I LOVE BROAD BEANS!!!!
i am not afraid to say it .... i do .... they are amazing! these little jewels have a delicate nutty flavour that can be used in so many ways. i love cooking and the myriads of things you can do with all types of beans (from falafel to risotto to stir fries and beyond!). i have had so much fun this past spring and summer putting beans in just about everything i could. great natural source of protien! and then it came time to harvest for seed saving (another topic,another day) and i realised that i had planted heaps of beans, used heaps of beans ..... but hadn't planted any to put aside for my winter soups and stews. i have about a third of a jar of beans .... gorgeous colours and textures (isn't God's creativity amazing!) .... but not enough for even one meal.
so i vow to plant so many beans next year that we'll have them coming out our ears! you can never have enough! i got my latest posting through for what i should be planting and was so stoked to see that BROAD BEANS should be planted in April where we live .... woohoo! i am NOT complaining!
but you know what else? i cannot believe how important beans are in preserving and creating our good earth. they are part of the legume family .... and have all these nitrogen fixing nodgels thingies that do heaps of good things for soil (that's why it's good to plant a root crop where you've just pulled up your beans as they reap the benefit from what's been left behind). i had a hard time believing all this stuff really went on .... so this past year when it was time to pull up the broadies .... i looked at the roots and oh my ..... there were thousands of these little white nodes all over the roots ..... woohoo .... making good soil and i didn't have to anything but eat beans!
so why not try planting some beans. i'm going to add snake beans to my bounty this year .... letting go of the scarlet runner as they didn't do much (if you have a solution to my lethargy about them, let me know!).
so ... one of God's amazing gifts to us in the humble bean. and He made it so that all we have to do is plant and enjoy the bounty .... the bean takes care of the rest!
Broad beans always remind me of my father. He had an amazing vege patch, the size of the average backyard and he spent hours in it every week. But his broad beans were something special. Every year he would select seeds from the strongest and healthiest plants, and they would always grow well over 6ft. And they never succumbed to disease. He was an agricultural scientist, and from him I learned about crop rotation and nitrogen fixation. He always planted corn where the broadbeans had been.
ReplyDeleteI found some of the seeds he gave me when we recently moved house. He died 14 years ago. I'll have to plant them and see how they go...