bean harvest

This year we grew a lot of beans – we usually do.  We grow climbers, and harvest bean poles from our hedging activities.

This year we grew runner beans – just one year as they are best fresh.  French beans – purple round ones and limka  - a flat slicing bean that freezes well.  We have too many in the freezer and really must cut back – although having a glut of anything makes you inventive when it comes to trying new recipes – we love our french bean pakoras:

Cook some beans until soft.  Drain and add ground cumin, black onion seed and salt and enough gram flour to coat well.  Add enough water to form a thick paste.  Fry spoonfuls of this mixture in a pan with a little oil, turning when brown – serve with yogurt and mint.

The gap we have really is podding beans.  This was our best year yet for broad means and we have lots frozen.  Borlotti were a disaster as our climbing borlotti from Thompson and Morgan failed to climb – I’ve heard from others that the same happened to them  - so you have to wonder if something went a bit wrong there.  Certainly for us it did, as they did not get to any height, the slugs had a good feed, and we didn’t get many.

We tried pea bean and they are ok, and the beans are so pretty – two tone, and it is nice to use an old variety.  I was also attracted to a variety of podding beans called ‘lazy housewife’ – well it turns out the housewife is lazy because there is very little to harvest! – We barely got more in than we sowed.

So the quest goes on to find the perfect easy to grow podding bean.  Next year perhaps we shall cut down on the limka – as I spend just way too much of my life slicing, blanching and freezing beans.. and too many of them – but they are so prolific.. perhaps the answer is to let these mature and pod them, rather than trying out other varieties

Now is the time to make these decisions, whilst I can still remember how the season went – Come January I will be enthusiastically buried in seed catalogues – and probably order too much again..