Beginner Gardening: Should I be Concerned about my Beans?, 0 by stephanietx

stephanietx wrote:
I have a 10' long bed filled with Kentucky Wonder pole beans and Blue Lake bush beans. They were planted from seed 4/14. They started good out of the gate, but seem to have stopped growing. They get lots of sun, mainly mid-morning to late afternoon. They've gotten plenty of water. I have found aphids on them, but have been spraying them with soapy water daily or as needed. None in this bed seem any taller than the others, so it's a universal problem in this bed. Most of the pole beans haven't started developing more than the first set of "true leaves", but there are buds for them on the plants. The planting medium is a combination of compost from our compost pile, mushroom compost, and planting medium from a local commercial supplier. Contrast this to another bed we have that's much smaller with a mixture of native dirt, compost, above mentioned planting mixture, mushroom compost. The plants in the smaller bed are much greener, taller, leafy-er (more leafy?), and generally just more healthy looking. The smaller bed gets about the same amount of sun. They get the same feeding, too.

Here's the first bed that I'm concerned about. The plants are approx. 6" tall. The black stuff on the bottom of the leaves is dirt residue from recent rains.