Odd Broad Beans

Thursday was a day of contrasts, heavy thundery rain showers interspersed with some warm sunny periods producing the warmest day of the month, not that there was much to beat.

We harvested our first broad beans of the season this week from our early sowing of Witkiem Manita.

These beans had been sown in the greenhouse on the 23rd February and were planted out on the plot on 23rd April. They certainly didn’t enjoy the most favourable conditions after planting out. They weren’t the first crop this year that I thought about pulling up and starting again as the plants looked pale and straggly. As they produced just a few flowers and I reasoned a few early beans would be welcome, they survived. Now all those early flowers have turned into the beans we've just harvested. In normal years that would be an end to the plants but not this year.

The plants have gone on to produce more beans and have some flowers still to set pods. That’s not what I’d expect as they normally flower, produce beans and certainly won’t go on and produce more flowers and beans.

Just for good measure they've managed to produce beans in various stages of maturity which will be ready for harvesting over the next few weeks. In the end we may have a decent crop of beans from plants that I almost pulled up in early May. It’s certainly an unusual growing season!