In my last article I said we were nearing the end of the broad beans I had grown over winter. That was wrong. We were still harvesting those I'd grown in pots in the greenhouse and then moved outside. We only started eating those planted directly in the garden about 10 days ago and there are plenty more on the plants yet. The Webmaster come chef groaned when I said I thought we would have fresh broad beens through to end of September.
I am more than delighted with the results. Some nights when we ventured out into the cold to cover them with fleece I wondered whether it was worth it; after the gales and the fleece had battered them down I thought they were unlikely to survive; when they began to turn black I thought of pulling them up. But most survived. In the end I only lost two or three plants. You can see these beans below behind the row of peas. The spring sown broad beans are developing pods nicely but are not yet ready to harvest. Broad bean variety (all sowings): Super Aquadulce. Pea variety: Douce Provence.
The outdoor plants developed much more slowly than the greenhouse plants but I hampered the early start of the greenhouse plants by leaving them in pots that were far too small when I moved them outside. Next year I'll transplant them into the garden towards the end of March (space permitting) or find much larger pots and see if they do better. Nevertheless we harvested broad beans from them from end of April through to early July. The peas didn't do so well. By the middle of June they were starting to look a little yellow and by the end of June they were mostly finished and completely yellow. Too much water? Not enough water? Pot bound and insufficient nutrients? Problably all those. The hot dry spell followed by a week of downpours didn't help although the pots were on well drained gravel.
All the other beans are coming along nicely now. At first they seemed to lag behind last year and as a novice I didn't know what to make of it. I put it down to the weather and decided I just needed to be patient. This strategy has proven correct as now, if I compare photos of last year with this, most have caught up and so far I think my cropping rate this year is much better.
Today I harvested the onions. By my reckoning only one of the sets didn't produce an onion. I think there are voles burrowing in the garden. I keep finding holes, you could say tunnel entrances, and the cat is very interested in sitting on guard. I think they are responsible for undermining a couple of my bean plants and also the single onion which failed to thrive. I am nervous about drying the onions and storing them. After tending them from October until now I don't want to lose them, and those we have already eater were delicious. Onion variety, Radar.
I planted garlic at the same time as the onions. If anything they have been even easier to grow. I dug one up today and it has a nice large, firm bulb but as not many of the leaves have turned yellow/brown I'll leave them a little longer as I don't have enough suitable space to dry them and onions.
The purple sprouting broccoli I grew from seed this has developed nice spears. In fact we have already eaten some. I'm not sure whether I should leave it longer before cutting it as the spears are still small, but I am worried about it going to seed. Given my disappointment with the lack of spears from broccoli I planted last Autumn, which I had expected from the information provided to be ready by late Spring, I was surprised today to see some flowering heads appearing. I had already pulled up most of the rather large plants to make space and light for a couple of rows of cabbage and cauliflower (also grown from seed). Still we ate the stalks and leaves which were tasty. Broccoli variety Claret F1. Garlic variety: mersley Wight.
