BROADly speaking...

Gardener:Somerset Sue

Date:06 Nov 2022

Blog Type:Vegetables

... or speaking about broad beans. I've posted about these "yukky" beans, as most of my family refer to them, a few times now. This may be the last time this season as they are finally coming into their own and we are getting a good crop off them. 

This weekend we had our two grandsons to stay and I gave them the task of venturing into the broad bean jungle to find fat beans to pick. They found a small tunnel into the middle of the square of plants and thought it was such fun to get in there, pop up in the middle and pass the beans to Nanny standing on the outside. 

I actually made a bit of a mistake with my planting this year by sowing the young seedlings in a square. It worked well with pollination and also with protecting the bulk of them against the wind, but it means the inner plants are hard to get to for harvesting. 

That's where intrepid grandchildren come in. It became an adventure of jurassic proportions and the challenge of finding the biggest and juiciest broad bean pod was a matter of acheivement and pride. 

They ate a few beans raw from the pod, but the ultimate reward was a bean free dinner of lamb leg roast on the spit, potatoes roasted in their jackets and garlic bread... not a bean in sight. That's what Grandparents are for!!

BROADly speaking...