We cleared out much of the bed this week.
The potatoes have died right back, but we will leave the tubers in the ground until we need them.
We started to pull up some of the broad bean plants, but noticed young flowering shoots at the base so we trimmed them off instead to see if they would produce a second crop of beans.
Many of the broad beans had this secondary growth. This was the same with some of the peas and we left the young shoots in the ground to see what will happen.
We were not able to locate any nodules containing the nitrogen fixing bacteria on the roots of these broad beans. It is possible that the soil does not contain this bacteria and we may need coat the next batch of seed with the bacteria to introduce it. This lack of extra nitrogen may be part of the reason for the poor yield of beans as the plants could not take advantage of the extra boost of nitrogen.
The stems of the beans had grown over 120cm tall and will provide a lot of material for the compost.
We cleared out much of the bed this week.
The potatoes have died right back, but we will leave the tubers in the ground until we need them.
We started to pull up some of the broad bean plants, but noticed young flowering shoots at the base so we trimmed them off instead to see if they would produce a second crop of beans.
Many of the broad beans had this secondary growth. This was the same with some of the peas and we left the young shoots in the ground to see what will happen.
We were not able to locate any nodules containing the nitrogen fixing bacteria on the roots of these broad beans. It is possible that the soil does not contain this bacteria and we may need coat the next batch of seed with the bacteria to introduce it. This lack of extra nitrogen may be part of the reason for the poor yield of beans as the plants could not take advantage of the extra boost of nitrogen.
The stems of the beans had grown over 120cm tall and will provide a lot of material for the compost.
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