June update: Underground biscuits and the beans have gone nuts

I earthed-up my potatoes recently, to ensure a greater depth of soil directly over the plants. I used my azada to draw soil from the edge of the beds to the middle. After the first couple of scrapes I found a bit of plastic in the soil - no great surprise there, I often find buried rubbish - so, assuming it was an old compost bag I gave it a tug. Up came half a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits. I'm not sure if I can adequately describe my shock at that moment, since they were actually quite fresh, a good 4 months off their sell-by date. I went and showed them to my neighbour, who was equally bemused. I can only assume some animal (squirrel? fox? the beast of Wolverton? The Moog?) has buried them there for safe keeping and will be disappointed to come back and find my potatoes instead.

Overall the plot is looking very healthy at the moment. The broad beans, in the ground since last autumn, have been threatening to produce useable pods for some time now. I kept checking but they were always too small, until about the second week of June when they finally reached maturity - all at once. So I have a bit of a broad bean glut on my hands. Luckily they freeze well whilst I find things to do with them! You can see clearly in the picture below the notches on the edge of the leaves, this means the plants have suffered the attention of 'Pea and Bean Weevil' again. These little beetles' sole purpose in life is to eat peas and beans. I wonder what they ate before I started planting peas and beans on this plot?

I have been quite careful to defend my crops from attack this year, but have still made some mistakes. My kohl rabi has been decimated by something, all leaves stripped to stalks. I assumed slugs, and liberally applied pellets until the same thing happened (quite literally, overnight) to my nice row of radish seedlings. they were coming up well, after I companion-planted them inside a ring of garlic. I called in my neighbour John for his opinion, and  he suggested birds are to blame, probably pigeons. This makes sense, and on checking my reference books I drew the same conclusion. So, more netting and wire have been employed, plus my rather jolly scarecrow has been brought out of his winter hiding place to look after everything when I'm not there.

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.