moringa tree? Thanks. FG

I have grown runner beans as perenniels. In mild Seattle winters, runner bean tubers will survive all winter in the ground in the garden. In other areas, people sometimes dig them up and store them for the winter. Some people say that this produces an earier crop and others report that they get earlier crops from seed-sown plants. In your situation, I am wondering if the plant will have a chance to make a tuber before the top dies and the plant goes dormant for the winter. Or, if you try to keep the vine going all winter and into next summer, will it insist on going dormant at some point? So the question is, how long will a runner bean vine grow before it dies and the plant goes dormant? One nice thing about runner beans is that they can be sown in the spring when the nights are 40F. A bit different from common beans!

With all the good information here I can't really add anthing new but I can echo several good points. I only grow pole beans and pole limas and occasionally yardlongs or another vining pea, so I have a lot of poles. I have 1800 7ft fiberglass rods and 1000 8ft bamboo poles. I use all the rods and about 1/3 to 1/2 of the bamboo a season. My rows are 4ft apart. I have a 42inch tiller attachment for my tractor that I can till down between the rows once before everything gets mulched with straw, making most everthing I plant 48inches apart. I plant my rows running east to west even though my garden slopes down from west to east as much as 15ft on the south end and 3ft on the north end. My gardening practices prevent any errosion and the benefit of having the sun shine between the rows is why I plant east to west. I have tried to plant a short season crop between the rows but it is not practical when they are side by side. The beans grow too quickly and even though side by side rows do fine the middles get too little sun to do anything, even weeds are spindly and I just mow them once or twice in the season. Another benefit is deer protection as Zeedman mentioned. My main garden plot is 145x300 with 125ft rows and room at the top and bottom to manuver around. I also have another 50x50 plot and a 25x30 plot. I grow alot of tall crops sorghum, old dent corns heirloom tomatoes the beans and peas. The long rows of poles or tomato cages make a fence barrier preventing deer from moving across the garden from north to south which is their normal path. Again the long high rows creat narrow tunnels that the deer will not go through, preventing movement from east to west. There is some benefit of the tall rows I found this year. I have a row of everbearing strawberries I planted two years ago. This year they are sandwiched between the corn and a row of sorghum both topping out at over 12ft. I thought it would shade out the strawberries but this year I am still picking berries because they get some sun but are keep cool therefore the relentless heat we have has been sheilded from them and they are still producing berries and look better than ever. I don't always plant side by side rows. I actually prefer to skip two to four rows and plant melons or winter squash between and let the vines cover the area. I also start late field peas in the path next to a row of spring planted pole beans because shortly after the peas are up the beans are finished and the poles will be coming down so I wouldn't recommend side by side plantings. Again on the deer control I have a row of pole beans then say 8 rows of peanuts spaced three ft apart then a row of pole limas, then three rows of peas three foot apart then another row of poles then a 10ft wide watermelon patch another row of poles etc. all this creates tunnels that deter the deer and everthing gets good light. Right now the I have 7 rows of tomatoes with a row of cucumbers between each row. The cucumbers are finished and I will till it under and plant collards, cabbage, kale, etc inbetween the rowsin the next couple of weeks. By the time these are big enough to make it difficult to walk between the tomatoes are done and their cages are removed and that area is now the path and I will also plant narrow 2ft wide rows of lettuce turnips spinach etc. where the tomatoes were or oats or barley for grain or clover for covercrop Conclusion if practical run rows east to west don't plant side by side poles, but can be done, and then can plant area between poles more effectively, take advantage of natural deer repelants. Why I plant pole varieties? more productive less bending over and I like heirloom varieties which are mostly pole and I like the look of long rows of poles. This turned out long but I hope I added something.

George, That's fascinating info. You read a lot about daylength sensitivity in onions for example, but I didn't know about it in some beans, corn, and squash....although I do know that some beans always produce "late" no matter how early you plant them. Now I suspect the reason for that is daylength. My Seminoles ARE always very late, but I never thought about it in terms of daylength. This year, I am going to pay attention to when they bloom and see what I can learn from that. I want to post a thread screaming "Rain, Rain, Rain...I Got Rain!" (Two inches this week!) I can't....since the 'post' feature is not working, so I'll tell you here: we got rain. And, did I mention, we got rain? Two inches in two days. God has answered our prayers. We got hail too, but it wasn't big enough to hurt anything. I could enjoy the rain more if I did not know that people in nearby Lone Grove (and in the NW Love County communities of Courtney and Orr) suffered such damage from the tornado. And, by the way, all this rain dropped our fire danger down to only "high to very high" which doesn't sound so great, but it is better than "high to extreme" or "extreme to critical". I bet our drought index numbers drop a lot, and I suspect the commissioners will not renew the burn ban next week, although I wish they would. Hope y'all got some rain there in Talequah. Dawn