Planting Green Beans

Yesterday, I believe I showed you how I was working up the garden soil for Spring planting.  Although it is a lot more work, I'm trying to turn the soil over with a shovel and just do it by hand.  I don't have a tiller and usually borrow my neighbor's tiller, but this year I wanted to do it the old fashioned way. 

First, doing manual labor is great exercise, a great stress reliever and an opportunity to prove to myself that I'm really not a pale, office-dwelling, keyboard pecking, nerdy accountant.  No offense to anyone out there!  I've got a nice callous on my hand as evidence that, yes, I've become a little soft.


Hmmmm.  I wonder if I could rig a yoke to Daisy & Rosie and have them pull a plow?

Secondly, if you get carried away with the tiller and work up the soil too fine, when it rains, it all packs harder than a parking lot.  You want to retain the soil structure and not kill the earthworms.  Speaking of earthworms... You ought to see them.  There are a ton of them.  That is good news and a testament to our soil building work as we use compost and try to amend as much organic matter as we can into the soil.  I'll have to take some pictures to show you all the earthworms.  They spread their castings and open up passageways in the soil to benefit our vegetables.

Here is a shot of seven rows I pulled up, six of which I planted potatoes on.  This represents about 1/8 of the total garden, I would estimate.  On the last row, I decided I would plant some Contender Green Beans.  Don't you just love fresh picked green beans?  We like them cooked with butter and some new red potatoes, sprinkled with some black pepper and kosher salt.  Wow!


Future meals of green beans & potatoes

Once the soil was worked up, turning under the winter grass, I pulled up rows and got out my Contender Green Bean seeds that I had stored from last year.   I dug small holes about six inches apart and planted the beans.  They should germinate in 6 - 10 days.


Magic Beans?  Jack and the Beanstalk style?

John 12:24

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

There's something special, miraculous even, about planting a seed.  Most times when you put something in the ground and cover it up, you're burying it.  It's dead.  It decomposes and becomes dirt.  Dust to Dust.  In this case, you bury it and something else happens.  Here is this dead thing that you put in a hole in the ground and within that tiny seed is an abundance of life.  If properly stored, it could survive for years, but it would be useless-just a seed.  Instead, when planted in the soil, and in a true miracle, water and warmth causes the seed to sprout and it grows and produces more seeds and those seeds will produce seeds and so on exponentially.  This is fascinating to me.


The miracle of the seed.

Christ used the example of the seed to show what was going to happen to Him.  He, like the seed, was going to die, but His death would in turn ensure an abundance of fruit - redemption of the world and multitudes of disciples.  And He didn't stay dead - He Lives!