hazel beanpoles

In vegetable gardens across the land, gardeners are erecting frames for climbing beans.

Almost every gardener will use regular, straight, imported bamboo canes.

The sustainable gardener, wishing to reduce the inputs in his organic garden, might wonder whether importing and using bamboo canes is the best option for supporting climbing beans.

'National Beanpole Week' was introduced some years ago to encourage gardeners to use hazel poles taken from local nature reserves. Taking the stems from hazel 'stools' in native woodland in a planned and regular way is a necessary part of woodland management. By cutting back the hazel on a frequent basis, light floods into the woodland floor, allowing a diverse range of native flora to flourish. It is a practice that goes back hundreds of years and it is this practice that has helped shape our woodlands and countryside.

If this work doesn't happen, our woods become much less wildlife friendly and rare flowers, insects and birds are lost.

Gardeners can make this necessary part of nature conservation work more likely to happen by creating a market for the hazel poles. This renewable resource is grown locally and does not need to be imported from thousands of miles away.

So, this year, we made a small step towards this by getting our wildlife trust to deliver poles for sale to allotment holders.

Demand exceeded supply!!

Because there weren't enough for everyone to use, I had to 'stretch' mine to make our beanframe. But, here it is, robust, rustic and rather too widely spaced, but, at last, my beanpoles are in and my bean frame is formed.

the legume bed slowly fills

The legume bed is steadily filling.

This year has been strange due to the cold winter killing the green manure field beans and so the earth seems bare, rather than its usual verdant self.

The cold winter also killed the aquadulce overwintering broad beans (fava beans). So we've had to start again.

So the bottom strip now has baby broad bean plants emerging.
The middle bed has strong little peas (Feltham First) growing on with netting protection against those pesky wood pigeons.

Saturday's job was to plant the marrowfat peas (Marro) that have been started at home. They're in the bed nearest to the camera.

We have had a dry spell and so they all had a good watering.

accompanying overwintering broad beans with phacelia

Preserving the nutrients and structure of the soil over winter is a priority in the autumn for the organic gardener.

Here, overwintering broad beans V. Aquadulce Claudia show good germination. They will preserve nutrients and soil structure - and give a us a useful bean crop as well.

The beans have been helped by the unusually mild weather we have enjoyed recently. In other years, cold ground has limited germination or vigour of growth in the vital first weeks.

With luck, these will grow on to make strong bushy plants that will give a good crop of beans by May or June.

The bed next to the broad beans has been sown with phacelia. This is a green manure and will prevent soil compaction by the heavy winter rains, will store up nutrients in its leaves and stalks and limit leaching of nutrients.

We would normally plant field beans into next years legume bed. Phacelia, rather than field beans, have been planted next to the broad beans for a simple reason. In spring, the phacelia will have attractive purple flowers which will attract early season pollinating insects. These will then find our flowering broad beans too tempting to pass by.

The result should be excellent pollination and a bumper crop!

climbing french beans markant

Now is the season for ordering next year's seeds.

A chance to review last year's successes and surprises. What didn't work well and what will we try that is different next year?

Climbing French Beans 'Markant' were one of the successes. This was their first year for us and we planted them , 'Three Sisters style' in with sweetcorn and squashes. They wound themselves up the sweetcorn stems without bending the corn stems down with too much foliage: the first requirement for climbing beans in a 'Three Sisters' bed.

But their main advantage was the quality of the beans they produced.

You can see from the photograph that the beans are lumpy and look as though they have passed their best. They are reminiscent of the beans you would buy in French street markets. In another life I could have been the old boy selling them to you. They are precisely the kind of bean that British supermarkets spurn and another great r4eason for growing your own food. where else would I get them?

The big surprise with Markant was that they were very slow to go 'stringy' and had a substantial texture when cooked. They were the best Climbing French beans we have ever grown. We must have more!

So, we returned to our catalogues this year but to no avail. They are not being stocked anywhere.

I should have kept seed. I failed the first rule of sustainable gardening - a schoolboy error!

peas and beans in organic rotation

The pea and bean family (Legumes) are vital in organic gardening. Their roots add necessary nitrogen to the soil. Organic gardening makes no use of fertilisers that are not natural. The nitrogen boost given by legumes will be used by the cabbage family (brassicas) when these are planted in this bed next year.

Green manure are plants that hold the soil together during the winter, stopping nutrients from draining away in the hard winter rains, and adding their own fertlity to the garden as well.

On the legume bed of our four bed organic rotation, the green manure field beans (Punch) are looking robust and vigorous. Farmers would drive their cattle across their bean fields to break the plant stalks and so encourage bushy growth. I gave the field beans a trim with my shears to create the same effect. I hoed off two beds of field beans ready for sowing with peas. The tops of the field beans added welcome bulk to the compost bins.

In contrast with the field beans, our broad beans (Aguadulce) have had a poor start. The plants are small and weak and a pale green colour. I hoed around the bed and then applied pelleted chicken manure before giving several watering cans of water. I hope this picks them up - they are a long way behind.

We have brought on early peas (Feltham First) and Marrowfat peas (Marro) inthe greenhouse and planted these out under fleece cloche protection today. The protection they need is against frost - against the pest of pigeons.

tartrazine in food

We have grown our own marrowfat peas this year. Their obvious use for me is in home made mushy peas and in pea and avocado humus.

But, as ever, a conversation came up this week ' Why prepare your own food?'. Surprisingly, someone asserted that preparing our own food is relatively modern and middle class and another that it is not good sustainable practice because of the high energy cost of food preparation on a small scale at home. I rebut these arguments!

Preparing our own food is primal and in every healthy culture I know of. Food preparation has always been a foundation of human existence. Sure, there have been and continue to be times when impoverished, urban societies have relied on others to prepare their food. We recognise that such cultures are poor and lack control over one of the most basic human needs - to eat healthily.

And as for being the province of the middle classes, my memories of my grandfather are of him preparing brawn by boiling half pigs heads. He loved cooking and was a working man.

Most of my food comes from the allotment or the garden at the moment. No food miles and zero carbon emissions.

But when reading the excellent 'Organic Matters' magazine, there was an article giving a further cogent reason to control what we eat. Just as Will Taft has alerted us to the dirty dozen of fruits and vegetables to avoid because of their contamination by chemicals, 'Organic Matters' reports on a range of potentially damaging additives used in our pre-prepared food.

I was particularly drawn to the listing of the colourant tartrazine that is added to mushy peas. Believed to produce hyperactivity and lower IQ, such additives are not only unnecessary, but harmful.

So, I was pleased to soak my home grown dried peas today, ready for turning into pea and avocado humus knowing the provenance of what I will eat and having had the satisfaction of preparing it myself.

Beans for drying

Our beans for drying have suffered over the past few years. First a virus attack, then the sodden summer of 2007. This year they were enjoyed by slugs just as soon as we put the plants into the ground.

This photo is of the small patch of Horsehead French beans we have left. Our stock of seed has gradually dwindled and the variety is no longer stocked in the seed catalogues. We allow the seeds to dry in their pods and then collect and store. I think we'll need the entire harvest for next years seed.

Its issues like this that make one reflect on the lives of subsistence farmers. If our crop fails, our children will not go hungry. For other growers, in other parts of the world, this small story could mean impending disaster. The climate change that we are propelling forward will have a bigger impact on the fragile existence of my distant and vulnerable growing brothers than it will on me.

My immediate concern is bringing the beans in before the mice completely destroy them. It will be a top priority at the weekend. Does anyone think we are doing even half enough to address the major environmental issue of our age?

green pea and avocado humus

Now, why didn't I think of that?

I think that home made humus is much better than the stuff sold in supermarkets.
Chickpeas, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and tahini if you want. Whizzed up but served chunky.
I'm in heaven!

You may remember the excellent crop of marrowfat peas we harvested this year. I was waxing lyrical about the old English favourite of mushy peas.

Nigella Lawson has much more imagination and makes a green pea humus substituting marrowfat peas for chickpeas and adding avocado.

You can guess what I'll be having a go at over the coming weeks. I'll report results over on veggie adventure.

......the man who ininvented the wheel?

British food has long been characterised by our love of over cooked vegetables.
The joke we tell against ourselves is that housewives begin boiling their Christmas dinner brussels sprouts just as presents were opened first thing in the morning. The boiled sprouts would be ready for the sprouts to be eaten early afternoon.

Our love of the soggy veg is diminishing, but there remains one last soggy accompaniment: mushy peas.

Marrowfat peas or processed peas as they are sold, are different to fresh green peas. They are reconstituted from dried peas and then boiled. In their dried form they were ideal for storing through the winter and provided a good source of cheap, stored protein in days before freezing and refrigeration.

Dried peas were carried on ships to feed the crew and are still popular in the north of England.

Pease pudding sees the cooked peas mixed with egg and left to cool. It makes a firm savoury dish to accompany vegetables. It was a staple of the poor who could not afford meat.

For many years, the process of producing marrowfat peas in tins left a by product: mushy peas. The peas went soggy, lost shape and were used as animal fodder with no value. It was only in the 1970's that processing companies realised the demand for tinned mushy peas and began to market them. They now sell more mushy peas than processed.

In Nottingham, mushy peas with mint sauce are still a favourite at our annual Goose Fair, celebrated each year at the beginning of October.

In northern Britain, they are a necessary accompaniment to fried fish and chips - our national dish.

Of course, most people buy them reconstituted and cooked with green colouring added.

This year we have grown our own marrowfat peas and here they are, drying. It is years since I have soaked and cooked marrowfat peas. Greengrocers used to sell bags of soaked peas along with bicarbonate of soda tablets in which the peas would boil.

From starting the soaking process to eating would have taken hours. Nowadays we just reach for a tin, open it, microwave for a minute and hey presto.

Of, course, I'm travelling in the opposite direction! When mushy peas are on the menu, I will need half a days notice. I feel like the man who uninvented the wheel!

stronger by the day

Our beans are looking stronger by the day. They should really be in the ground by now, but we did not use 'Rob's foolproof method for germinating beans' the first times through.

Anyway, no recriminations here! The plan is to continue to nurture and then plant out at the weekend.

They will be planted against corn so that the corn plants provide support and the nitrogen fixing roots of the beans fertilise the soil in which the corn is growing.

Spare plants will be planted up wigwams of bamboo.

The beans can be eaten green, or allowed to dry for storage and use in soups and stews.

treasure lost?

Washing out through our bare, winter soils, like dry sand through our opened fingers, are the nutrients we have spent so long trying to build up.

For organic growers this can be a real problem. we do not use chemical fertilisers and treasure the natural fertility that mulching, manuring and composting give us.

When the soil was bare in autumn, we planted field beans to:

• hold soil structure together and reduce leaching of nutrients
• provide leaf cover to dissipate the compacting effects of heavy winter rains
• store up in stems, roots and leaves soil nutrients that could be released back into the soil when needed.

Here, the roots have been hoed and stems and stalks chopped and left on the soil surface for incorporation by worms. The end quarter of the bed has been covered with opaque plastic to see whether this speeds the worm activity.

Meanwhile, back in the greenhouse, early peas 'Feltham First' have been raised and now the first batch have been hardened off ready for planting out.

I just need time!!!!!

bare earth is bad earth!!!!!

Although it is traditional for gardeners to clear their land and leave it empty for the winter, there is another way.
This photo shows one quarter of the vegetable garden - the section given to legumes (beans and peas) next year.
The bed is is now planted with green manures - red clover and field beans- and broad beans were sown today.
The leaves of the growing plants will dissipate the compacting effects of winter rains. The roots of these leguminous plants will enrich the soil for a longer period.
The stems and leaves will store nitrogen that will be released in the spring when green manures can be 'dug in' or chopped off and used as a mulch or composted.

bean feast??????

The biggest disappointment of our organic gardening year has been our bean bed.
Beans and peas are important in the organic cycle because their roots put nitrogen into the soil. The stems of the plants are often chopped off to leave the root nodules in the soil to maximise their nitrogen benefit.
Early season peas were superb. But....
Usually, we have one quarter of the summer and early autumn allotment full of dwarf beans for drying or picking as green beans and climbing & runner beans. We also have mighty sweetcorn yielding big cobs.
The terrible, wet weather and accompanying slug damage of the early summer put paid to that!!!!!
Pictured is the entire yield from our beans in 2007. They are the seeds of horsehead, which are great for drying and tasty in chilli and refried beans.
No climbing beans grew and borlotti and brown dutch beans also perished. The climbing beans planted in the 'three sisters' bed (maize, pumpkin and climbing beans) also failed to thrive.
Those who got their beans in early have enjoyed a good year. The plants got going and developed stems tough enough to deny slugs and snails. Those of us who were slower out of the blocks planted, replanted, planted again and again - only to see torrential rain and our slimy enemies united to defeat us.
These horsehead seeds can't even be eaten. They can't be obtained from seed catalogues and so the precious few salvaged will be used to produce plants next year.
The heavy rain of summer will have depleted soil nutrients. The empty beds won't have had foliage to dissipate the rain or roots to retain soil structure.
The poor bean harvest is only one consequence of a disastrous year.