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Onoff
In the land of the unfinished project I am King!
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Yep, there appears to be more flowers coming lower down. Beans have suddenly started to really grow. Biggest I guess is about 6" long. Heavy rain tonight can only help.
redlig
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Your supposed to EAT them ?? With all that cr*p that I've put in the trench you must be joking. Next thing is you will be telling me to eat the eggs that the chickens have left about after they have eaten all those worms and things. How can that be safe with no processing.
redlig
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Be careful not to let them get too big and become tough and stringy. By the way they taste best if picked in the rain.
Remind me to look out the photos of one of our hens killing and eating a mouse. I didn't get pictures of them when we uncovered a rats nest, but they had a field day with the baby rats as well.
redlig
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A cockerel in defence of his hareem is not to be underestimated. Vicious beasts.
redlig
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Very artistic, seems a shame to cook them. Enjoy with lashings of butter. Sod the health risk.
Onoff
In the land of the unfinished project I am King!
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Haven't cooked any yet, one kid and I just eat them raw.
Onoff
In the land of the unfinished project I am King!
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- 12,022
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- Sevenoaks, UK
Had our first crop of runners the other night. Simply top and tailed, chopped with scissors and boiled. With some fish cakes. Very nice.
Did somebody here say you can eat them with butter?
I really want to try a runner bean chutney recipe.
Did somebody here say you can eat them with butter?
I really want to try a runner bean chutney recipe.
Onoff
In the land of the unfinished project I am King!
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Taking time with the trench was well worth it I think. 4m long, 1m wide and 600mm deep. The layers of ash, compost, soil and grass cuttings seem to act like a big, presumably rotting down nicely, sponge. The whole area remains much darker than the surrounding soil. This even before the beans were established and created shade.
Got a cute robin that seems to always be inside the "A frame" whenever I'm there. Bees galore too.
Think I'm heading for a glut of beans!
Onoff
In the land of the unfinished project I am King!
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DAPPH
as dyslexik as I'm daft
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Furry four legged worm type protein ?
DAPPH
as dyslexik as I'm daft
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In hot weather the beans produce flowers & a little pollen but very little nectar to attract the pollenating insects bees & moths , a fine hose pipe spray over new opened flowers late in the evening disturbs the pollen and spredds it into other flowers . That's called setting the flowers .
Hot days that are humid tend to produce nectar flows and the bees take advantage of them . just don't get in the Bee line between the flowers & the bee's nest / hive as your very likely tom get stung as the nectar crazed collecting bees crash into you .
On tomatoes which tend to be easily pollenated due to a profusion of close proximity flowers you just need to tap each flowering cluster stem around 07 45 till midday . ( commercial growers use ultrasonic wands & boxes of bumble bees in their massive poly tunnels for pollenating .
DAPPH
as dyslexik as I'm daft
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Yep what you've done to get the bean shot bed is almost right , next time add a couple of bags of well rotted farm yard manure and several inches of old news papers to help retain the water and nutrients released till the bean roots get at them . One yrear i sank a 4 inch waste water pipe inn the ground some two feet dep ... one at each end of the bean bed , filled them twice a day with home n[made liquid feed down the tube . I got massive 42 to 48 inch runner beans long beans ,,,not one was stringy or scaly . We put twenty or more pounds of beans in the freezer that year and dried around 10 pounds that got vac packed & heat sealed for future years chili con carne .
I have a photo somewhere in my 30, 000 or more digital pictures of our 8 yr old daughter , standing on a wall holding a tape measure against one of the many 42 inch long beans still on the vine . .
next year move the beans & pea hot beds to new locations and use the areas of the old beds for sprouts/.brassicas & ridged celery . then the next year use them for root crops .
In seven year you will have done most of your veg garden and also there will still be a seven years of slower rotting veg matter deep down in the ground .
When you repeat this oved the same ground as you rotate the beds , you do what is called building the beds and the levels of nutrients and moisture tend to be very consistent through the growing seasons.
The old boy who explained that to me was 84yrs old in the 1960's took over his dead grand fathers gardens after he came home from action in 1919 .
His veg beds were two or more feet higher than his neighbours gardens and the soil was nice fiberous moist dark brown almost black . He could have grown tits on my baby brother in his gardens ....... they were that good .
It's an ideal way of deep manuring /cultivating veg gardens and as it all takes place in a small area it's fairly doable
