Bean Trials - Findings start Coming In

Borlottis

Two years ago I grew as many different potato varieties as I could with the aim of settling on a few varieties which would serve me well.

This year it was the turn of the beans, runners, dwarfs, dried, French, inside, outside...

The beans broadly fall into two categories, those where the whole pod is eaten and those grown purely for the actual beans inside.

First, let's get the dwarf beans out of the way. They were a complete failure this year, with virtually no germination. I guess the late winter meant the soil was not warm enough. Everybody round here had the same problem. The climbing beans on the other hand did well. Don't ask me to explain that one!

Runners
I have abandoned heritage varieties this year and have prioritised stringlessness. This is because I detest finding a mouthful of stringy bean pod in my mouth. It's like eating bony fish.
I have grown a red variety, Armstrong, and it has done well. Even when I forget to harvest it for a while, the ones which have grown a bit too big still snap cleanly. Then there's a variety with white flowers and white beans - the name totally escapes me right now. This I am growing for the beans inside, which I hope to be able to use as dried butter beans. It's pretty much stringless as well, so would have been a good back up variety if needed. For some reason, white varieties always seem less vigorous than red ones and take longer to get going.

French (Green) Beans
I've grown a past favourite, Blue Lake, outside and it has again performed very well. It is a crisp, clean flavoured bean which is responsible for me discovering that there are some green foods I actually like! I've also grown Cobra this year, some in the polytunnel and some outside.Both have done well. Given how precious space is in the polytunnel, I may just grow enough in there next year to last until the outdoor crop comes good.

Yard Long beans

A bit of a novelty one this. It failed outside, even when started off in modules in the polytunnel, but the tropical conditions under cover have suited it much better. You don't need many beans to make a meal and it's cropped very well over quite a long period. Not quite as delicate a taste as the French Beans, but it has earned a place in next year's plan. I have lots of very long pods full of next year's seed just hanging until they fully dry.

So we're pretty much sorted for next year on the green bean front.

But I've also been trying a few varieties for drying, a great source of protein for winter stews. The plants in the polytunnel have gone over now and many of the pods are dry enough to pod out.
It's not that long ago that the luxurious profusion on the bean plants was threatening to overwhelm the whole polytunnel. However, I've a feeling that this may have been somewhat at the expense of the bean harvest. I've also got a feeling that the earlier beans to set weren't pollinated very well. The insects took a while to discover the tropical environment of the polytunnel earlier in the year and the older pods seem to have very few properly developed beans inside.

Today's exploratory harvest was, I have to admit, slightly disappointing, but on the whole I have a lot more beans than I started with and I have a much better idea of what I want to grow for next year, and more importantly where I want to grow it.

Pea Beans
An old favourite this one. It performs pretty well outside and I actually planted some late to replace a couple of failed crops. Inside the polytunnel it romped away, winning the race to the top and thriving under the warm conditions. It wasn't long before I was regularly having to pull leaves from the plants to allow some air ventilation.






But, now that most of the leaves have fallen, the final yield is sparse. I reckon I'll struggle to fill a jar. So although it'll be on next year's list of plants to definitely grow, it probably won't be getting a place in the polytunnel again. There is plenty of space outside to grow as much as I want, so half of this year's harvest may be saved for next year's seed.

Black-eye Beans

I absolutely love eating these beans, so when a few were included in a cheap pack of 'exotic' bean seeds, it gave me the idea to try growing the beans I had in store in the kitchen. Last year I just sowed them straight into the cold, wet ground and they happily rotted away!

Not one to give up, this year I took more care of them and raised them alongside other beans in modules under cover. Germination and initial growth was strong. I wasn't sure whether they would be dwarves or climbers, and they ended up somewhere in between, starting off slowly but then climbing up the sunflower stems in the polytunnel.

Again, though, the total yield looks like it will be fairly low. Each pod has done well, with up to 13 beans in each pod, but the number of pods is fairly low. However, I intend to try some black-eye beans fresh in tomorrow's dinner and if I like them they may just earn a little place under cover next year. I'm hoping, though, that they will thrive outside. As with the pea beans, it may be that less leaves equals more beans. Or are they too exotic?

Black-eye Beans growing next to Pea Beans

A pod full of black-eye beans

Fresh black-eye beans

Over in the corner of the polytunnel, the climbing Borlotti pods provided a vivid splash of colour through the summer. But now the pods are fading. These beans appear to have been the most prolific of the beans I have grown for drying, as well as looking very dapper.
I podded a few of them today to discover the most subtly beautiful beans inside.






Borlottis



So Borlottis haved earned themselves an increase in space next year, as long as they taste nice. There are some growing outside too, a less tall variety, so it will be interesting to assess how they do.















I've saved the very worst till last. Not beans, but peas, I decided to plant a batch of chick peas from the store cupboard to keep the black-eye beans company. They germinated very well and I was pleased with their initial growth. But after a while it became apparent that each plant seemed to have, on average, about one pod on it! Not only that, but each pod seemed to have one chickpea inside! This seems to be a crop which, at least in a British polytunnel, would require quite some acreage to fill a tin.
But it gets worse. For today I realised that most of those precious pods had either dried up and withered to nothing or else just totally disappeared.

 A rare chickpea pod 

I guess then that if we want to continue to enjoy eating chickpeas, hummus and tahini, then we'll just have to buy them from the supermarket. Some crops just weren't designed to grow in this country, which probably explains why you don't see fields full of chickpeas.

My total chickpea harvest!!!!
Sue and I will have half each.

Harvest is upon us

OK, we've already had the rhubarb and the asparagus. And most welcome they were too.

But for the last couple of weeks harvest has been well under way. In fact, some crops have come and gone already and the freezers are starting to groan.

It all started with the soft fruits. Punnet upon punnet of strawberries, enough to share a few with the guineafowl. It's been a good year for them.

Strawberries in preparation for freezing.

They lose their texture when frozen, but still make excellent jams and sauces.

The gooseberries weren't far behind. The Red Hinnomakis were the first to ripen and the most prolific. This variety is incredibly sweet. Close your eyes and you could be eating a grape.

Meanwhile some of the veg were responding to the warm weather. Turnips swelled nicely, both outside and in the polytunnel. The courgette plant in the polytunnel - I never meant to grow one in there, the labels must have got mixed up - started throwing out its offerings, closely followed by one of the more advanced plants outside. A night of heavy rain magically transformed skinny green fingers into fat, foot long giants.

Elsewhere in the polytunnel, hidden amongst the jungle of leaves, I came upon a wealth of French beans. I am growing the climbing variety Cobra in there and it is yielding a huge quantity of beans. Unlike some others which I've grown previously, Cobra's beans don't seem to get tough and stringy if you miss them by a couple of days.

The Borlottis and Pea Beans are producing pods too, but these will be saved for the beans rather than eating the pods.

And the potatoes have finally swelled. We've made a small dent in the Earlies, Arran Pilot and Red Duke of York, as well as starting on the Charlottes.  

I pick a little from each crop and suddenly
we have enough to more than fill our plates

Peas are ready too now. I have grown Sugar Snaps, Mangetout and normal peas. Unfortunately I seem to have a problem with the Pea Moth in my garden, which means that each pea in each pod has to be checked for the tiny caterpillars which burrow into individual peas. A complete pain, and it means that the Sugar Snaps, whose pods I would usually eat whole and raw, have become a bit useless. Still, the Mangetout are still OK as long as I catch them before the peas swell.



You can't get this freshness and crispness in the shops.



The broad beans have done exceptionally well this year. I wasn't intending on freezing any, but we've hardly even made a dent in the harvest and I don't want the beans inside to get too big and leathery.

 

But I've saved the best till last. For on the way to the chickens I get to pluck fresh raspberries every day. The varieties have got a bit mixed up now, but the tastiest are definitely the smallest ones, the most difficult to pick and definitely not the ones you would ever find in a shop. Imagine a ruby with exquisite taste. No. Imagine hundreds of rubies, then more and more every day, for the raspberries have been very fruitful this year.

Not every crop has fared so well this year. It's been a very poor year for dwarf beans and, as I've mentioned, the Sugar Snaps will be going to the chickens. But it looks as if we'll have plenty enough to keep us extravagantly supplied in delicious fresh food. And when that runs out there'll be a freezer full of produce and a pantry full of jams and preserves. If my planning goes right, there should still be some more hardy veg coming through the winter and there'll be a store of root crops in the ground or packed in boxes in a cool, dark place. Oh, and there'll be mountains of pumpkins too.

The greatest delight about all this is that we've put all our efforts into it and now we are reaping the rewards. And what a reward! For what you can buy in the shops just falls flat on its face, both for choice and most especially for freshness. The crunch of a carrot pulled straight from the ground, the juiciness of a strawberry ripened by the sun while still on the plant, the bite of a gooseberry teased from the prickly branch, the freshness of a peapod plucked straight from the plant, the earthiness of a potato fresh from the soil.  

All these things make our harvest special.

Three Sisters resurrected

Last year I attempted to cultivate The Three Sisters.

That's the system where you grow sweetcorn in small clumps, interspersed with squashes and pumpkins. Then you add the third "sister" - climbing beans, whose sole purpose is to feed the slugs and divert them away from the other crops... or so it seemed.

Well, that was last year.
As it was, the sweetcorn, squashes, courgettes and pumpkins did very well given copious amounts of rain.

This year is a very different year. So last week the three sisters were resurrected.

The sweetcorn is growing well now.
Time to sow the French beans.

I doubt the original growers of Three Sisters
surrounded their crops with electric fence
to protect it against rabbits.

Young sweetcorn plants, back on 27th May


The sweetcorn has been planted for well over a fortnight now. It always takes a knock back when it first goes into the ground outside and the weakest specimens don't make it.
After a tricky germination, where several complete trays just rotted away as they failed to spring into life in the cool conditions, I didn't really have any to spare. As it is a high proportion of plants have made it through and have begun to grow more strongly.

Various types of courgette, squash and pumpkin have now been transplanted out between them.

I decided to invest time erecting the electric rabbit fence around my lovingly nurtured plants. There is nothing as soul-destroying as the disappointment of finding your freshly planted crops nibbled or, worse still, uprooted and laying wilted on the surface of the soil.

And so to the third sister. While the cucurbits spread and shade the surface of the soil, the beans climb up the sweetcorn stalks, in the process capturing nitrogen and enriching the soil for next year.
I had some beans already sown, but they are about three times as tall as the corn and reaching rapidly for the skies. So I decided instead to sow fresh beans at the bases of the sweetcorn. I have plumped for French bean Blue Lake, a stringless variety which has performed well in our soil in the past.

And in honour of the Native American origins of the Three Sisters planting system, I have planted some wigwams of runner beans alongside!

But in all seriousness there are some very valid reasons for growing these crops in combination. Get the timing right and the plants aid each others' growth. They provide a good nutritional balance too.
There's some good information on this website:

http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html

One very useful hint I picked up from this site, so indirectly from the Native American Indians, is to use nature to time sowing and planting.
For early spring in the books is different across the whole country and from year to year. If you sowed seeds strictly by date this year, as I found out to my cost with the sweetcorn, they just sat in the cold conditions not realising it was time to sprout into life.
But if you sowed when, for instance, the cow parsley came into flower or the sowthistles started to grow, then nature would be your calendar...

Not that nature always gets it right.

Beans, beans, beans.

Against all tradition, the bank holiday weekend we've just had gave us some most glorious weather.

So it was time for a drastic haircut.



a haircut for the orchard grass



a haircut for the hay meadow
(thanks Don)

and my twice yearly haircut.

I paid for it with burnt ears, a rather raw neck and sore temples. For, as I took advantage of the sunshine and put in a very long weekend outside, areas of skin long-covered by my rather wild hair were exposed to ultraviolet rays for the first time in a long while.

In the veg patch, this weekend was all about the beans. They have been growing happily in the protective environment of the polytunnel but, now that all danger of frost has passed (I sincerely hope), they will grow into stronger plants in the soil outside.

During last week the Runner Beans went in. I have changed varieties this year. As with all my beans, I have prioritised stringlessness. Much as I like to grow heritage varieties, I find a stringy bean somewhat akin to a fish full of bones. So, for the runners, I have plumped for two varieties. Armstrong, a red flowered cultivar, and White Lady, surprisingly a white-flowered type, but more significantly white beans for drying.

I ran out of time to dig trenches for the beans, which should be
filled with compost, newspaper and all manner of rotting
material.
So instead, I transplanted each young plant onto a bed
of comfrey leaves, which should provide plenty
of goodness as they rot down.

Some French Beans have gone into the ground in the polytunnel too.

Yardlong (though the beans are best harvested before they reach this length), Cobra, Pea Beans (again for dried beans) and climbing Borlottis.

The spares have gone outside to brave the British weather. But my main French bean variety outside is Blue Lake, with its small, white haricot beans. I grew a few two years ago and the beans were beautifully crisp with not a hint of string.

We also planted some purple climbing beans, Blauhilde. These have gone in as seeds, rather than plants raised in the polytunnel.

Likewise, three types of dwarf beans: Canada Wonder, which can be stringy but should yield a good harvest of kidney beans for drying; Tendergreen; and Helda, which I snapped up ridiculously cheap at the end of last year.

All my beans will grow accompanied by climbing nasturtiums and sweet peas, to make them more attractive both to the human eye and to pollinating insects.

There's also an experiment going on with more exotic beans, nabbed from the kitchen store cupboard. More on this later.

Raising the pulses

Monday 2nd July
A glorious morning sky.

Exotic beans
I bought a cheap packet of beans from a pound shop which contained black-eyed (one of my favourites), haricot (baked beans), purple teepee and butter bean. I must say, I hadn't realised I'd be able to grow this range of pulses but, aside from slug browsing, they seem to be doing quite nicely.

Rows of exotic beans. A few gaps, but otherwise doing OK.

The thought struck me that I already had half a jar of black-eyed beans in the pantry. Could these be any different to what I'd just planted? So, as an experiment, I've sprouted the beans and literally thrown them into the ground.

Now to wait and see what happens. Could be a very cheap way of buying lots of seeds (though hopefully I'll be able to save my own of this particular variety anyway).

I'm also growing loads of kidney beans with seed saved from last year. These are edible as dwarf beans but, being a heritage variety (Canadian Wonder), I found the stringiness not to my taste. However, the prospect of jars full of dried beans for winter protein is a very appealing one.




Meanwhile, the Borlotti beans I sowed in the greenhouse are reaching for the skies and ready to be planted out.

Borlottis protected in the greenhouse.

Likewise, all the other beans I belatedly sowed to fill the slug gaps are bursting into the fresh air. I love growing beans - they come up so strong and before you know it you've got strong, thriving plants.








Outside, most of the early sown beans have just about made it past the slugs. There's an equation here - growth rate of the plant against rate of eating by the slugs. This is where my wet weather slug culls redress the balance in favour of the plants. A modicum of sunshine in the last few days has helped too.

However, the seeds I planted direct in mid May are nowhere to be seen. This is when the slug explosion really went berserk. My French beans Blue Lake (a tender, stringless variety) have completely vanished in the soil.
Let's hope that giving them a start in paper pots and culling the slugs will give the new plants a fighting chance.