Beans, lots of beans, lots of beans...

I thought I would take a few moments to extol the virtues of growing your own broad beans.

Like me, you may have a pathalogical distrust of broad beans, no doubt suffering from the same post-traumatic stress disorder after being fed those horrible, grey, leather-coated blobs of yuk from the freezer compartment. However, last autumn, still high on the excitement of the summer harvest, I took the plunge and planted a packet of "Aquadulce" overwintering broad beans. Overwintering means exactly what it says, they survive the winter to give you an early crop. Behind a chicken wire fence they were safe from marauding bunnies and they shrugged off the worst snowfall for 20 years, to give a little cheer in the dark winter months.

You get several crops for your money; pinch out the tips of the plants when they reach a decent size, have them in salads; stir fry the immature pods; then, before long, we have beans, lots of beans, lots of beans lots of beans, just like the cow who was disappeared by Magical Trevor:
www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/magical+trevor/

This is the best bit: They taste nice! Steamed for a couple of minutes they taste sweet and fresh, in fact a bit like peas, rather than the grey powdery things of my youth. Finally, because they are legumes, they will fix lots of nitrogen into the soil, via the little white nodules on their roots, so they help the next plants along as well.

So, with this sort of four-way payout from the humble broad bean, it would be hard not to be converted. Moog doesn't really like them, he just gives me his forlorn "hey, this isn't food" face; I don't know, it's hard to tell what he's thinking these days, especially as he's gone stone deaf since this time last year.