Russell Whittemore

Well, about 7 days ago, I took a batch of my Provider bush beans and soaked them for 24 hours, followed by an attempt a germination using the wet paper towel method.  It's so far taken a full week to get 10% germination, which is pretty disheartening.  I'm going to continue for another week, but it looks like I'm running a race with the beans rotting at this point.  The preliminary indicators are certainly pointing in the direction of bad seeds, though.

Wow! Thanks everybody for your prolific replies!  Lots of helpful info here!
Here's what I've been planting:  
Among the pole beans the winners are Baker Creek Blauhilde, Purple Podded Pole and to a lesser extent, Monte Gusto Yellow Pole beans (from a different source)
These seeds are all 4 to 5 years old and consistently germinate at 90%+.
The poorest pole performer is my Botanical Interests Blue Lakes - 20 to 30% germination at only 1 year old for the packet.
On the bush side, I'm having success with Royal Burgundy, with very anemic germination from my Gold Rush and (so far) no germination with my Providers.  These seeds are all 1 year old.  The Providers and Gold Rush all pass the "float test."
Right now I'm going to try some paper towel germination of a batch of Providers and see if that yields any useful info.

Hi folks!  I'm observing something a I think is  a bit unusual, but I can't come up with an explanation for what I am seeing.
My Zone is 8b, east of Seattle, with about 2 to 3x the number of sunny days as Seattle proper.  I am growing in raised beds constructed with Hugelkultur technique, with my soil layer consisting of a modified Mel's mix made with coir, pumice/perlite, 2-3 types of commercial organic compost as well as worm castings and a bit of topsoil.  I generally have reasonable success with most things I plant, barring insects or boneheaded mistakes of my own.
Here's what I'm seeing now for the 3rd year in a row :
1.  For both bush and pole varieties, every year the purple variants come out of the gate like gangbusters and are pretty prolific.  Everything is direct sown.
2.  I am seeing comparatively very late germination of my green types - both Blue Lake and Provider and the same for my yellow wax beans.
3.  The greens and yellows also germinate quite poorly - sometimes as little as 20%, while I consistently see 90-100% germination of my purple variants.  All of my beans are of similar vintage, being 1-4 years old.
I am wracking my brains trying to understand why these beans are so late to germinate and have such a bad percentage compared to all of my purple variants - of which I have 4 or 5.
I'm at the point where I feel it's not even worth the effort to plant the green and yellow varieties.  
My past experience has been that when I have poor results, it almost invariably is because I did something dumb.  But c'mon guys, these are BEANS - and some of them do just fine.  
Your perspectives and experiences would be very helpful - so thanks in advance!

Thanks, Phil!  This approach aligns with how I like to do things with minimal invasiveness.  We had quite a mild winter here around Seattle and you'd think that there would have been more breakdown, but that didn't happen.  I think we're already at the point where I can start planting my frost-tolerant brassicas and early lettuces, which is the earliest I've ever launched my season.

So, I have 4 raised beds - 2 @18 inch and 2 @ 32 inch height.  Last year, I mulched with straw, which worked well, but the decomposition has been slow, to say the least.  A couple questions loom for me at the moment:
1.  I'd rather stay as close to a no-till planting approach as practical, so I'm wondering if it's a viable option to layer some of my Mel's mix over the top of the existing straw, or should I do a shallow turnover of the straw and top 1-2 inches of the bed before adding new growing mix on top?
2.  I don't have the option of taking the partially composted straw and throwing it in my barrel composter, because it's already full.
Thanks in advance!
Russ

Hey Permies!
I am growing potatoes for the first time and am using a grow bag.
My potatoes seem to have sprouted fairly well, but are poorly synchronized.
I have several plants that are 1-2 inches high and a couple others that are above 6 inches and are in definite need of additional soil coverage.
Because it's a grow bag (on the smaller side at 15 gal capacity), I am concerned about covering up the shorter plants, since it will be tough to do right by the biggies and not bury the smaller plants.
Should I be worried about this, or just let the faster growing ones drive the soil addition and not worry about completely covering the smaller plants?
Thanks!
Russ

Thanks for replying, May!
I think your suggestion is pretty reasonable and it addresses another possible variable.  I will see if I can get some things to grown with samples from the beds as they currently are.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Eric!

The top half of my bed composition was a mix of about 5-10% manure and then equal parts of topsoil and compost.
Your point about drainage was a good one, but I was very conscientious about watering and monitoring soil moisture.  I checked water status with an actual probe, so I'm thinking that water stress was maybe not a major problem.
It's encouraging that we seem to be thinking along similar lines about boring down to the chip layer and "innoculating" the bottom of those holes.  I'm getting a line on a hand augur and bit I might use for that.  I'm loathe to dig much bigger than that, as I'd like to keep my overall bed interventions tilted towards more of a no-till approach.  Even though I may not have much of a mycelial network at this point in time,  I'm keen not to disrupt my early microbiome evolution any more than needed.
If I can get the auguring done soon,  I am leaning towards throwing down my 13-0-0 and then simply topping the beds off with a good quality, organic raised bed/potting soil mix, perhaps something from G&B.
In my mind, that would provide a decent substrate for germination and early growth and when the roots get down past 3 or 4 inches, they'll be at the interface where I put the 13-0-0.
You raise a good point regarding ongoing exogenous fertilizer.  My inclination right now is to go kelp-based for any further nutrient additions as the season progresses.
Thanks again!

Wow folks!  Thanks for all the replies!  Much appreciated.  
Sorry for the late response - I've been recovering from some surgery.
I'm going to try one post here to respond to all of your helpful comments and questions.
I apologize in advance for its length.
I should probably go into more detail regarding how I constructed my beds.
We had just moved to the area in a newly constructed house, with no local gardening support system.  1 or 2 local nurseries not offering their own composting and big box stores were my materiel sources.  There appears to be a real dearth of locally source-able organic mulch and compost.
They are raised beds, using the Vego system for containment, 30 inch height. I used a fairly "classic" layered material approach.
Bottom of beds lined with brown cardboard, avoiding colored/dyed sources.  Filled to approx 50% with local, bulk wood chips, mostly pine/fir (I live in Washington state).
Next layer is bagged, "big-box" mulch, about 4-6 inch depth, used for budgetary reasons.
The remainder of the depth was a combination of about 50% bulk local topsoil, 40-45% bagged compost and bagged cow manure.
I used a combination of direct sowing and transplants.  Pretty much everything I sowed would germinate and then after about a week or so, growth would stall.  Some seedlings like cilantro and oregano would show yellowing.  Others, like beets and carrots would just not grow much beyond 1 or 2 inches in height.  Tomato transplants limped along with low yields.  Pole beans grew, but were sub-par in height obtained and in production.  Onion and garlic sets barely grew.  Lots of leaf yellowing and slow growth of squashes, in spite of very good luck with pests and powdery mildew.  I doubt I got more than 2 or 3 zucchini and yellow squashes the whole season.  Transplants of sage, rosemary and garlic chives barely grew.  Some co-planting of marigolds also grew very slowly and poorly.
Obviously, the beds settled several inches since construction. I will need to bring them back up to full depth with amendments soon.  Probably will use a combination of 50% topsoil, 30% good quality organic bagged compost and the balance as potting soil.  Seriously considering biting the bullet and using G&B organics products for these sources.
There certainly seems to be a wealth of possible fungal inoculations I could choose from.  The question in my mind is how to add them.  I want to do minimal tilling, so it seems there are two possible ways to go:  (1)  Combine the mycorrhizal source with my top dressing for this season or (2) bore holes down to the wood chip layer from the top and get the fungi down to the interface.  That would obviously be more work.
Going forward during the season, I'm also planning to use a kelp supplement regularly, both as a tea and direct foliar spraying.
Thanks again, everyone!

Hi folks - like a lot of other people who have to start from scratch with limited/no access to logs, I used wood chips last year to begin my first try at raised bed Hugelkultur.

It's all clear in retrospect that my really crummy growing season was nearly entirely related to nitrogen sequestration by the wood chips, so I'm hoping I can address this in the coming year.
I live in the Pacific Northwest in an 8b zone, so I'm looking at getting my transplants and seed starts into the beds in probably 10 or 11 weeks.  This will depend a bit on how much moderation of temps we get from El Niño this spring.

I have five 30 inch raised beds of varying sizes, each filled about 50% on the bottom with wood chips.  I think that the wood chips are predominantly local fir and pine and I do not have any reason to suspect any allelopathic wood content.

So, the questions I am hoping to get help on are as follows:
1.  How much ongoing nitrogen sequestration should I expect this year?
2.  Would adding mycorrhizal amendments to the soil help accelerate the wood chip breakdown?
3.  I have access to some OMRI-certified 13-0-0 fertilizer, which takes around 8 to 10 weeks to break down.  I'm thinking of adding this to the beds more or less immediately and probably again after my transplants are settled in, some time in May.  Does this seem reasonable?
4.  Should I consider any more immediate amendment interventions like adding manure?
5.  Any additional suggestions or comments?
Many thanks!