by Tony
Green Bean roots
9:31 pm in Uncategorized by Tony
I thought this was worth sharing. I needed to rearrange the order of the plants in my WF. http://our.windowfarms.org/2011/03/20/green-bean-harvest-at-8weeks/ The jalepano on top was getting real tall and was hitting the ceiling and growing out of the sun. The green beans grew well and were covering up the bottle beneath it. So I moved the green bean to the top since it had fallen over anyway. The middle is now empty and is covered by the fallen beans. The jalepano now has the bottom and has more room to grow up.
This is a picture of the bean roots that had grown out of the net pot. I pruned them off and the plant is just fine. Don’t assume your roots will stay in the net pot. They will try to go anywhere there is mousture. As you can tell by the shape, they collected in the bottle nozzle and a few actually were traveling down the tube that drops the nutrients from one bottle to the next.
Green Bean Roots
Updated 5/5/2011
Just to clarify, the roots above that I cut off were only the root sticking out of the net pot. The picture below is of the netpot 2 weeks after the root pruning. You can tell by the shape of the roots that they were starting to fill in the nozzle of the bottle again. In general the plant was still growing ok and was starting to flower some more. However, it was getting way to big. I have a jalenpano in the same WF and I wanted to give it a chance and the bean was shading it to much. So the bean made it’s way into the compost pile.
In general, I am pretty happy with the beans. In late march, I harvested and ate 25 good size beans over the course of a couple weeks. It would have kept flowering and the harvest could have continued If I hadn’t move things around. But oh well. I have to say again that these were the best tasting beans I have ever had. Even raw they were good and I can not say that about the ones I grow outside. If I were to do them again, I would only put one or maybe two plants in the net pot. four was too many.
Bean Roots 2 week Followup
Beans Before Going Into Compost Bin
Roots weren’t meant to be confined the way we’re doing this. They will always seek out water. This is a pretty impressive length though.
Looks like noodles on a plate. This be making me hungry. That is some intense root system. How much root did you leave beyond the stem?
Wow, I had roots that were poking out of the bottle cap on my bean plant. Maybe I should do some pruning too!!
I suppose if you had a massive bean plant (maybe a seedling of a plant known to be huge), you could ‘bonsai’ it by pruning the roots. It would keep the plant smaller and would help avoid a clog.
@deanr, @bionicmel, & All, I have added an update to this post and added some more pictures so take a look.