Beans, beans the magical fruit

The almost last of the semi-hard borlottis. There is still a large tray to shuck. The beans were tricky this year and I had to resow. Ideally with the now baking dry summers they want an early start but they won’t go if it is too cold and hate a caked soil -ie after even moderate rain - over them. Both these conditions slow their start to a crawl and seem to leave much more vulnerable to attack by soil residing pests. Once going they do pretty well in terms of growth but bean formation seems to be dependent, perhaps obviously, on a decent supply of soil water. If planted later in the season it’s a struggle to get the beans to ripen and dry on the plants. These borlottis produced a mass of greenery but struggled to produce fruit until after rain in September (drip irrigation only gets you so far and probably holds back root development in drought conditions as the surrounding soil bakes to a soft terracotta that would struggle to support any life).


I stripped the plants at the end of October ( not having been helped by a wet and at times v cold early autumn) and left them spread out in their pods. By now the sun is too low to do much effective drying but so far there has been no mold.

The semi hard beans cook well although but are not as satisfying/tasty as the dry ones which take up other flavours - bay, rosemary, sage - when initially cooking and, I would guess, have a higher protein content.

Still it’s all grist to the mill and either with olive oil or our own tomato passata.