After the relative success of growing beans last year (certainly drying beans) we decided to go all out and grow 5 (yes, 5) varieties of bean -
- Borlotti (also known as cranberry bean, apparently, for drying)
- Black turtle (also for drying)
- Orient wonder (also known as asparagus bean, green)
- Purple queen (purple dwarf bean we grew last year)
- Blue lake (green dwarf bean we have grown in the past)
Interestingly they largely look the same as one another:
We started them all in root trainers - as for the peas.
Ground preparation was as elsewhere, dig over soil and put in raised beds - by design we made a long thin bed for the tall beans to allow easy access to both sides (since picking beans is fiddly)
Filled with compost, built a long A-frame as for the peas (though with 2.4m / 8 foot canes) tied in with posts to keep rigid:
Left hand (West side) planted with Orient Wonder, right with Blue Lake - since both are harvested green keeps things simpler.
The other bed was a little less straightforward - as it had been dug over a while back the weeds had come back including the dreaded
bindweed:
This is probably from a small fragment of root missed while weeding - there were a few 🙄- but removal was easy enough. After digging over put in a couple of traditional teepees:
The Borlotto are a tall drying bean so go onto the teepees, while the Black Turtle and Purple Queen are bushy self-supporting beans. As the PQ beans need picking during the year we put them at the opposite end of the bed, with the BT's in between:
Theory states they should be OK, but time will tell - overall planted some 13 Borlotto, 13 Blue Lake, 9 Orient Wonder, 12 Purple Queen and 30 Black Turtles - could have a lot of beans come the summer... Here's hoping we do not get a frost.
