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- Location: Flagstaff, AZ
Intercropping Bush and Pole beans
Hello fellow gardeners! I've heard good things about letting garden beans hybridize for better pest resistance, so I recently intercropped some Top Crop with Kentucky Blue. I noticed that Top Crop is a bush bean variety while Kentucky Blue is a pole bean. Are their any issues with intercropping these? Also, will they hybridize? Any comments and advice are appreciated!
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- Greener Thumb
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the question about hybridization - you're asking this because you're planning on saving seed, right? any hybridization that occurs won't do anything for the original intercropped plants themselves, just their offspring (the seed, and the plants that will grow from them).
beans usually self-pollinate, but it's been reported that places with large populations of pollinators (bees/wasps/flies, depending on lots of things) have a lot more cross-pollination of beans than conventional wisdom would suggest. in one of plant breeder carol deppe's books, she talks about beans of two different species crossing (which shouldn't happen at all, but seems to have), and they weren't even intercropped, just in nearby beds. that said, they won't automatically hybridize.
on the mechanical side, if you can get some trellis or fence of some sort up for the pole beans to climb, they should separate themselves from the bush beans by climbing. could be not much harder to pick than picking both bush and pole beans separately would be anyway. depending on how you've got them planted, this may not be as easy, of course.
beans usually self-pollinate, but it's been reported that places with large populations of pollinators (bees/wasps/flies, depending on lots of things) have a lot more cross-pollination of beans than conventional wisdom would suggest. in one of plant breeder carol deppe's books, she talks about beans of two different species crossing (which shouldn't happen at all, but seems to have), and they weren't even intercropped, just in nearby beds. that said, they won't automatically hybridize.
on the mechanical side, if you can get some trellis or fence of some sort up for the pole beans to climb, they should separate themselves from the bush beans by climbing. could be not much harder to pick than picking both bush and pole beans separately would be anyway. depending on how you've got them planted, this may not be as easy, of course.
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- Joined: Fri Jun 08, 2012 12:13 am
- Location: Flagstaff, AZ
Thanks everyone! This information really helps. I was planning on saving the seed after hybridization, but it sounds like that might not be worthwhile. I'll probably take out the Top Crop (bush) and let the Kentucky Blue (pole) do its thing! I have it planted along chickenwire fence so it should vine pretty well.