Broad Beans
I picked some broad beans late today - I think they’re ready… nice and long and I can feel the beans inside the pods.
Something has certainly taken a fancy to them as quite a lot have been eaten …what is it? A bit of a search suggests it could be caterpillars or birds - I’ve no idea?
I think we’ll freeze them. The BBC suggests you don’t need to blanch them but I’ve read elsewhere that you should blanch them? Any suggestions?
How Do My Broad Beans Grow?
Not too bad I think. I’ll be planting them out when the frosty mornings end. This photo was taken 10 days ago - they’re looking stronger now.
Wind and Beans
Wind and beans are often used together to good effect in schoolboy humour - but no such jokes in this post!
Wind: Well, as per usual for Hoylake recently, it’s been blowing like crazy again in the last few days. It’s curtailed my running, bashed the trellis in our back garden and re-salted our windows again. Having said that, I didn’t spot much damage on my way down to the plot on Saturday afternoon, unlike last Jan when we had the strongest winds for many years (allegedly). Had a bit of a fire to burn some weeds and did a bit of weeding too. Had to cut my visit short to fit in some hospital visiting unfortunately.
Beans: Moved my trays of broad beans from the garage into the utility room the other day ‘cos nothing much was happening …well, nothing was happening actually. Now starting to see a few sprouting through the compost at last.
Want to crack on with more weeding this week! And I’ve got some packets of seeds to use too including leeks - they need sowing in the next week or so according to the packet. My Mum bought me a packet of melon seeds for Christmas and I think I need to get cracking with those soon as well.
Broad Bean Seeds
Not the bestest of photos as it was going dark as I took it but here are a small handful of broad bean seeds. I’m starting them off in some plastic trays of potting compost. The packet says stick the trays on a windowsill but as I haven’t got any free windowsills they’ll just have to make do in the garage!
I’ll see if I can find some space in the house if the garage is a bit on the cool side.
Attack Of The Weeds
What with one thing and another I just haven’t had chance to get down to plot 69 since last Wednesday. As the photo shows the (presumed) chickweed has enjoyed the recently, unseasonally warm and sunny weather. The onions appear to be growing but the 6 broadbean plants that Dave gave me don’t seem to fairing so well (sorry Dave!).
Rose (the person) paid me a by-chance visit this afternoon and also thought that the weed is chickweed and she suggested that I simply hoe the weed out - so that’s an important job for over the weekend. Need to get some seeds in too! Sometimes I fret that I’m not ready and veg isn’t yet planted - but when I visit the plot and spy on my neighbours I feel (slightly) re-assured. It doesn’t help that my left-hand neighbours, Frank and Dave, manage their triple plot with army like precision - well, that’s how it seems through my novice eyes.
Over in the fruit cage the red currant bush and the raspberry canes appear to be doing well. If they and other bushes give fruit then we’ll be picking lots of it.
Looking forward to the weekends weeding and planting session already. Also looking forward to taking a few more snaps of more veg (seeds) being planted - it’ll be an education in pictures for our 2 young girls as the seeds turn into veg that they can eat. Actually, I’m toying with idea of setting up another flickr account, along the lines of this one that I’ve just setup for my to-be developed site about Hoylake. I’ll see how the time goes.
Well My Onions Are Growing
Well, since my last post about finally getting around to planting something, things are on the up - the onion sets are starting to sprout. Only just, but it’s great to see something growing. Actually, I’ve had quite a few of these small onion bulbs popping out of my light soil and I’ve simply been plonking them back into the soil. Broadbeans are doing okay I think?
My potatoes that I’m chitting have only sprouted a little whilst they’ve been sat in my garage. Plan to plant them in a week or so - looking forward to that.
On recent visits I’ve been digging up more of that bleedin’ couch grass. I had a fire a week or so ago to burn some of the dryer weeds and stuff but the couch grass is way too green to burn so I’ll keep on bagging it up and bringing it home to brown bin.
Spent an hour on the plot this afternoon and met my neighbours Simon and Sabina. We’ve not seen each other on our plot for weeks. They’ve made some progress too and have managed to get some stuff planted including some onions and some raspberry canes. Talking of which, my raspberry plant in the fruit cage is looking a tad wild and maybe I need to prune it some more - am I too late?
Getting a little concerned that I’ve not got seeds etc ready for sowing. Beetroot, carrot and the like can all start going in now and I’m not really geared up for it yet! Think I need to be getting a bit more organised.
Other thoughts: Need to get the glass back in the roof (at least) of the small greenhouse to catch some rainwater. Need to come up with a way of guttering my side of the main greenhouse to catch a lot of rain that is currently going to waste. Also want to create a flickr account to have all my plot 69 photos available to the world.
Enjoying it all a lot!
Finally Planted Something
After several weeks were each visit has simply been a weeding session I finally got around to planting something on Saturday (yesterday). I’d spoken to Dave at Friday nights AGM and he told me that he had a 1lb of onion sets left to sell and also a few kg of seed potatoes.
So on Saturday afternoon I met Dave and his wife Sally down at the site and bought myself the Sturon onions (for 80p) and about 6kg of seed potatoes for a fiver. Dave also kindly gave me 6 broadbean plants.
So I weeded again the back section of the plot and planted the broadbeans and all the onions. Should be alright for onions for a while if they grow well ! I planted them at about every 6 inches - I understand that planting them further apart gives rise to bigger onions.
Here are the broadbeans; obviously need to stick some canes in at some point.
Here are the Sturon onions, spaced at about 6 inch intervals. I’ve got quite a few rows, 5 I think. I pushed them into the soil with the tops just peeking out. I think that they should be ready to harvest around August.
I’m hoping to plant out the potatoes toward the end of the month, though I gather the traditional day is St Patricks day. Today, Sunday, I placed all of these seed potatoes in plastic trays so that they’ll start to sprout - chitting as it’s called. I’ve just put them in my garage where they’ll get light but not direct sunlight.
Also today I popped down to the plot to pick up the spuds that I’d forgotten to bring home yesterday. I did a bit of pruning on the big raspberry bush in the left of the fruit cage. Not quite sure what to prune really so I sort of tidied it up a bit and removed any branches that were heading off along the ground. Need some advice next season on how to prune it and train it properly.
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Seed Shopping
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