Broad Beans

My first row of Broad Beans (the "Aquadulce" ones) is growing quite rapidly now that the weather has turned milder. I took the cloches off today, so that I could have a close look.

I found that every one of the beans I planted in the main row had germinated, and two of the spares at one end of the row as well. That gives me 16 plants - and maybe the other two will eventually germinate also.

If you think that the row of beans is covered in weeds, then you are wrong. Those are not weeds, they are Radish seedlings. The idea is that the Radishes will mature long before the beans, thereby giving me two crops from the same space.

In the next photo you can see the spare plants at the end of the row. As it happens, it looks as if they will not be required, but I'll leave them in place until I'm sure that all the plants in the main row are OK and growing strongly.



I have had a lot of trouble with animals digging ("excavating" would be more accurate!) in my raised beds, so since the cloches have come off I have had to erect a net to protect the beans.

The seemingly empty bed in the foreground of the photo above is actually the Asparagus bed. No sign of any spears coming up yet. When I was at the Garden Centre the other day (buying the flowers I wrote about a couple of days ago) I was fortunate enough to find some Asparagus crowns for sale - of the same variety as my well-established plants - and they were only £1.99 for a bag of two crowns. I bought a bag and I have put both plants into the vacant space which was the result of the death of one of my plants. Well, to be more accurate, its failure to establish when I planted the original batch of 10, some years ago. The variety is Gjinlim F1.

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P.S. My laptop failed this week - so I wasn't able to do much blogging/commenting for a while. Back in action with a new laptop now...