Lugubrious Legumes

Some of the Painted Lady runners
are just starting to produce beans.

Friday 3rd August 2012
These clouds eventually brought some torrential afternoon showers

I'm just glad I'm not a bean.
Even the runners have struggled this year. The Painted Ladies, normally so vigorous, have struggled to get going, but finally some have got past the slugs and managed to gather enough light and heat to reach the top of their wigwam. I've clipped off the tops to encourage them to bush up and I've even harvested five runner beans.
I selected Painted Lady for its dual coloured flowers and its vigorous growth, but I have to say it seems to go stringy very quickly. There's nothing worse than a mouthful of stringiness - the bean equivalent of fish bones! From now on there'll be daily checks to make sure I catch the beans at optimal size.

I also grow Czar, a runner with white flowers and white 'butter' beans, which I plan to harvest and dry for the winter. It's not so vigorous though, and has struggled to get going this year.

Which varieties I grow is always open to review. In fact, this year's crop has been grown from beans collected last year and I'm not sure they haven't crossed. It'll be a lot clearer when I can harvest some Czars. I have noticed that one of the Painted Ladies has all red flowers.



If the runners are looking a bit sad, my other climbing beans are looking woeful. My third attempt at Borlottis will be lucky to yield one or two plants - all the others have been systematically nibbled into oblivion. I'm just hoping for enough to get some seed for next year. The same with French Bean 'Blue Lake'. This is a real shame, since in a good year it yields wonderfully tender and stringless beans.

Purple Teepees, I presume.

The packet of 'exotic beans' which I purchased are beginning to fare a little better. I'm not entirely sure which are which, as the five types came mixed in one packet. I separated them out based on colour, but the Purple Teepees have not come from the beans I thought they would!


Anyway, they are beginning to bush up and flower. The first tiny pods are appearing.
You may remember that I experimented with sprouting a few shop bought black-eyed beans and throwing them in the ground. Well, it didn't work. Probably not a good year to try, and a rather haphazard way of doing it. I will give it another go next year, but with a little more care and attention. They may even get a place in the polytunnel.

Much better this year to be a pea.

They have loved the wet conditions and seem unaffected by the slugs. The standard peas have done well, although the pea moths have found some of them. I've grown four different types and it will be a learning experience to compare them for yield and taste.



Purple-podded peas still cropping well.

The purple-podded mangetout is cropping well now. I agree with others' comments that these have a less delicate taste than standard green mangetout. We still eat some either raw or lightly steamed, but have found that we need to pick them very early before they begin to swell at all. No worry if we miss them though, since the peas they produce rival any others we've grown for taste. They are a very attractive additon to the veg patch, especially now that the sweet pea I sowed in with them has come into flower and the Cosmos Sensation are flowering at their base.
But I do think that for next year I'll look into a more tender green variety too.

Contending with the purple-podded peas for prettiness is the asparagus pea bed, which I have bordered with alyssum, along with the odd marigold. Not to everyone's taste, if anyone tells you this tastes like asparagus or peas, or a cross, they have probably not actually tasted it. In oriental cookery it's known as the winged pea/bean, named after the square, winged pods. These need to be picked very young and lightly cooked. If you don't get it right, they taste woody. A quick surf of the internet reveals plenty of people bemoaning the cardboard razorblades they have grown! I don't eat many of mine, but I do find the taste quite good - I would say a little nutty. In oriental cookery it is used more as a green ingredient in other dishes rather than on its own. I could see this working.


Asparagus Pea flowers

Asparagus pea has not really been selectively bred so does not come up to the yield and tenderness of other legumes, but if you have space it is certainly worth a try. I find it easy to grow, and this year's crop came from last year's collected seeds. Germination was excellent. It is an attractive, low-growing plant and the bees love it.




Finally, can you guess what this is?       ...
Last year's celery!
I had the bright idea of leaving it to collect the seed, but now find that celery seed has very few culinary uses. Anyway, I'll give it a go. I do like the proliferation of delicate flowers too.

Beans 'n' Peas

Tuesday 22nd May 2012

Another dull start to the day, but eventually it warmed up and the sun shone all afternoon.

Today's task was to finish the beans 'n' peas quarter of the veg patch.











Peas
First, another sowing of peas to continue the succession. I've already got Early Onward and Kelvedon Wonder in, but I found some old collected peas from Twinkle, so I've tried these.
I'm not convinced by the virtues of growing peas. Yes, they're great fresh, but it takes so many plants to get a decent amount and the frozen ones in the supermarket aren't actually at all bad. Anyway, I'll trial these varieties and see which is best. It may be that I need them all to give a succession through the season. Again, I poked clippings of red dogwood into the ground to give the plants a framework to clamber over. But just look at the first lot of dogwood twigs - they're sprouting. By the end of the year I should have a decent crop of saplings.

Now Sugarsnap peas and Mangetout are a different story. Bountiful, delicious straight from the plant and at supermarket prices a valuable crop. I'm growing two varieties of Sugarsnap - Sugar Ann and Sugar Snap. The former I grew last year without much success, and so far this year it seems that the latter is growing with much more vigour. We'll see what the harvest is like before we make any snap decisions (see what I did there?) about next year.
As for mangetout, I grow a purple podded variety with an impossible name. It tastes as clean and fresh as the green, but adds a touch of interest and colour.

All my climbing peas are grown in with sweet peas and nasturtiums.

Beans
The runner plants are already transplanted outside and some have started to wrap themselves around their wigwam poles. Today was the turn of the more exotic beans. French beans, dwarf beans, climbing beans, Borlottis, Haricots (for baked beans), Butter Beans, Purple Teepee, Blue Lake, Canadian Wonder (for kidney beans).

The soil felt warm for the first time today. The water collected in old baths from the gutters was tepid as it trickled from the watering can over my fingers. I love it when beans push and shove their way through the soil and continue skywards at a staggering pace. If this weather continues they'll love it.

Now, if Gerry's daily catch is anything to go by, then there are certainly plenty of mice and voles around, enough to threaten young peas and beans. So I have elected this year to soak the seeds in paraffin briefly as a deterrent. But one of my bees took exception to the smell I think and buzzed me with annoying determination to the point where I had to scarper till it gave up.

Milk Carton Graveyard
If you'd looked in my veg patch mid afternoon, you'd have wondered what on earth was going on, with piles of dismembered milk cartons in piles on the grass. I've discovered that milk cartons are well designed to fit a cane tightly through the handle and to protect the young plants from the ravages of pests and the weather.

Some of my wigwams have wellies.

Bees
Since I mentioned the bees above, a quick update on the two hives. Hive A (the original, from which we removed the queen but left a few of the best queen cells) is buzzing well. In the warm weather the hive entrance and the surrounding air have been full of bees, many returning laden with pollen. Hive B (the new one into which we moved the queen along with frames of brood, honey, pollen and bees) is much slower, with just the occasional bee emerging or returning. But I still hope to find, when we can look in a couple of weeks time, that we have two colonies of bees.


Hive A - busy








Hive B - quiet

Asparagus Peas
I've grown this unusual vegetable for the last three years. Each plant forms a low growing clump and they carry the most richly coloured, delicate little flowers, much loved by bees. You eat the whole pod, plucked from the plant when it is only an inch of so long. I find the taste a little nutty, though it's supposed to taste like a cross between...you've guessed!...peas and asparagus.