Thank you for the detailed response. I will keep in mind your first point for next year definitely. it was evident to me that the beans started and grew way faster than anything else I was planting so it sounds like it would make sense to plant them directly in the bed next time. Good tip.

Somethings do well and need to be done in pots/ indoors before you get them out into your garden (long season crops like tomatoes, peppers), somethings not so much. A lot of it has to do with root architecture. Pay attention to what farms and farmers in your area are doing and replicate that.

It is the beginning of the season where I am. I only just put them in the ground ~10 days ago. The growing season has just begun. So no beans and they (hopefully) have not reached the end of their life cycle.

Great. So plenty of time, even enough to plant more beans from seed. Something else to consider here too, those leaves that are dying off; they grew indoors in a different climate. It might be those leaves fall off and new leaves come in and you are off to the races.

As I said in another post this is a newly built bed for this year, so the soil isn’t what I would call “mature” although from a gardening standpoint I am not sure what that means. I did not (foolishly?) combine the fresh raised bed mix soil with my existing, i just put it on top. Succeed or fail, I will leave the roots in the ground at the the season.

This is more of a soil physics issue. I would consider this to be very, very young soil. Its a good thing that you combined your old soil with the new soil. But…

i just put it on top

I think this might be getting us closer to your issue. When we drop in new soil, it doesn’t have structure yet. This will come in time from roots creating holes, insects burrowing and digging around, etc. These actions will create pore and channels that water can infiltrate through. You really can’t “short cut” structure. It just takes time to build and develop.

One additional consideration beyond the scope of your original question, but something I’ll tell you because you’ll almost assuredly hit this issue. Carbon eats nitrogen. Or at least, thats the anecdote, and its true enough to remember it. Garden soils you would buy from big box stores often do really well for a season, then people see a big drop in performance. Its usually because these soils are usually super carbon rich, and only have enough nitrogen for about 1/2-1/3 of a growing season. As this soil matures, you need to continuously add nitrogen to continue/ finish the composting process.

I do have plenty of wood ash. I have a wood burning stove and a bucket full of ash that I can easily add. How much do you recommend?

Any where from about one to one and a half tofu container per meter square. ish. Growing up we would dump our wood burning stove right into our garden beds whenever we cleaned it. Probably closer to several tofu containers per square meter. As long as there is no trash in it.

Plants love it. Phosphorus is the main limiting nutrient to plant growth globally. Effectively you are moving the phosphorus from where ever those trees were grown to your garden, and increasing its productivity. As long as your plants have everything else they need, they’ll be phosphorus limited.

My watering schedule so far has been “whatever nature is doing”. For much of the week and a half or so that they have been in the ground it has been rainy and overcast. Only the last 2 or 3 days has it been sunny.

So it sounds like in terms of water your in the “plenty” range. But maybe its not able to penetrate or sticking around because of the age of your soil. Dig in there with your fingers and check.