Inoculation of bean seed with nodule bacteria

Inoculation of bean seed with nodule bacteria helps the plant to acquire its own nitrogen. Not recommended as a standard practice on green beans. Using nodule bacteria is tricky since there are so many different types. One of the biggest obstacles are inoculating the plant roots with the same strain of bacteria that are in the soil. There are billions of types of bacteria and the chances that you will inoculate your plants with the right type is very small. So be vary by over exaggerated sales talk and bigger than life promises about yields. The above image shows the Nitrogen-fixing nodules on clover roots with centimeter scale ¹

Incorrect handling of the serum causes the death of the rhizobium bacteria. Nitrogen fixation is ineffective if serum not not applied correctly. The latter is also the case when imbalances in micro and macro elements are present in the soil.  It is therefore clear that reliance cannot be placed on rhizobium bacteria to supply enough nitrogen. If there is no match the artificial inoculation will serve no purpose to the plant in order to obtain higher yields and your money and effort will be wasted.

You can add fertilizer rather. View more information on bean fertilizer by clicking here. If you do want to use a plant to add nitrogen into the soil it is much more effective using either clover or buckwheat. Incorporate current plant standing in order to release nitrogen into the soil for use by next planting.

1. By Jeremy Kemp [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons