confused about plant spacing....help!

[aimeruni]

NOTE: The beans being grown are limas; they're for shelling, NOT snap beans. Have never grown them before.

The pkt only gave spacing for pole limas, but mine were all bush types; I called the seed company, explained this to them, asked for for spacing for bush limas, they said 3".

I then looked on the internet, and it said 8" spacing for bush limas. W/the 3" spacing would it be baby limas, and the 8" spacing larger limas?
Am referring to size of beans, not plant itself. W/closer plant spacing, would my harvest be reduced, or not since I'd get more plants?

[ContainerTed]

Instead of spacing out along a row, all bush-type beans can be grown on a "hill". That is - a small area (generally circular and slightly elevated) with a bunch of seed sown in it. It allows you to harvest from any point on the compass, so you generally see a lot of plants in a small area.

I feel like you may be putting too much emphasis on the spacing. Different gardens can accept slightly different spacing for any given item being grown. And I"ve found that the seed company will tell you what they recommend to everyone to get "adequate" yields.

Personally, I usually don't pay much attention to most of that. As an example, my brother keeps a small garden at his daughter's house. He got down and crawled along placing bean seeds exactly 4" apart - one bean at a time. It took him almost half an hour to do one 30 foot row and he was sore afterwards.

I put in two 82 foot rows in 10 minutes. I just take about half a handful of seed and hold my hand about 3 1/2 feet above the ground and move down the row while gently shaking my hand. The seeds fall out of my hand and find their way into the shallow trench made with the handle of the rake. I do beans, peas, okra, and a few other things that way. After germination, if it looks a bit crowded at any given point in the row, I can always thin out the number of plants a bit.

This takes all the stress out of it. My philosophy about it is to put enough seed in the ground to get maximum plants in the space assigned to that particular vegetable.

BTW, I have a bet with my brother about how many of his precisely placed bean seeds will not germinate and give him a gap.

Here's a couple pictures of my current garden. Picture #1 shows two rows of Blue Lake Bush Beans. Picture #2 is on the other end of the bean rows and shows the short portion of the left row with White Half Runner Pole Beans (between the white topped "T" poles). In the background is my row of Peas. Picture #3 is one of my Okra patches. Note the randomness of the location of the seedlings.

All of those plants were sown the same way - without spacing stresses. I do this every year and generally end up giving away some of the bounty - expecially the Okra.