Beans and Things

6th June: It seems unbelievable that here we are in June already. Weird weather means that certain things are later than usual (although I’m not sure anyone knows what ‘usual’ means any more!) and we’re waiting on tenterhooks for the broad beans, turnips and early garlic. Throughout the middle of May we were in the height of transplanting time according to the biodynamic calendar and transplanting was de rigeuer on Sutton Community Farm as we popped more shallots into the ground, along with more courgettes, a bunch of brassicas (cabbages, broccolis and kales) and lettuces. The broad beans are suffering a bit from weed competition – we noticed that they have few flowers which is a bit concerning. When the weather warmed the sinister sounding perennial weed hoary cress popped up and grew and grew, keeping pace with the beans. It seems that a consequence of this is that the scarce moisture in our soil (it’s pretty chalky and good at draining quickly) is being sucked up by the weeds to the detriment of the beans. A decent weeding effort at the end of last week should help. In tomato news, Peggy has been really, really busy companion planting flowers amongst our tomatoes. We have borage, basil and marigolds which all offer different benefits:

• Borage – repels tomato hormworm and improves tomato flavour.
• Basil – repels whiteflies, mosquitoes, spider mites, aphids, hormworms.
• Marigolds – repels nematodes, tomato worm, slugs and may also be a sacrificial crop for aphids.

Bean sowing has taken up a lot of time and now we have a full complement of six 50m beds with bamboo canes, and six with steel rods. The varieties we have sown are:

• Enorma – a high yielding, early cropping, purple seeded runner. The beans can grow to 50cm!
• White Emergo – vigourous variety with cream coloured seeds. Good at withstanding adverse weather conditions.
• Cobra – One of the most reliable varieties around, they have beautiful black seeds. Produce heavy yields of sweet 20cm beans over a long period.
• Casse Violette – A vigourous early, purple bean.
• Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco – Translates as ‘tongue of fire’! This is a mid-early with red spotted beans. They can be eaten young in the pod or can be dried.

We’ve started sowing dwarf beans too that don’t require any infrastructure as the plants only grow to around 50cm:

• Hildora – Bright yellow bean, high yields, approx. 16cm long.
• Safari – Produces tender, green, stringless beans, heavy cropping.
• Royalty – Produces purple pods of 10-15cm long, which turn green when cooked. Good cold tolerance.
• Sonesta – An early variety, high yielding, yellow wax beans approx. 12cm. Harvested July to September.