Tag Archives: beans

Monday Miscellany, posted on Tuesday

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We had a strange day at the farm yesterday. With nobody in we managed to force our firstborn into action and shifted quite a lot of work. This was despite frequent visits from a variety of people. I wasn’t allowed to talk to them because I’m considered a trifle direct when people stop me working, so I was able to brew mint tea, make the nettle soup for today, restructure the herb bed and plant the new beans after the problematic start to the “Bean Trial”. More of that later.

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Mint Tea

 

Sorry if the tenses seem a little strange in that paragraph, it was originally written yesterday but will be posted today, which was tomorrow when I wrote.

Julia spent half the day explaining what we were doing, what the statues were, what was happening on Open Farm Sunday and how to enter the Scarecrow Competition. She’s very good with people.

I’m good with tools of destruction, a talent which came to the fore when we got home. The laburnum tree, which had been leaning at an increasing angle over the last few months (coinciding with the time erection of next door’s new fence, though I am pointing no fingers here) had finally given up its struggle with gravity.

They don’t look like much but I can assure you there’s a lot of wood in a laburnum, particularly when you’re  using a pair of loppers and a pruning saw. The worst is over now ad I’ll be able to get on with pruning the plum, which is why I’d originally gone into the back garden.

I’ll miss it because laburnums have featured in my life since I was about 6 and we moved to a house with one in the garden, but it’s an ill wind that blows no good and I have plans now that we have a new patch of unshaded patio. Think “heated greenhouse”.

As for the “Bean Trial”,  it hasn’t worked out well. You may recall that we filled half a bed with compostable material and left the other half plain. I then added an “X” shaped frame and planted two Firestorm beans at the base of each cane. The half of the bed that was prepared with organic material definitely showed better germination and growth, but then nearly all the shoots disappeared. On digging holes to plant replacements I found many more beans which had germinated then been eaten.

We’ve also done a Health and Safety trial with the ends of the canes. The Mark I – Coke bottle and gaffer tape is big and clumsy and tends to fall off. The Mark II – plastic protector was too small for the cane so became a Mark III using a slit and gaffer tape. The unmodified protector still works for most canes and at 12 for £1 is a good investment. Better than a poke in the eye, as they say.

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Mark I

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Mark III

 

So, organic material is good, slugs are bad and beans that are two years past the date on the packet will still grow well. Hopefully the new plants will survive and we can start to measure the crop we get from the two sides.

However, nothing is certain in life so we will just have to see.

Games, bamboo and beans

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It’s not often we welcome a sports personality to the group but we did today, after his trip to the Disabled Games at Scunthorpe. So it’s congratulations for a job well done (including archery and curling) and a big thank you to the Rotary Club for putting on  the games.

Despite predictions of cloud and rain over the weekend we pretty much seem to have had good weather. Too good for the plants in the polytunnel – some of which had laid down and died on heat stress on Sunday. I was in on Saturday so I know all was well then. Current forecast indicates we are in for some cooler days but they haven’t exactly covered themselves with accuracy for the last ten days so I don’t know what to believe.

I’ve been ordering a few new seeds as I crave excitement in the garden and don’t think I’ll be getting that from phlox, onions and feverfew. So it’s hello to Giant Bamboo and Bananas. The Giant Bamboo is suposed to grow a foot a day when it gets into its stride so I’m looking forward to that. It’s going to make an interesting photo diary at the very least, and next year’s bean frames are going to be pretty spectacular if it gets anywhere near its predicted 100 foot tall.

Final picture is of our new, slightly out of kilter, X-shaped bean frame. The theory is that the beans will hang down and be easier to pick from an X than from an inverted V. I’ve seen a more sophisticated version of this in a book – I think by Alan Titchmarsh – which was a timber frame supporting a proper V shape. If the X works I may look at going the whole hog next year.

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More news on the beans is that the roots we saved from last year are starting to form shoots. Normally gardening books tell you to cut the top part off and leave the roots in to the soil so that all the nitrogen they have fixed from the air will go back to the soil. A couple of years ago  Julia read an article saying that runner beans were perennials and you could store the roots like dahlia tubers. We did it and they seemed OK. Opinions on the net seem a little mixed but we’ll give them another year and see what happens.

 

Is it only two days?

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Just  look at the beans – they’re a bit different from the picture I took a couple of days ago. However, this isn’t the first time I’ve had good beans at this time of year. It’s not always a guarantee of having good beans later in the season. Last year’s crop, for instance, had to be replaced after cold winds saw the original plants off.

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Pride definitely goeth before a fall, as I often misquote.

There’s something about crops that brings out the fool in many of us. I always used to plant too early anmd suffer huge losses. I’m better now but It’s hard. Same went for my customers when I used to be an agricultural salesman. There were always a few who had to be the first to gather the harvest in. You could always tell them by their smug expression and the sound of the grain drier working overtime. I’m not sure what the profit margin is with grain, but I can’t see the cost of drying improving it.

And here’s the tea plantation – or nine sticks in pots. It’s early days yet. If you fancy any I can recommend hot-plants on ebay. They came from Cornwall, were £8.95 each, arrived quickly, and were well-packed.

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100!

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I’ve been looking forward to this one as a milestone, though simply getting to number 100 is no guarantee of quality, or that I’ll have something to say.

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This is actually the 103rd post I’ve written for the blog but I’ve sidelined two as not quite fitting in. One was on the evils of cheap toilet rolls, including a discussion on why smaller cardboard tubes may be better for transport but they make planting runner beans more difficult.

The other was about keeping rats out of compost but it spread a little to include other rat-related topics. Before clicking on the link you may like to know that you keep rats out of compost by making it damp enough to be unpleasant. If you have rodents in the compost it means it’s too dry.

We had a meeting in the centre today and two soups for lunch – Leek and potato with thyme, and Nettle and Spinach. Everybody had some of the nettle in the end, though a couple did start off with Leek and Potato to break themselves in gently. Last time we did soup and sandwiches we only persuaded around 60% of people to have the soup even though the choice was Pea and Mint or Vegetable, which are not at all scary compared to Nettle.

With the meeting, the cafe and the allotment group we had quite a crowd. I was supposed to be weeding, sowing more seeds and re-potting as part of our plan for a plant sale. Regular readers (both of them) will recognise this as a prelude to admitting that by the time I’d made extra sandwiches, been ensnared by the cafe, done some weeding, spoken to some parents about coming to our next Kids in the Kitchen day, run an impromptu farm tour and done some paperwork I didn’t do much of what I was meant to do. I did, however, remember to water the plants in the polytunnels. That’s good, because I don’t always remember.