Beans or no beans?

As I suspected I would, now that it's the dead of winter, I'm thinking of gardening.  I can't plant tomatoes or potatoes because I've already grown them two years in a row in the same spot and the garden needs to grow something else (or nothing) the next two or three years.  Last night for dinner I had excellent homemade black bean tacos so naturally, I'm thinking I might grow black beans.  Growing legumes is good for the soil and growing beans is fun.  These are the beans I'm thinking of growing.  I'm not sure what to do.  My beef with gardening this past summer is I put a lot of work into growing tomatoes and got only a few tomatoes for my effort.  I think we're short on bees around here.  I still want to grow some dyeing plants and I'm not sure how much room I'm going to have.  Plus, I'm leaning toward growing a single zuchini plant.  (When you live alone, if you plant more than one zuchini plant, you risk alienating all your friends when you hide the tons of extra zuchini in their cars, mailboxes, etc.)  I'm very enthusiastic about gardening in the spring but as the summer gets hotter and more humid, my enthusiasm drops off radically.  I'm sure I'm not the only one to whom this happens.  What will you be planting this spring?  What should I plant?  Thoughts?  Ideas?

Comments

[Nannette]

Thanks to you, I'm going to be singing 'beans, beans the musical fruit' all day. It's a good thing I don't know any zucchini songs.

[gayle]

Growing dried beans is easy, easy, easy! You'll love it. Plant, weed a couple of times, then ignore them until the plants and pods are all dried up. And the ignoring part happens during the hottest part of the season! By harvest time, the weather has cooled off, and you're ready to deal with gardening again. Go for it!

[elizabeth]

I've got a pot of arugula growing right now! It's been so warm this winter I decided to risk a freeze, hopefully I'll get a few salads before then, if it freezes at all.

You know you can buy something (some kind of spray) to pollinate your tomato plants, right? To make sure they set fruit? That's what we did last year and it worked fabulously.