What to grow before climbing beans or squash?

[SausageParticipant]

Any suggestions for vegetables to grow in a long, narrow strip before May or June when the space is taken up by beans or squash trained to climb? I usually just pop in some lettuce or spinach but wondered if there was anything else that would give a good harvest in this short space of time?

[CleansweepParticipant]

Dwarf French beans, planted now under the runner bean stick row, may be sufficiently fleeced/sheltered and forward to crop before the runners shade them out. Otherwise, radish, rocket,mitzuna, ‘spare’ onion sets to produce salad onion…somebody else’s turn.

[SausageParticipant]

Those are great ideas, thank you.

[RhysParticipant]

Too late for this year, but spring cabbage will work if you are not planting out your beans before 20th May.

Ditto overwintering chard, which usually goes to seed just as you wish to plant out beans.

For when your beans are growing, I grew a very satisfactory beetroot crop on the morning sun side of the beanpoles: transplanted outfrom modules in late May, then harvested October-early December.

I tried dwarf beans the afternoon sun side, but they did not germinate well.

[SausageParticipant]

Brilliant ideas, thank you. I wonder if the dwarf beans would have worked better if sown undercover and transplanted? Worth experimenting.

[RhysParticipant]

I do normally germinate in module trays and when transplanted they do very well.

I was experimenting to see if direct sow would work but it did not. Two sets of beans happily germinated and transplanted so far this year. One more lot to go.

[RhysParticipant]

This year I have dwarf beans morning sun side of pole beans and they are now flowering beautifully around day 48.

I have just transplanted my second PACA lettuce onto the afternoon sun side, so we shall see if they do well in semi shade during high summer.

[Author]

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