Question
I have 3 raised beds in my garden area and this is the second year that I have planted green beans only to see them suffer.  The come up out of the ground and then they start to die before they are more than 4 inches tall.  They turn yellow then brown and dry up.  I have recently bought a device to test for moistness of the soil as I believe I was over watering and the raised garden tends to nee less water.  This has helped my tomato plants but I am perplexed with trying to grow green beans.  My parents never had trouble with beans, we seemed always to have more than I wanted as a child.

Answer
Raised beds are an effective way to address poor drainage. But overwatering won't be solved any way other than by NOT overwatering.

Like anything, this often is easier said than done. This is the most common cause of failure in the U.S. garden for a reason.

Roots need air to work. Under normal conditions, there's plenty of air around the growth medium. Rich, loamy soil is filled with Oxygen molecules, where they lie tucked in spaces around soil particles.

But if the spaces are filled with water, there's no room for Oxygen. Aerobic microbes and root hairs the Oxygen up. Now you're in trouble. Roots suffer; anaerobes thrive (many of them pathogenic). This is one reason floods wipe out farm crops so quickly. It's also why houseplants can be quickly killed by over-watering.

Read more at Suite101, 'The Function of Plant Roots: Investigating Water Uptake, Anchorage, and Food Storage in Roots':

botany.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_function_of_plant_roots#ixzz0gj0KkXjZ

Roots that can抰 breathe are stressed roots. Stressed humans are more prone to disease. Well, stressed plants are more prone to disease, too. No wonder overwatering is the cause of most houseplant fatalities.

Once you get a handle on your water technique, you'll be moving to a new level of gardening expertise. Recognizing that you may be an accessory to whatever is afflicting your vegetable garden is 99% of the solution. If you're feeling discouraged, understand you're right now at the brink -- perhaps past it -- of successfully completely Gardening 101.

Nevertheless, Gardening 102 brings with it a whole new set of problems. Anything that was not caused by overwatering is now another challenge. It's always something.

Tomatoes, by the way, need way more water than many other vegetables. It is harder to overwater them. Also, raised beds do need to be watered more frequently, because they drain and consequently they dry more efficiently.

Now that you've invested substantial sweat and toil on raising the vegetable bed, plus cash on gadgets like a moisture meter, it's time to order a serious Soil test. Maybe you've done that, but if you haven't, it remains Step #1 in any serious garden agenda. Get it done. We have too much to talk about right now for me to give you my "Get A Soil Test" lecture, but let's just say it is critical to growing Grean Beans.

While you're measuring moisture with your handy dandy meter, touch the soil around your plants, too.  Take a good look at the color.  Get to know what moist soil looks and feels like. Touch the leaves.  Become familiar with how thirsty plants look, how limp their leaves begin to feel when they need watering, how cool the soil feels if it's still moist.  Wait until they begin to wilt slightly, then drench -- you can do that with a raised bed without risk.

But understand that this is a big world and there are a lot of things that can go wrong.  Like the book began, "Life is difficult..." (The Road Less Traveled)

Top suspect: Soil Fungus. Fungi live it up in overly moist venues. Bacteria thrive in Oxygen-free environments caused by too much water, but Fungi are the champions. So long as there's air and water, there will be Fungi.

Yellowing leaves indicating no sign of pest or slug damage are the first symptom. Others follow. See these photos of infected roots on Green Bean plants posted on Penn State's Agricultural College website?:

vegdis.cas.psu.edu/VegDisases/Identification_files/bean_rrot.html#dryrootrot

Look familiar?

There is no shortage of salespeople who will line up to pitch their Fungicides and Bactericides to disinfect your Soil.  This is a common battery of diseases that costs farmers a ton of money.  That's why we have Agricultural Research departments at institutions of higher learning like Penn State.

At this point, a Scotts representative would be encouraging you to purchase a heavy duty Fungicide/Bacteriacide. Just say no.

Many people find the prospect of re-learning how to grow things without the Easy-As-Pie instructions from Scotts overwhelming, and I don't blame them. Unlike the beautiful photos and friendly voices murmuring about the benefits of their profitable chemical treatments, the 5o-dollar words and cold, arms-length reliance on things like the Periodic Table and Plant Pathology feel downright impersonal.  To heck with the scientific method, they say.  Buy "this..."

Not so fast.

Let's take Fusarium solani f sp phaseoli.  That's the world famous Fusarium Rootrot disease, a major problem of Green Bean growers.

Like other plants, Green Beans have evolved to survive in potentially hostile soil.  Fusarium solana is common.  You probably have trillions of spores blowing around in your garden right now. You might say this is a Fungus waiting to happen.

But Phaseolus vulgaris has been fighting Fusarium for milleniums.  Somewhere in their bag of tricks, they keep antibiotic enzymes called Phytoalexins.  When they detect damage on a leaf or a root section caused by germs, your Green Beans respond by turning on the Phytoalexin faucet; that triggers the protective OGA generator (which stands for 'Oligogalacturonides') in their cell walls to make them thicker and tougher. These Phytoalexins program your sick plant to undergo basic changes in its cell growth -- cells in roots, leaves, stem.  They also cause a release of invisible gases, steaming out of the leaves, to warn its friends -- Green Bean plants growing nearby -- that there's a serial killer on the loose.

Alas, Phytoalexins have unwanted side effects. They never develop into the plants they could have been, pre-Phytoalexin, because the physical changes they cause in the plant are permanent. Among the negatives: The long tap roots in your Green Beans, which reach deep into the earth to draw nutrients that are less common in the shallow end of the pool, tend to grow much shorter (in one 2006 study, by 33 percent).  The stubbier root system is less efficient at harvesting nutrients, slower at obtaining water.  Most of the defensive changes have some negative side effect.  And those special gases -- the ones that warn other plants of a Fusarium attack? The ones that trigger a wave of physical changes in neighborhoring plants, to defend against disease causing Fungi?  This is why you want to quarantine, quickly, any sick Green Bean plants you happen to notice.  The defenses that are needed to protect them from disease won't be set up unless they have a reason.

Faced with Fusarium, however, most Green Beans are willing to put up with those. Without them, they would die. The ability to build up Phytoalexins rapidly is what we mean when we say a plant is 'resistant' to a disease.

All this by the way is pretty new research. It takes 21st-century technology to detect these chemical reactions in a plant -- the warning gases that work like smoke signals on other plants. The thickened cells walls to block Fungal access. At University of Georgia, scientists are using surface plasmon resonance, mass spectrometry and biochemistry to monitor these kinds of chemical warfare in the garden.

But not all Fusarium are alike.  One Fusarium has devised a brilliant Green Bean attack strategy:  Detoxify the Phytoalexins.  This is why, despite all their natural defenses, Green Beans can still be attacked by certain very devious Fusarium -- the kind that is likely to be annihilating your vegetables. Besides learning how to water properly, what are you going to do about Green Bean specializing Fusarium?

That's easy. Hit them with something they can't fight.  Hit them with Fungus-eating Bacteria.

You know how a sudden Aphids infestation in your garden practically disappears overnight when you release Lacewings and Ladybugs?  Same thing with disease causing Fungi.

There are three very good products on the market that are just what the doctor ordered for problems like yours:  KODIAK, SERENADE, and SONATA.

KODIAK, billed by manufacturer Bayer as 'America's first biological fungicide seed treatment', contaminates Soil with Bacillus subtilis GB03. The bacteria compete against Fungi for nutrients; by rubbing out the Fungi, they leave more for themselves. Any roots or sprouting seeds that happen to be around are automatically protected from Phytophtora, Aspergillus, Pythium, Rhizoctonia solani, Fusarium, Botrytis cinerea, Sclerotium rolfsii, Sclerotinia and Ustilogo.

The bacteria in SERENADE target Fungi that cause Mildew, Botrytis and other diseases.  SONATA's bacteria target Mucoraceae and Aspergillus.

Where were these diseases when you were growing up?  I wasn't there, so I'd only be guessing. It is possible your parents used chemical controls, but in my experience, that only leads to more need for more chemical controls.  The other side of the coin is that when you aren't doing intensive farming, if you use crop rotation and other best practices, you are able to sidestep diseases as they crop up.  The great majority of bacteria and fungi are non-pathogenic. By keeping them around, there is very little opportunity for pathogens, which must compete for resources and elbow room.

Remember, test that Soil.  If nothing else, it will reveal that your Soil is so wonderful you won't have to use fertilizer.

THE LONG ISLAND GARDENER