Aquaponics - Stake 'n beans

I cant really see why a plant like a bean needs all the space the seed packet tells me it needs.

I figure instead of giving them some kind of string or stake to climb on, I'll just give them more beans to climb on.

With this in mind, I planted fifteen bean seeds in a single plastic NFT cup a few days ago.

Fourteen have sprung to life, and are looking good. It's still early days yet, but I suspect, with a plant like a bean, they will each find enough real estate to express their beanie selves, and will probably do alright.

That's them on the left, and right now they don't look like much, but it's either going to turn into a jungle, or some kind of rotten swamp in no time.

If it works, I doubt I'll get a harvest fourteen times as much as I would have with one plant, but I should do better than the single.

At the very least, it should be interesting.

I planted one or two in each cup in the previous batch, and unfortunately didn't count how many beans we harvested. This time didn't plant any cups with just a single bean to compare outputs with my fourteen bean cup, but that's my plan for tomorrow.

I think I'll do a test with different cups with 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and if I have enough seeds left, I'll do one with 32 bean plants all growing in the same standard, small, plastic cup. I'll measure the output from each cup, and decide which is the beast way to go.




120 Things in 20 years, bringing you free, NFT, bean science, even if you don't want it.