Before sowing your beans in beds or punnets, soak them overnight in a bowl of water and then drain. You may even see some starting to offer a tiny shoot at one end — these will go off like rockets.
Push beans twice their own length beneath soil or compost. Water once and do not water again until the bean has formed its first pair of leaves.
To ensure even growth and a good crop from all your plants it is useful if you can run your rows from north to south.
You can plant them in blocks say 5 plants by 5 plants with spacings as above but start at the southern end of the bed and make additional plantings — say every three weeks — moving northwards towards the sun. Mulch as seedlings start to stand strong and have developed two or more layers of leaves. Keep weeds at bay and tie-in bunches of plants as they start to put on height. I put a cane at each corner of a bunch of plants and tie a few layers of garden twine around them for extra support.
Alternatively you can be creative with a bunch of bamboo canes or something similar and stick loads of them amongst your beans which can then simply lean against them. When the first beans appear at the base of your plants its time to pinch out the juicy tips. This is done to reduce the chance of black bean aphid attack and to stimulate strong growth with plenty of pods.
Simply pinch the stem below the top two leaves so that it breaks neatly off. These tips can be eaten raw in salads or steamed like spinach. The size your beans are when you pick them is really a matter of taste.
To eat the pod and beans inside pick at around finger size. Let the pods get a little bit bigger and then pop the pod to eat juicy young beans. From March to May, sow broad beans directly into the soil. Plant 2 beans together 10cm apart down your rows. Rows should be 20cm apart. Over-watering is the biggest cause of germination failure. While young, broad beans are self-supporting, but as they get taller they will get very top-heavy with pods. Planting in double rows is helpful as the plants can lean on each other, but I like to place stakes at the corners of the garden bed and tie strong string around the stakes, which helps hold up the beans.
Broad beans are very easy crops to grow and are largely untroubled by pests and diseases. Simply allow enough room between plants so that good airflow can inhibit fungal diseases.
Buy your beans seeds from any good seed-growing outlet. Old, late season beans need to be double-shelled. First peel, then blanch the pale green beans, drain and when cool enough to handle, pinch the end to slip the tender bright green bean out of its skin. Shelled broad beans freeze well. Blanch in a rolling boil for 2 minutes, cool with icy water for 2 minutes, drain and freeze in freezer zip lock bags for use later. Rotate crops each year so broad beans enrich soils and add nitrogen into all parts of the vegie patch.
Grows to 90cm. This works very well, far better than you might expect. If the beans are not totally dry and hard, wait another week before testing with another pod again. Warm and dry weather speeds up the process whereas cold and wet weather slows it down. Err on the side of leaving the beans for a longer rather than shorter time - as long as the weather is not very wet they will remain viable on the plant for quite some time.
As with all seeds, do not bother saving seeds from F1 varieties of plants, they will not come true to type and are likely to be a very poor second to the original plant. If you want to know more about F1 seeds, click here. Be aware that broad beans will very easily cross-pollinate with other varieties of broad beans resulting in a plant the next year which may well be a cross between two varieties. Cross pollination will occur the nearer the two varieties are to each other.
This is not normally a problem for the average gardener. Correct storage of the seeds is essential but easy. Place them in a paper bag such as an envelope and put them in a place which will be dry, dark and cool. Stored seeds do not appreciate being stored in conditions where there are large temperature variations. If aphids do attack then follow our advice in our page on aphids. They tend to leave notches in the edges of the leaves. They can severely damage young broad bean plants but larger plants can normally outgrow them.
See our page on vine weevil which is almost the same pest and the advice given applies to both. Blackened tips or edges to the leaves is, in most cases caused by frost damage. Plants started off indoors and then planted out or into an unheated greenhouse too early without hardening them off are the most vulnerable. Normally they will grow through the damage when the weather warms up. There is some doubt as to whether broad beans benefit much from crop rotation.
We discuss this in detail on our crop rotation page which can be found here. However, because you have the cloches in place I would leave them in place and do exactly as you have done, remove the ends for ventilation. When they get to the height where they actually touch the top of the cloches sounds like that will be soon , I would remove the cloches. A frost down to -3C will not damage broad beans or peas which have been hardened off.
Below that, down to about -5C they will survive with the possibility of some frost damage. But they will recover. By keeping the ends open for a week or so, you have effectively hardened the plants off. The problem with the plants touching the top of the cloche is that damp and moisture may accumulate on the upper leaves increasing the risk of fungal diseases.
Be aware of the danger of too much heat as well as a frost. March can be warm some years and peas and broad beans can suffer under cover on warm days. Better a moderate frost with no cloche protection compared to a few very warm days with cloche protection. I definitely would not fleece them.
That will trap in moisture which will encourage diseases. If they have survived this far you have every chance of a healthy crop. I would remove the roots for two reasons.
First, although they do fix nitrogen, the plants use that nitrogen and there is almost nothing left when the plant has produced beans.
It's a gardeners myth that the roots add nitrogen to the soil. Second, I'm not sure at this moment if rust overwinters in the soil. I wouldn't take the chance and I would burn them, don't put them on the compost heap. Try sowing beetroot after harvest and expect tender small beets before winter. Radish will also grow in the same space. They are a spring to early summer crop. If you have no more use for the space they occupying then I would cut away the old stems and leave them to rot in the ground.
You could also dig them up and put them on a compost heap if you have one. I dig them up and if the plants are healthy chuck them on the compost heap. One reason is that they grow earlier in the year compared to many crops and the sun is not very strong initially. However, the bean "family" of vegetables, including the broad bean, are the least likely to suffer if you don't rotate them. So certainly give it try in the same position again this year but I would then rotate in It is probably caused by a short spell of colder than normal weather when the pod was forming.
If the pods are small and have turned black without any beans in them then the problem is that they have failed to pollinate. The flower's job is to attract pollinating insects, allow them to pollinate the plant and then their job is done. Harvest the beans when when look a reaonable size. It just seems to be another task without any real benefit.
ANSWER: The spores of broad bean rust may over winter in plants in soil and theses are likely to re-infect this year's broad bean plants. Does this sound suitable? Will the beans be finished in time? So, weather conditions permitting, you should be OK. My only reservation is that you propose to plant brassicas in the same bed for two years running.
This would increase the chance of diseases. It all depends on how strictly you want stick to the rules of crop rotation. Can I plant them out now?. Just as a precaution I would take them out of the greenhouse for a week to fully harden them off. Put them where they will be exposed to some wind but take them back in temporarily if it gets very windy. Date: 7 August From: Joy If there is only one advantage to an autumn sowing, it's having one less thing to do when the garden gets busy in spring.
I don't have a picture of one that does but see this link here for a good picture of broad beans with a black line at the end of each bean. They are big pods and look full, but when I picked them there was only one or no beans in them.
The pods were about 6 to 7" long. Any suggestions please?
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