[webwahm]

Walked past a plot yesterday and noticed rows of mini trenches filled with scattered veg waste...

...is this another way of composting, directly into the soil?  What are the benefits over a compost bin?  And why leave the trenches open and not cover over with soil?

Bet you love these newbie questions 

[zazen999]

It's a bean trench.

[JayG]

It's a bean trench.

...........saves using up (and having to move) your existing precious ready-made compost; gets covered up when the trench is full in February/March to provide a humus-rich medium for growing beans (esp. runner beans) in.
 

[poppies]

It's a bean trench.

I did this last year and had the best crop of runner and french beans ever.

[Elcie]

so perhaps the fact that it was still open is because they were waiting for more veg waste?  Wouldn't the cats/rats take it?

If it has worked for others then I would love to give it a go.  What type of thing do you put in there?

[sunshineband]

Any veg waste from the kitchen, shredded paper, soft green weeds with no tap roots to grow again or seeds on, grass clippings if you have any

[JayG]

so perhaps the fact that it was still open is because they were waiting for more veg waste?  Wouldn't the cats/rats take it?

There is nothing to interest cats or rats if you stick to the ingredients Sunshineband suggests (might get the odd hopeful blackbird chucking it about a bit though!)

[Brambles]

I did this the year before last, sorry to say I had a poor crop ...  Personally I would not do this again, but most people that do this seem to do well with a bean trench.

[Zippy]

In my experience, better to bury a large leaky plantpot in the centre of your runner bean wigwam than to bury veg waste as it is water that runners need over and above heavy feeding; which can lead to too much leaf growth and less fruit.

I always tip the entire contents on my potato crop every spring and let the worms do their thing and the beans always follow potatoes in my rotation so the runers would be sown into one year old settled moist soil anyway without having to dig trenches.

[sunshineband]

Must be horses for courses 

Actually the veg matter doesn't so much as feed the beans, as provide an underground mulch to keep the roots moist. The real benefit of the nutreints comes the following year, together with the nitrogen from the bean root nodules as well of course.