Monday 31 July 2017

French beans

We're having a really good crop of climbing French beans this year. After a couple of disappointing years (last year we had none, despite two sowings of beans from different suppliers) this year has been outstanding.

I have always planted Blue Lake before, but this year I bought "Fasold". These are climbing French beans with rather lovely mauve flowers. Every bean I planted in pots germinated and nearly all survived after planting out. Immediately after planting out they got chopped, as did the Runner Beans. I suspect slugs but could have been rabbits that had taken up residence in our Rhubarb patch.

But after that initial set-back they've all climbed up the bamboo supports and produced loads of beans - quite a bit longer pods than the Blue Lake - and very tasty. Here's some I harvested earlier...


"Fasold" climbing French beans

Monday 24 July 2017

Garden Gallery

Very warm, proper summer but with occasional downpours - June was a great month for the garden. See this collage of shots around the garden, mostly in the vegetable area with brilliant, self-sown poppies sneaking in.The Desiree( large reds) potatoes had masses of pretty mauve flowers. Now in July they've turned into tiny fruits. I've started lifting them and they are looking pretty good so far.


The Sante (white) potatoes are much better than last year, when they mostly drowned, but some have been chewed by slugs so I'm going to lift them as fast as I can and store the best ones in cardboard boxes in the garage to use over the winter. I've also tipped out one of the big pots with potatoes (pots pots?) and they are fine. No slugs or worms and I'm wondering if it's a better method than planting in the ground, but probably harder work filling the pots and then keeping them watered. At least the garden-grown potatoes can send roots down if there's a dry spell.