Tim Foster
Many pests and diseases will sort themselves out in the garden, so maybe my runner beans will stand a chance after all...
We were given some runner beans recently. A gripping statement with which to start an article, I’m sure you’ll agree, but there is a surprising amount within it. Firstly, the generosity of gardeners when it comes to sharing produce. Of course it is often generosity tinged with a hint of desperation as in, ‘What the blue blazes do I do with all of this stuff?’ If you have an excess of your own vegetables, composting them is not an option – that is too hard to contemplate. Preserving them is a good alternative but how many beans can an average freezer hold? So then we get to ‘distribution-asdisposal’ and it is such a great feature of growing simply because many of us aren’t growers and are happy to receive. It helps if you have friends and neighbours on whom to unload the excess, otherwise we have the old New england story as a cautionary tale: police were warning motorists to make sure that their cars were particularly secure – apparently, gardeners had been breaking in and leaving loads of courgettes. Another aspect of that simple first sentence worth investigating is: ‘Why were we given runner beans, after all, we have an allotment?’ Well, this is slightly embarrassing in that, as our donor knew, our runners hadn’t really got out of the starting blocks. You are desperate to know what went wrong, I can tell. Our runner beans started well; slugfree, they slithered smoothly and serpent-like up the poles – anticlockwise, if you’re interested – and then they got blackfly. Blackfly is a black greenfly and is a species of aphid that is strongly attracted to peas, beans, nasturtiums and, curiously, beetroot. Anyway, they multiplied rapidly in the hot weather and the growth of the beans ground to a halt. When it comes to pests and diseases, I have a relatively hands-off approach (others describe it as ‘laziness’): leave well alone and it will sort itself out. And indeed it did - but unusually not for ages. The few ladybirds sharpening their knives and forks for a three-course meal of blackfly were deterred by lots of ants protecting their herds of aphids from such predators (ants collect the sugary, sticky waste from aphids and take it to their nests). It took a long time for the ladybirds to build up in such numbers as to succeed in this garden battlefield and clean up the plants. Incidentally, if you use any chemicals, even ‘organic’ ones, you may kill the aphids but you’ll take out the predators, too. And the result? Clean plants, no predators for the next attack and, of course, your crop infused with a helping of your chosen pesticide: just how many different artificial chemicals do you want in your body? The other aspect about being given food is summarised by the word ‘value.’ Not to be confused with the value of food when you are seriously hungry, this is when someone puts a price on something and it becomes instantly desirable. When I ask people why they don’t eat organic food the answer is nearly always cost. even though the cost of food is at an all-time-low-percentage of our income, it is still given as a reason. There are alternatives to supermarket prices: direct from the growers themselves such as The Community Farm, Leigh Court Farm and Sim’s Hill via their box schemes or the farmers’ markets. Growing your own organic food is the cheapest option of all but then the scary word ‘time’ comes into play. Being given a bag of beans is different. They were organic and freshly picked that day but because they weren’t bought or grown by us their ‘value’ seemed diminished. What did we do with them? We ate the lot in one go and thoroughly enjoyed them, but I’m under no illusion with that value thing. If we’d had a load of our own, these would have been passed on or, yes, even gently nestled into the compost heap. Our plants are now off and away with beans forming and I hope they will continue to do so a lot longer as a result of their ‘holiday,’ ideally beyond everyone else’s. So then I can give some away.