Frech beans - Blue Lake and the end of the beans

Baby blue lake beans forming nicely

This summer we have been experiencing a bean glut, and the last player in my bean bounty where my climbing french beans. I feel like I have covered much of why the beans were so successful in my runner bean posts, and the story behind the french is no different. They enjoyed the spot and produced a great quantity of beans.  More than we really needed so the freezer is groaning.

I don't remember these being particularly covered in flowers, there were definitely more blooms on the runner beans but this didn't seem to prevent the production of beans, they kept appearing.

Fully formed french beans

One thing that was different about these to the runner beans is boy did they spread!  I found french beans amongst both the runner bean wigwams on either side, not even just on the side facing the frenchies, but right on the other side miles away from where they started out. I ended up picking a real mixture in certain areas, very odd when you suddenly come across a patch of french in what should be exclusively runner bean territory.

The variety Blue Lake that I grew was very tasty, stringless, everything you would want in a bean.  I would definitely grow it again, if I wasn't the type of person who always likes to grow different things every year.  I have already bought some cobra climbing beans ready for next year and no doubt I will branch out into other varieties when I see some offers at some point.

I do love a good whirly-twirly vine

I really like french beans because they are tasty and they are also distinctly easier and quicker to cut up than runner beans.  However everybody else in my family much prefers the runner bean.  Because of this I have eaten the lions share of french beans, which is fine with me.  The mother however turned to me the other day and said we shouldn't bother to grow french beans again.  Last time I looked I wasn't growing them for her exclusive enjoyment! Needless to say I will be ignoring her and growing them again next year.

Some of these beans are a little big but I struggled to keep up with the necessary level of picking

The beans have just finally come to an end and were unceremoniously ripped out the moment I thought it was acceptable. Time waits for no bean as they say! I need the space for all my winter veg which is coming along nicely.  Just like I predicted getting the wigwams apart took ages, I think the mother thought she was constructing a sea-worthy vessel rather than a bit of support for beans.  No wind would ever have taken that apart.

The final bean hedge before I ripped them down

I had already whipped out the first of the runner beans when I discovered you're meant to leave the roots in the ground to let the nitrogen the beans have collected disappate back into the soil.  Woops. I have left the other two in so hopefully this bit of earth will turn into very nice soil at some point.

This is the top of the wigwams after about half an hour of chiselling and hacking
at the vines.  Who needed string round the top to hold it together!  

The front garden is looking a bit sad now my three soldiers of green are gone but you can now see all the gladiolus and annuals all at once, which is still pretty despite the lack of green backdrop.

An endless supply of runner beans - Scarlet Empire & White Lady

The Scarlet Empire in full flower, I do enjoy a vegetable that can do pretty as well

I got plenty of blossom off this variety, although there are a fair few plants
in this mass

I come to writing this directly from eating what could not be far short of a pound of runner beans for dinner, which may cloud my opinion a little.  I have taken to eating ludicrous amounts of this vegetable in an attempt to keep up with supply, but there is only so many beans one person wants to eat, and I am well over this level.

I personally like the runner bean flowers coloured rather than white, they
make more of a firey impact

Normally my main complaint with growing vegetables is that the crop tastes great, I just end up slicing one pea in half to ensure everybody gets a piece.  Not with my runner beans, oh no.  From what you can gather from above, I have been inundated.  To say it has been a success would be to undersell.

Yours truly at the beginning of the season getting the mass pick underway, ignore the shoes, they aren't mine.  Im now only picking from about chest height and above

The White Lady variety in flower, managed to snap this bumble making good
his exit

The secret has been where I grew them.  Last year the mother grew runner beans but I only remember having a few meals off of them.  That would be because she only had a few plants planted in about a foot square and they had to climb up the apple tree for support.  Clearly not ideal.  This year she sowed about twenty seedlings of Scarlet Empire, without actually having anywhere to put them, and then she dug up all the bushes in the front garden, and suddenly a prime bean growing spot appeared.  It is open on all sides, with good blow-through and lots of sun.  And the beans have loved it.

Early beans forming.  I swear they look like this one minute and then you
check on them a few days later and you have a foot long green swords

I have already covered my intense session of wigwam making, needless to say they have survived sturdy through intense rain and the odd gusty breeze.  The mother's runners I planted round one wigwam and some White Lady I bought round another.  The Scarlet Empire started flowering first, with lovely bright reddy-orange flowers that sung out and were really pretty.  The White Lady are more of a pale creamy white, still nice but not as impressive.  The Scarlet Empire was completely covered in flowers, and much to my horror does still have flowers on it now because I haven't cut the tops of the plants, naughty me.  The only difference I can tell between the two is that the Scarlet Empire tend to be a slightly darker bean and maybe a bit thicker, and also possibly mature faster.  Its hard to tell because I do not segment my beans on picking, I just chuck them all in a colander together.

More early beans

I do this because picking beans has become my second job.  I come home from work every other day and go straight into the front garden to start picking for a good half hour.  I can't keep up.  It always amazes me that a, the little rotters can grow so fast.  You leave them to get just a smidgeon bigger and come back the next day to find them huge.  And b, that despite going through the plants with a fine tooth comb you come across absolute whoppers that are a bit on the tough side.  And the most annoying part is at the beginning I would be out there picking and a neighbour would wander past and exclaim that they were wondering when I would start picking.  Like im not always picking!

Slightly bigger beans

At the start I was terribly concerned about knocking off the ageing blooms incase this meant that little beans wouldn't form.  Now I actively try and knock off the baby beans.  Thats a joke, I would never turn my nose up at vegetables that have made the effort to grow, but I am reaching my limit.  I probably pick a good half pound of runner and french beans every two days, thats a lot to consume, especially as the mother, a woman who can munch through twenty beans in a single sitting alone, is out of action just having had a tonsillectomy.  So with our ranks dwindling the fridge is stuffed and the freezer is also packed out.  Im hoping some extra room can be found in the freezer so we can save them for a time when I feel less over indulged in beans.

The average pile every two days, thats a lot of bean to munch through

Next year I will be growing runner beans again, after all they are such good value for money, just maybe not so many plants!

PS. What's the deal with the massive spiders on spindly legs that seem to hang around in runner bean bushes?!  I just pulled a few and screamed like a girl.

My takings from one lovely August day, ah the summer, I already miss its bounty

Building wigwams for runner and french beans

I think you will agree, these are three solidly looking wigwams.  I forgot to photograph the wigwams on construction,
so this is a few weeks later, the beans have made rapid progress.  This also demonstrates the closeness of the beans to the neighbours

When one turns the front garden into an impromptu vegetable bed, one also has to construct wigwams.  I have never constructed a wigwam before.  Theoretically I believe the correct practise is to build your wigwam and then plant the beans around, but that would require the canes to be in ones possession when one plants the beans, which I did not have.  This is the problem with trying something new in the garden, it always results in having to invest in more equipment. I have sticks for broad beans, sticks for peas, sticks for sweat peas, but nothing longer.  And I needed a bit of length here.  So off to the garden centre I went, mother in tow.

Unfortunately I hit the garden centre after the locusts had already been through, buying every cane below eight foot and above five. After deciding that eight foot sticks would not fit into my car without some serious alteration on their part, however I attempted to wedge them in, we had to leave for another.  Typically this did not have cane supply problems, with every size imaginable covered.
We settled on seven foot canes as the appropriate length, but even these had to be wedged into the glove compartment on the passenger side, pass right under the mother's ear to be wedged right in the back of the boot. Getting them home was just stage one.  Now I had to set too and lasso them together.  I did not think this would be a difficult task.  I tried my best, but apparently wigwam making is harder than it looks, or at least it is if your making them to the mother's standards.

Being the daughter of the vegetable growing god that was my grandfather, I asked her to take a supervisory role.  Accordingly she vanished and I found her drinking tea and snacking on biscuits indoors, by which point I had one of my wigwams in place and was just going to lasso a whole load of twine around the top.  Despite opting out earlier, she declared I had done it all wrong and my wigwam would not withstand gale force winds.  Why she is expecting such gusts I don't know, we don't live in a terribly windy place.  So I told her if she thought it could be done better, feel free.  So the mother had to take to the soil and start making some reef knots.

I think the mother thinks the bamboo canes are the next Houdini.  Nobody is getting free
from this lassoing

She didn't like this for two reasons.  One, she was in her good skirt.  Two, she had until now believed she could act like a front garden full of beans had been thrust upon her rather than she was taking an active role.  No more.  Also her tea went cold, but that's by the by.  Anyway shes much taller than I and therefore far more suited to wigwam making.  She did a fine job, although complained incessantly.  It will probably take several hours to prize them apart at the end of the season the level of lasso she went into.

She says it suddenly looks like we have instantaneous beans because as they had been in a few weeks they had been putting on a bit of length, albeit along the ground.  While she was up-top in construction, I was coiling the beans up the poles.  I think it looks really pretty, very cottagey garden.  The parents were concerned it would be very vegetable patch, but beans have flowers and a whimsical air.  Not like im out there growing cabbages, not yet anyway.  It must look good because my neighbour told the mother while I was on holiday how much she liked the new front border, saying there was always something new to see.  I just love being proven right.

On the plus side if anybody had a mind to knick the canes, they would end up
giving up.  I dread trying to get them apart.  On a brighter note I love a good bean stalk coil
up a pole, its just so pleasing

So hopefully the wigwams will withstand the British hurricane season, having returned from holiday I can confirm they are all still very much in situ, and hopefully I will get a fine crop.  I am however concerned that passers by may feel inclined to pinch a bean or two on their way past.  I may have to erect signage and tell that neighbour to stop eyeing up my beans.   

Beans in the front garden - french, runner and dwarf

I am back.  The reasoning for a three week absence is I escaped to Cyprus for a ten day break from the stresses of being a journalist and my everyday life.  If I was a more organised person I would have written posts in advance and had them go up automatically while I was away, but I am not that person.  But now I am back, brown as a berry and refreshed and talking about beans.

The mother does not approve of me turning the front garden into a vegetable patch.  Luckily I don't  give two hoots what she thinks so have done so anyway.  You see, the reason I don't grow more vegetables than I already do is a question of space.  I have wedged in a small vegetable bed at the bottom of my back garden by removing shrubs, but there is only space for a small crop of broad beans, sugar snap and peas.  No room at all for more exotic legumes such as french beans or a cheeky line of dwarf.

In my minds eye when I was writing this I had taken lots of lovely pictures.  It turns out
I only took two, and neither are terribly visually interesting.  I dug three enormous holes
to put manure in, the effort that had to be put in does not come across.

I am a big believer in grabbing opportunity by both hands, and if that opportunity is a border of old shrubs, pulling until removed.  The shrubs did need to go.  Looking like a row of unkempt teeth, what had been a delightfully ordered set of various bushes had grown and morphed into quite frankly what can only be described as a monstrosity.  Several years I have tried to convince the parents to let the bushes go, and only when the tall end one started to die and one in the middle sagged onto the lawn did they finally relent.

Being ever keen to save things the mother chopped down the euonymus and berberis in the hope they would re-sprout.  Then they called in a professional gardener to pull out the stumps of the other two.  Only said professional gardener got a little carried away and pulled out the whole lot.  I practically died of amusement when I came home to find a barren front border devoid of any plant-life.  This quickly moved to salivating over what could be put there instead.

Luckily the mother saw this mishap as an opportunity rather than a disaster, an opportunity to start afresh. Admittedly fresh with shrubs was her thought but I had other ideas.  Beans.  To be fair, now is not the time to be planting new shrubs and she has no idea what she wants to put in there so in the mean time I have whipped in several circles of beans.

I had to go shop bought rather than home-grown as I was not expecting this soil windfall and so hadn't prepared.  Instead I bought two packs of the french bean variety Blue Lake.  The garden centre actually had a very limited choice, I was expecting beans of every shape and colour, but no, so I couldn't mix it up a bit.  On another trip to a different one I did stumble across some dwarf beans which are handy because they are vertically challenged members of the bean world and don't require staking.

The mother's runners.  She had a really healthy luscious crop that have grown like weeds since going in.  She knows how to go for numbers, think we will have runners galore

The mother has benefitted as well mind you.  She always likes to grow some runner beans.  Last year she planted them in a small space at the front of a boarder in the back garden and they ended up growing through the apple tree which didn't make picking easy.  Pretty though.  With all this new space she was able to plant out her runners in a nice roomy circle ready for a wigwam.  Picking should be a dream.  It hasn't been without its work though because the entire thing has had to be dug over to remove small roots and copious amounts of horse poo has been shoveled in, although I read afterwards that beans don't like freshly manured grounds, but tough, they've got it now.

So currently there are three circles of climbing beans and three small lines of dwarf beans in the front garden.  I plan to add to this with some broccoli in the near future.  The mother keeps talking about putting bushes back in. but its not happening.  Now I have my hands on this earth im not letting go.  The only problem is its a little exposed to my neighbours and I can not garden in my night frock out there as is my want sometimes.  Better than nothing though.

Runner Beans 'Mergoles'

So its fairly evident by now that the mother is a fruity lady.  Pears, plums and apples get her excited, if she was a bug she would be a fruit fly.  Vegetables she leaves mainly to me, taking more of an advisory role.  There is but one exception; runner beans.  She has a need for a little runner bean patch every year which I think stems from my granddad.  Whenever we visited during runner bean season we would leave with a huge carrier bag of runner beans; I spent a lot of time until I was ten slicing them into colanders.  In the mother's opinion a bought runner bean just doesn't cut the mustard, so now she grows them.

To be honest I only really got involved at picking time but I did keep an eye on proceedings, mainly through my camera.  I would have been more involved, but I had enough on my plate or at least I hoped to eventually! The beans she planted were actually old and well past their planting time.  I tried to grow them myself but planted ten beans or so and only had two germinate, declared the beans duff and gave up on them.  The mother however laughs in the face of 'plant before end' dates, planted a whole load and had virtually every single one come up.  Sometimes that woman is hate-able.
The variety was 'Mergoles', I didn't chose them so I can't tell you what appealed.

Runner beans have a rather menacing twirl to their climbing I think, like they might
 strangulate whatever it is they are climbing up

She planted her beans in their own special 'patch', if we can call it that, as I told her my patch was fully booked.  By 'patch' I mean a cramped two feet of soil at the front of a border in front of some roses.  I believe her plan was for them to climb up the fence behind them, so of course they did something completely different.  They started climbing up some wooden poles she had provided, produce from a pruning session although of what Im not sure, got to around shoulder height and then made off.  Tendrils reached out bridging the gap between border and apple tree and then merrily knitted themselves through all the branches.  The ones at the back went for the Camellia instead. Whoosh, and they were gone; eight feet up into the air vanishing round behind the bush to visit my neighbour.  Harvesting was going to be fun.

Having said I didn't like the colour they have produced a rather arty picture here,
but still in my opinion look tobacco stained, sorry Mergoles

The beans had a good covering of flowers, although I can't say I was a fan of their colour.  The flowers themselves were fine when they finally came out, but the buds were a faint yellowy cream that reminded me of a the colour white walls go around a heavy smoker.
Despite complaining that all her baby beans were falling off, she had tonnes of them.  I love a good baby runner bean, they are so cute and curly like little spirals or upside down question marks.  I love the way they gently uncurl as they grow into huge long beans.  I also like the formation, one behind the other on opposing sides making them rather structurally lovely.  They are definitely one of the more attractive beans.

Like a bunch of green question marks pegged to a washing line, I do love the way they gro

Typically the mother went off on holiday when her beans needed picking so old muggins here and the father were left with the task.  I sent him up the ladder, as the man, to do the picking while I stayed on terra firma in an advisory role.  He isn't terribly good at spotting what he is meant to be going for.  They were absolutely delicious, probably more so because I didn't really have to do much, and also terribly nostalgic.  A big pile of runner beans reminds me so much of being a child, really its funny how  many childhood memories seem to revolve around vegetables.

She announced this year a success, but did admit that where she planted them did not work out terribly well.  She said we needed a proper big vegetable patch next year, Im currently working on convincing her to let me dig up a huge strip of the lawn.  Im not holding my breath but we will see how it goes.