In my opinion (not Dom’s opinion), broad beans are THE beans they are talking about in the fairy-tale Jack and the Beanstalk. OK, maybe I won’t find a golden-egg laying hen at the top of the plant (that actually happened in Jack and the Beanstalk) but, they are tasty, good for you and easy to grow in Capricornia this time of year.
Our snow pea crop has just finished. Even though strong winds a couple of weeks ago pretty much finished them off, we did get a plentiful crop when they were fruiting. Luckily, our homemade bamboo support structure will do the job for just about any peas or beans, so we pulled the old snow pea plants out and put our little broad bean seedlings in.
Ordinarily, we wouldn’t recommend planting a legume crop (peas, lentils, peanuts, beans etc.) in the same place twice, but our rotation system wasn’t ready for the move due to the shortish snow pea season. We are crossing our fingers on this one. The other “issue” with this particular planting was that we didn’t plant out the seedlings straight away and they got away on us. Before planting, we cut the seedlings back to just above the new shoots that were developing near the base of the stem. Once they were planted, we watered them in with some potash for strong growth, root development and above all, to increase flowering.
Fingers crossed for a golden egg!!
Potato Update
The first shoots emerged and we covered them over with some more soil. We will continue to do this until the potato bag is full.
