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peas and beans together


seb47
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Does anyone grow peas and beans close together? My neighbour's 'moon gardening' guide said this is tres mauvais so I kept them separate this year. Now it's playing havoc with my crop rotation plans, and I want to start putting out some peas to over winter for an early crop. (I didn't have time to stick to any more of the moon gardening rules but didn't do too badly overall!)

Thanks, Sue.

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I did earlier in the year and got a pretty decent crop off each but then I am new to this gardening lark and at the moment it is trial and error. I was talking with the old man the other day who has a potager next to mine, I was asking him what he was planting. nothing yet apart from onions and salad he said, so I asked him about Feves as I have bought some en vrac, no instructions on how to plant etc. His reply was to plant them on the 11 october and petit pois on the 15 th November, so I presume he is planting by the moon too. I shall ask him about planting them in rows next to each other, I did a search on the internet a while ago to about crop rotation but do not remember anything about planting beans and peas close by.
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Thanks julia - those are useful dates and we loved the feves from the market this year, so will have a go. It's easier to stick to the planting rules at this time of year when there isn't so much going on (providing we're not in the middle of a deluge like last weekend).

Sue.

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It may well be that beans and peas are enemies on the Moon but I have grown them successfully together for donkey's years both in the UK and for the past 3 years in France.  Interesting as it is, it can be very hard to keep to moon gardening dates if it's peeing down or the soil is baked like concrete.  Sometimes it is better to be governed by the soil and weather conditions.

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  • 2 weeks later...
    Blimey my neighbour wouldn't even think about venturing into her garden if the blinking moon wasn't right!

Do you reckon that they are a bit obsessed with size over here! (veg that is!)

I plant when i want to!!! Sod Mr. Moon!

Louise

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When we first arrived here and I heard about the moon-gardening lark I

was intrigued. I'm no botonist, so I read up what I could on the

subject, and I could find no actual  scientific basis for any of

it. True, plants are aware of gravity - shoots head up and roots down,

and this can be easily demonstrated without recourse to firing stuff

into space - but no causal link with the cycles of the moon can be

shown.

That said, the 28 day lunar cycle is a significant natural rythme for

animals, and plants are comparitively poorly studied, so there may be

something in it. Certainly some of the moon-gardeners I know achieve

spectacular results from both ornimental plants and food plants, though

this may be due to their general dedication to their gardens. Still, I

am not stupid enough to discard something simply on the basis that

there is (as yet) no proof for it, so I try and stick to the lunar

planting schemes where I can. There's no scientific basis for dowsing

either and I thought it a load of codswallop until I watched someone

using a twig to site boreholes. Now I'm not so sure - if I'm not

prepared to trust the evidence of my own senses, then what am I

prepared to trust?

Anyway, unless I've got the whole thing arse about face (not the first

time!), I believe that peas and beans have the same lunar

characteristics, so there is no reason here why they should not be

planted at the same time. Nothing in my "conventional" gardening books

gives me any reason not to plant them together, so I do. This makes a

lot of sense in rotations, after all.

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I have grown peas and beans close together and as others have said for years.  No problems.  Indeed both these fixe their own nitrogen into the ground and thus for crop rotation a crop that is a heavy feeder say such as pots should follow..........I think?

However what I have had given me as a present is what I think is a great book on vegetable gardening by Sarah Raven and she deals at length with crop rotation and this year I have followed her advice with great success.  Yes I may well be off my trolley but I have a large sheet of card with the plots outlined and then with details alongside such as manured limed etc and what crops went where that sort of thing.  Over the top and for the next year I have tracing paper and repeat the exercise for the new crops.  Bit of fun and seems to work well.

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Crop rotation is a good system as it helps prevent build-up of pests and diseases in the soil particular to certain plant types and, as Llwyn says, lets following crops benefit from the nitrogen fixing properties of legumes - don't dig up the pea and bean roots, just let them rot in the soil.  We've divided our veg plot into 4 large beds divided by pathways to help plan and manage the rotation.  Only problem is, we're not big brassica fans so we have to be a wee bit flexible with the rotations.

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Is moon-gardening anything to do with Biodynamics:

"Biodynamic farming is a form of spiritually evolved organic agriculture

and animal husbandry. The term 'biodynamic' translates roughly from the

Greek as 'working with life energies'. Crops are grown in accordance with

organic principles, incorporating systems such as crop rotation and companion

planting, but there is also a spiritual dimension of reverence and care

for the land. Sowing and harvesting are contingent upon the vital influences

of the soil and rock strata, and the position and influences of the sun,

moon and stars."

Now some of that makes sense, but what on earth is the vital influence of a rock stratum, being, as it is, so non-vital?

Is all the moon-gardening chumf about the water table rising up to respond to the moon's gravitational pull true? Has anyone ever tested it, or is it all based on some straw-in-the mouth misunderstanding of the science?

The BBC website asked a 'scientist' about it, and he endorsed it, but he also believes in astrology and crop circles, so, hey, maybe he's not the most impartial guy to ask. Nice one again, BBC, bringing irrationalism to the masses.

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[quote user="Dick Smith"]

Now some of that makes sense, but what on earth is the vital influence of a rock stratum, being, as it is, so non-vital?

Is

all the moon-gardening chumf about the water table rising up to respond

to the moon's gravitational pull true? Has anyone ever tested it, or is

it all based on some straw-in-the mouth misunderstanding of the science?

The

BBC website asked a 'scientist' about it, and he endorsed it, but he

also believes in astrology and crop circles, so, hey, maybe he's not

the most impartial guy to ask. Nice one again, BBC, bringing

irrationalism to the masses.

[/quote]

All fluids will respond to gravitational pull, so the moon could

influence the height of a water table in porous layers I suppose. The

issue is: is this important? Water will rise up through capailary

action, will be held in soil by organic material and be more or less

available depending on the mineral contents of the soil. Whether the

effects of the moon are of significance seems to depend on who is being

asked.

I'm always a little cautious to discount ideas like lunar gardening

simply because of a lack of scientific basis - quite often very little

work has actually been done in these areas because of lack of funds or

lack of interest. Soil science is hardly the sexiest of disciplines.

Quite a lot of "scientists" still fall into the old trap of accepting

an absence of evidence as evidence of absence - actually rather more

than before as many usniversities have quietly dropped philosophy of

science from ciricula as it is "non-core". [blink] One of the major

difficulties of trying to test anything in living systems is trying to

formulate the experiment to have a managable number of  variables

(one is best). Bad science gets over this minor annoyance by ignoring

it.

Possibly there is something in it. If nothing else, following the

cycles of the moon could be beneficial, particularly in the days before

halfway accurate weather forecasting: if planting spuds so many full

moons after the vernal equinox, for example, were followed as being a

rule it would ensure that growers would be more or less certain of

missing the last frosts.

Cas - have you got chickens? If so, fill your brassica break with kale. They love it.

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We don't have any chickens yet - still have to convince Jude that they won't escape and scratch up the flower garden.

I can't imagine that any effect the moon has on the water table or sap has any significance compared to the remarkable power of capillary action, but maybe moon gardening, as Jon says, is rooted (sorry) in counting the days/seasons and organising tasks.

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[quote user="Cassis"]We don't have any chickens yet - still have to

convince Jude that they won't escape and scratch up the flower garden.

I

can't imagine that any effect the moon has on the water table or sap

has any significance compared to the remarkable power of capillary

action, but maybe moon gardening, as Jon says, is rooted (sorry) in

counting the days/seasons and organising tasks.

[/quote]

She may have a point. With chickens, it does rather depend on the

breed. Some of the modern hybrids exhibit a near fiendish intelligence,

and being of diminutive build can get through very small gaps. Some of

the traditional heavy breeds (I'm a big fan of Sussex and Marans) are

much slower on their feet and quite dim. The problem is that they all

have 24/7 to inspect the fencing and do sometimes get out, and whatever

people say, they can do a lot of damage to the flower beds.

I've fenced off about 200m2 of the vegetable garden and put a chicken

house on it. Each winter (starting this week, in fact) I move them

across and give them free rein to scratch as much as they like. By

doing this, I give them all the greens they could want over winter,

they pick up weed seeds, grub out hibinating beasties and obligingly

dung the area for me. By March it is clear and ready to be cultivated

again. Could this be biodynamic I wonder?

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Jon - yes, all fluids respond to the gravitational forces exerted by the moon, but is anyone suggesting that at full moon the moon is NEARER to the Earth? Surely the phase of the moon is immaterial to the gravitational effect, so apart from equinoctal periods the force is relatively constant. Or have I missed something?
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Well, as I recall, the tides are highest around the time of full and

new moons, so presumably the moon is closer to a given point on Earth

at these times - gravititational attraction varies with the inverse

square of the distance between the two bodies, as I am sure you know.

The situation is complicated by the action of the sun - spring tides

when the sun acts in alignment with the moon, neaps (sp?) when it is in

opposition.

My own inclination toward the whole business is that which I've already

suggested - that counting the cycles of the moon after certain key

dates gave clues to when to plant to avoid poor weather conditions.

This then became caught up with the general mystique around the moon

herself and, voilĂ  a whole folklore about when to plant according to the phases of the moon. Then again, I cannot prove this, and there may well be more to it, and as a race we just need to learn to measure it.

I'd be interested to know if any close study has been made - I've not come across anything.

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Hmm. I agree. I think I need to know what the difference between closest and furthest lunar approach actually is, and how it relates as a percentage difference (taking into account the inverse square law, as you say). And a tide is a rather different thing from sucking water up through kilometres of rock and clay...
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[quote user="Dick Smith"]Hmm. I agree. I think I need to know what the

difference between closest and furthest lunar approach actually is, and

how it relates as a percentage difference (taking into account the

inverse square law, as you say). And a tide is a rather different thing

from sucking water up through kilometres of rock and clay...[/quote]

Right! Hopefully no-one else is bothering to read this tread, so we shouldn't get in trouble for deviating wildly.

According to my Boy's Big Book of Space, the closest the moon gets to

the Earth is 363104km and the furthest removed point is 405696km. The

moon has a mass of 7.35E22 kg. Plugging these into the general formula

for gravitational attraction (and assuming I've got my numbers right)

shows that the moon attracts 25% more strongly at her nearest approach

than at her most distant. The absolute numbers are 3.72E-5 N /

kg at the high end and 2.98E-5 N / kg at the low. For a person having a

mass of 70kg, this equates to a variation in weight across the lunar

distance range of about half a gram, so this is not going to form the

basis of an exciting new diet.[geek]

The questions now are: how sensitive are living things to variations in

gravity of this magnitude? Would water held in rock formations behave

like a sea or not? And where can we find out? [blink]

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Jon - that is surprising (in the sense that the inverse square means that normal estimating is put out of whack) - I have the same trouble with logarithmic scales...

The next question has to be how much water can be attracted through the strata. I guess that at c25%+ there could be a significant effect to something with low mass. Don't knock losing half a gram, by the way, I'd settle for it.

I still can't google much on this, either for or against (and a lot of the pro argument is mumbo jumbo).

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Dick

Gravity operates independant of mass - Leonardo and te tower in Pisa stuff.  So the fact that water has a low desity should not be a factor. 

You also have some strange ideas about water being kilometers deep in the rock strata.  The closest water is either at sea level (as in seas and oceans) or at a higher level (whether on or under the surface) - max potential depth to water is 9km (from the top of Everest).  Also most rock is impervious - ie any water under it will stay there.

 

I would suggest that if there is an efffect it is more likely to be on the water in plant cells being attracted and either making the cells bigger, distorted or causing differental osmosis through cell walls.

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All this is a bit angels on a pinhead-ish, but gravitational attraction is entirely dependent on mass.  Hence Jupiter has a much greater gravitational attraction than the Earth.  But gravity is a very weak force on the human scale, so two objects dropped from the tower of Pisa would (wind drag apart) hit the ground simultaneously.

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