I’m rethinking my bean crops
Some sulky French ones have been replaced with a different variety!
Sometimes Mother Nature throws you a curveball, and this week has had its challenges. I planted some climbing French bean plants a few weeks ago when the weather was warm and sunny; they should have been romping away by now but the plants just sat there and began to sulk. They began to go brown and die, even though they were well fed and watered. I suspect we had a cold night or two, which affected the plants as French beans really don’t like extremes in temperature.
I’ve taken the hard decision to remove them all and sow another batch of a different variety direct. It may seem a little late, but French beans will be fine sown in July, as long as the soil’s warm and the seedlings are kept moist. I may not get as big a crop as from seeds sown earlier in the year, but I’ll certainly get a bigger crop than the one I’d get from the plants I removed! I’ve opted for a climbing variety called ‘Cobra’. This typical green, pencil-thin bean should start cropping in no time.
While I was thinking of beans, I also decided to make a sowing of broad beans. ‘Luz de Otono’ is the world’s first autumn-cropping variety, which will give me a nice harvest later this year from a sowing this month and even into August. Hopefully this will make for a larger selection of beans after my spring-sown broad beans have been harvested and happily eaten. I’ll make sure both lots of newly sown beans are kept well watered when they first germinate, and I’ll lay a piece of butterfly netting over the ground (weighed down at the corners). This isn’t to stop butterflies, it’s to prevent mice from being able to dig up the newly sown seed! I’ll also sprinkle a little hot chilli powder in each planting hole as this will discourage any persistent mice from snacking on my future crop.
I’ve just harvested some early potatoes that were grown in buckets, but I won’t throw the compost away. It may be nutrient poor now the spuds have been removed, but it’ll have enough goodness left to grow a quick crop of salad leaves in before it’s added to my raised beds later in the year.