It is autumn, time to consider improving the soil in your garden, starting by growing broad beans. These are part of the legume plant family, which grow pods with seeds inside, while their roots perform magic underground. Other legumes in the legume plant family include peas and lentils.
Broad beans have large dried brown bean seeds which are fascinating to watch grow. With water and warmth, the seeds germinate. The roots grow down, securing into the soil supporting the shoots which grow into large green beanstalks tall above the ground. Let your imagination grow at this time too, by imagining planting a magic bean and seeing the stalk grow as tall as the sky, while thinking of climbing it and visiting the giant, just like in Jack and the Beanstalk! Imagination is the seed of invention, which can also be planted at this time.
From the beanstalks, white flowers with distinctive black markings grow. These are also edible with the taste of beans, but do not eat too many of them, or you will miss the next stage of the broad bean life cycle.
From the flowers, the bean pods grow, getting longer and thicker, with the new broad beans growing inside the pods. At this time, the beanstalk will start to be weighed down by the heavy bean pods, so you may need to tie some string around the beanstalks to keep them from growing over the garden bed and pathways.
Once the weather starts to warm after the cool of winter has passed and the pods have set, enjoy picking the pods and eating the beans inside.
Not only do the broad beans feed you but they also feed the soil. When you pull the beanstalks out of the ground, you will notice tiny white nitrogen nodules attached to the roots of the beanstalks. The nodules allow nitrogen to be added to the soil to feed the next plants growing in the garden. Rotating crops like legume plants that feed the soil, followed by hungry crops that can feed from the soil, is a technique used often by our farmers.
Make sure to leave some beans growing on the beanstalks to dry, save and have them to plant in your garden the next autumn.
It is the end and the beginning…….
Here is what you need to get growing in early autumn:
- Book – Faye the Farmer Friend, Legume life cycle
- Packet of broad bean seeds
- Broad bean seedlings
- Seedlings of other leafy green vegetables including – beetroot, bok choy, silverbeet, lettuce and peas
- Cow manure
- Compost