- Broad beans are an easy seed, so you can sow them direct.
Here I'm sowing them in a compostable material tray.
So I'm filling the tray in this case with homemade compost,
that can also be compost you buy,
and just don't push in too firmly.
The tray in this case, it's quite deep.
It's two inches, five centimeters
gives the roots a bit of a rundown.
The top riddle hit the floor I'm pushing it in,
not too firmly, ready for sowing the seed.
Broad beans are a great standby for
the first part of the season.
So, I'm sewing them here at now in late winter February,
you can also serve them in the autumn.
And that's a very good way to have some early beans.
It won't work in all climates.
It may not work in an all soils,
but if you think there's a glimmer of a chance,
I would try it
'cause the only thing you're going to lose is a few seed.
So anyway, here we are in late winter,
I prefilled a tray with compost.
Now this tray is a little bit deeper cell than most others,
that one uses in vegetable growing.
That's about five centimeters two inches
and that's because these are big seeds.
They're very quickly put out quite a big root.
And it's good to just put the seeds on top flat,
even though the seed comes at one end,
the plant will sort that out.
So it's a quick job, just one seed per cell
there will for sure be a few failures
that won't matter too much.
As long as you've got reasonable quality seed
which means basically reasonably fresh.
And this seed is something that I soaked myself.
So I let the pods go dry on the plant
and then shell that to seed.
But not last summer, it was the summer before.
So this seed is actually 18 months old now.
So there we are.
It's all sewn.
There's 35 cells here, so this might make about 25 plants.
25 broad bean plants is actually quite a few
because when they grow each plant tillers
which means they become multi-stemmed.
And the earlier you sow the more that happens
because they've got time to do it more
before they think of flowering
which is sometime in the middle or late spring.
So you can have not many plants
to give you lots of broad beans
quite a wide spacing that we'll see
when I'm planting them out.
And there we are ready to go.
That just needs a bit of water.
And then whether or not you give that much warmth
it's not too critical.
Broad beans are very tolerant of low temperatures,
but if you give it a bit of warmth
or put it on a windowsill or wherever
that will speed things up.
To give you an though here...
Sow my soda earlier.
So these broad beans were sewn about two months ago
and just before Christmas in December.
And you can see there's quite a few gaps there
where the seed haven't come up,
but they've just been in here ambient temperature,
no heat given, they frozen quite frequently.
It freezes in here not massively,
but you know, these plants tolerate freezing.
So that's not a problem.
And then if I just pull one out,
you can see a bit how they grow.
The roots are all mattered at the bottom.
Doesn't matter, you know there...
That's not gonna affect the subsequent growth of the plant.
Well, they're certainly ready to go.
As soon as these go in the ground,
they're going to shoot away very fast
and brought bees do have a taproot,
but it doesn't matter that it hits the bottom
and then coils around.
It seems to have the ability to redevelop
and grow from the time it's planted.
The broad beans I sewed a month ago are well established now
in their multiple trays, good time to plant them out.
And I'm putting them actually on the end of a row
that has been here all winter.
So these we sow the back end of last November,
late fall a month before Christmas,
and they've been not doing much on winter,
but putting their roots down as broad beans do.
And then once they got their roots into the ground,
they go wush.
And it's snow third week in March.
It's actually Quinn knocks tomorrow,
which is a time of massively increasing daylight.
And you suddenly see how everything
really just wants to grow.
So here I've got some soil which has not been dug
except for rabbits making little holes over the winter.
And I put some compost on
three months ago just for Christmas.
And so that's all in lovely condition now.
I'm just giving it a light rate really
just to level it more than anything mainly from
the rabbits doing that digging,
and in my tray I've already planted
some of these broad beans.
So there's about a dozen there.
You can see by the way the lovely surface
of this compost which has been broken apart a bit by frost
over the winter and weather generally.
And so it's in a lovely condition.
It's not being dug or anything.
It's no dig,
but just very open solved from putting on this compost.
And I've got double rows here which as well for broad beans
'cause you can put a string along other
either side of a double row and kind of hold it in place.
So I'm looking to just carry on
that double row right up to the end,
using those few plants there.
And we've brought beans.
You wanna give them quite a bit of space
because they tiller out.
You can see it how many here on these ones,
that's one seed there.
One seed is already making three stems.
Now that's called tillering.
So giving them space allows that to happen.
And if you don't give them enough space in fact,
it really is not helpful because they...
You get too many stems, too much leaf
and then you don't get so many beans proportionate in.
It's very difficult to pick them to find them,
this way you'll get nice big fat pods.
And so I'm putting the dipper in pretty deep.
These are deep module trees
and the plants will benefit from going in deep
because I've got plenty of compost on top of my soil here.
You can see how easily the dip is going in,
just going in three inches, seven centimeters easily,
not much effort.
So I'm making these lovely holes
and then I'm gonna ease these plants
out of the module tray.
There's a nice big one.
And you can see lovely root development there.
Although broad beans make a tap root
which has hit the bottom, it hasn't hurt it
But it hasn't been able to go down.
They just make more roots basically, in these trays.
So I'm easing them out, popping them in the hole.
And as I pushed them in, planting like this
you can just be quite fun.
You don't wanna fuf around,
just get them in there, push them in firmly.
I'm just doing it with one hand as you can see,
and I'm putting in the best plant first enough,
I'll finish off the road with the weaker plants
just because sometimes one is not too sure
if the weak plants are gonna make it.
And then, another question is that
planting anything at this time of the year
does one cover it up.
Okay, and it's weather or pest.
Broad beans fortunately are not eaten by many animals.
I think deer are the main thing you'd want to worry about.
So, fortunately I don't have deer in the garden.
I'm not going to, cover them up
for anything.
We have rabbits and rabbits are not eating the broad beans.
And there we are.
So that's spring sewn broad beans are gonna come later
than the autumn stone Broad beans
is gonna be a succession here.
Cropping from late May through to late June, early July
(wind blowing)
Six, seven weeks after planting these broad beans here,
they've grown nicely.
This Ferrazzi DeMonaco is not a very tall variety.
It's close to maximum height now
full of flower which is great.
And also we're coming up at time of year
when there's aphids around black flows,
that are one of broad beans main pass.
And you can reduce the impact
by pinching out the tops of broad beans at this stage
when the plants are full of flower
right the way up the stem.
And that means the aphids don't have anywhere to land.
So the other tip is broad beans love moisture.
It's just rained here.
So that's one reason they looking so lush in abundant,
but if they are struggling with dryness,
it's really good to water them
in the spring May early June particularly.
And then just by way of contrast,
you can see behind some earliest sewn broad beans
which over winter this small plants,
that's why they're so much further on.
We pinch that top site about two weeks ago.
And they even have some little pods on them
which are not quite ready yet,
but some people actually do eat the pods at this stage
the whole pod that is edible.
You see the tiny little broad bean pot type there.
Personally I think it's a waste to eat them at this stage.
I'd rather wait until the broad beans get bigger
but it's just an example of how, when you grow your own
you can choose that.
You know, you're not governed by the store
that you walk into who are offering you the food.
You can choose the bit of the plant.
I mean, all of this is edible already,
or you could wait particularly in terms of the pod
until they get much bigger and full of lovely creamy beans
which we will see shortly.
And here we are,
a harvest of fruit beans in the middle of June.
In our climate here's only nine that's early summer.
So they're coming at a time when they're really welcomed.
There's not a lot of other fresh vegetables around
and this is not the tallest variety.
It's a medium height and we've been pinching out at the top.
So that's taking off, there's always a few keep coming.
It's good to keep removing them
and look at the lovely pods at the bottom.
How do you know when to start harvesting?
You feel for swelling there on the pod,
basically pick one and have a look is a good but giving
and see what they're like.
And whether they're the sort of
size broad bean you like to eat,
and these ones, I would call that a slightly immature bean.
Personally, I like them fatter than that,
but a lot of people love them at that stage.
So it's your choice entirely other...
Given that you could start picking when they're that size
and carry on until they get quite fat.
There's at least two weeks near a three
period of harvest from each sowing.
And the other lovely thing from here
that you can see is four little stems
of broad beans grown all from one seed.
So that was the one plant that I put in there
which was one seed, has made these four stems
and each stems has maybe two or three pods on.
So it's really quite a few beans there.
And this one is called the Monica.
Which is reckoned to have really good flavor.
So I need to check that.
And actually It's sweet.
But what it also is, there's a bitterness
that follows with board beans from the skin.
And the beans behind me here illustrate that difference.
So, these ones were sow three months before the others here.
In November, rather than February.
So these broad beans have survived the winter
as small plants got that roots done,
then they shoot away in the spring.
Look at this harvest.
It's like fantastic pods.
Lovely long pods with really quite fat, broad beans.
Fat broad beans like this,
have I think an undeserved bad name.
But I think that comes from
when they're perhaps not grown in fertile moist soil
'cause they, they are moisture loving plant.
And these beans now, are fat enough
that you can cook them just lightly
for about two minutes and then the skins will slip off them.
If you want to do that,
they're actually also very tasty raw,
so many possibilities and options.
And again now these plants are making
many stems from the one seed.
So we've been taking already tens of kilos
off this patch here, 30 pounds or so pods.
And the difference between pods like this,
the ones with mature beans in,
and not any of the fact that these are smaller posts,
but the fact that this pod has small beans
and this one has fat ones,
it does mean actually that you get a much...
Obviously a much bigger harvest
and a much higher proportion of the bit we want,
which is the bean compared to the pod.
You can't eat raw bean pods
more at the stage we're seeing at the top of the plants here
like that, rather like a minus two piece.
So again, that's another option.
It's really fun.growing crops like this,
these types of vegetables,
you've got so many harvesting possibilities
starting with the, the bean shoots as a green.
Then the first image here pods, if you like that,
but do always bear in mind that it's really worth waiting.
If you like a bean like that,
that's a big meal and really good flavor.