Because I figure “Why not?”, I’ve poked some pinto beans into the soil along with my banana seeds. I didn’t presoak them or anything. I just poked them in.
The purpose was simply to troubleshoot the growing medium and see if there are any issues with the beans before the bananas sprout. If everything goes well with the beans, that’ll be a good sign that the growing medium isn’t going to cause damping off for my bananas.
Okay, the other purpose was that I was bored and wanted to have something growing. I figure it’s probably good for the bananas to get used to the idea of being intercropped, anyway.
Julia recommended using native soil indoors, which I haven’t tried before. So far, I am seeing signs that she was 100% right, and a half.
I poked the beans in four days ago. The beans are now up and looking happy. Some are even growing their first true leaves. They’re not leggy, but the container they’re in is very close to the grow light. They’ll be too tall for it in a week.
So, what do I do with them?!
Do I:
- Move everything around so that the beans have space to grow full-sized, and have them give me a harvest of green beans indoors before I can even plant beans outdoors? This might be useful to troubleshoot whether any issues show up later on in a plant’s life cycle.
- Transplant the beans outdoors under a hoop house, and see if they can survive? (Unlikely, but it would be awesome if they did.)
- Pull them out and eat them as little plants?
- Dig them into the soil as a cover crop to give the banana seeds more organic material and nitrogen when they sprout?
- Do any or all of the above, and then poke in favas or peas in their places that I can definitely transplant outdoors when they get too big for the grow light?
What do you think? 