beans
Our weeds are purple beans
Following on from our earlier our weeds are lettuces, here is the latest rogue to grow in our pebble driveway.
Yes, that’s a purple bean plant, self-seeded into a bed of stones. It just goes to show that even edible plants that we take for granted are incredibly resourceful and adaptable.
Now to drive around it, as I can’t bring myself to pull it out — it looks so happy where it is!
A jungle of tomatoes
The wet spring (the wettest on record) has been miserable for us humans, but the garden has been loving it. Plants that did well last year have gone crazy this year, beyond all reasonable expectation.
This includes:
- Tomato plants (both bush-type and climbing-type) that have gone wild, taking over everything.
- Beans and snowpeas producing vigorously.
- Celery sprouting everywhere, after I let a single plant go to seed last year.
- Sweetcorn that’s higher that us.
- Cucumber plants starting to get out of control.
Now we’ve just got to stop it all getting eaten by caterpillars, and keep on top of our harvesting and eating …
This is how many beans we’re harvesting
The bean plants are really coming into their own! This is how many beans we’re harvesting each day or two, and we’re already creating a backlog in the fridge. We need to eat more beans! 🙂
Three colours bean
We’ve eaten our first beans tonight, in three colours: green, yellow and purple. The bean bushes are just ramping up at the moment, so plenty more to come!
I blanched these, and served them with olive oil, lemon juice, mint, feta and pine nuts. Yum.
Bush beans coming up
Despite the earlier bad news, the first of our bush beans are pushing themselves forcefully out of the ground. They are a week late, so perhaps seed storage in the fridge put them into a dormant state, rather than killing them outright.
One lonely pumpkin has also come up, which I’ve supplemented with two others that have sprung up out of our compost. Spring is definitely here…
Planting record: beans and pumpkins
I did some gardening this morning before work, and for my planting record, this is what went into my new garden beds:
- Bean, Violet Queen Bush Bean – harvest in 60d
- Bean, Sex Without Strings (dwarf butter bean) – harvest in 87d
- Bean, Gourmet’s Delight (dwarf bush bean) – harvest in 60-70d
- Bean, Stringless Pioneer (dwarf bush bean) – harvest in 60-70d
- Pumpkin, Golden Nugget
- Pumpkin, Buttercup – harvest in 120d
(I’ll do a more complete post, including garden diagram, in the next week or two.)
Lewisham House and Farm 