A reader asked which plants would be good companion plants to grow with her beans to deter bean beetles.
TheGardenLady would plant a variety of plants that deter bean beetles, if you have the room in your garden. Then you can hope that at least one will work.
Sage is a good companion plant for beans and it also has insect-repelling properties, especially against beetles. Sage is a strong aromatic–it may be this that repels some insects.
Plant rosemary where you will put your beans next season as this is also an effective beetle deterrent. Summer savory repels beetles, I am not sure which kinds, and encourages good growth and good flavor.
Black Locust - Robinia pseudoacacia by maxi millipede (flickr)
TheGardenLady received this question from arv:
I want to know what leguminous trees / shrubs I can plant in Jerusalem for nitrogen fixing . I want something longer lasting than lentils, beans, chickpeas etc.
This writer, from Israel, wants to know of leguminous trees or shrubs that he can plant in Jerusalem. For those readers who want to know what leguminous means, it is a Botany or Plant Biology term that refers to plants related to legumes like pinto beans, great northern beans, lentils, etc. that help fix nitrogen in the soil. Nitrogen (N)Â is essential for plant growth. N is the mineral element most demanded by plants.
The locust tree is my favorite leguminous tree. See here.
It is the black locust, Robinia pseudoacacia, that is nitrogen fixing not the honey locust. See here. An article about the black locust is this.
But the locust tree can become invasive because the plant typically reproduces vegetatively by root suckering and stump sprouting. Root suckers arise spontaneously from established root systems, sprouting
new shoots and interconnecting fibrous roots to form extensive, dense groves of clones.
One tree that is short lived but is in the leguminous plant family is the Acacia tree. A scholarly article about the amount of N each type of Acacia tree fixes is this.
A complete list of leguminous plants is on this website.
Because this sounds like a scholarly endeavor that this questioner is asking to do, TheGardenLady has included some scholarly articles on nitrogen fixing that has been done on leguminous plants. I hope you can open these sites here, here, and here.
