The Crafty Cultivator

I wasn’t going to grow Broad beans this year. They are not my most favourite thing. I like the taste of them enough, but mostly I like their flowers, growing habits and soil enhancing abilities.

However, while working on getting the garden organized and ready for planting things, I noticed that I had a handful of broad beans popping up. I never harvested very many of these last year, and obviously wasn’t very diligent in removing the seed pods when I dug the bed up. So they survived winter and started growing.

Things that survive winter instantly make me like them more. I appreciate the tenacity of it I guess.

So these survivors can stay.

Just not where they are currently growing.

So I just moved them. Two are now over by the Jerusalem Artichokes, and the rest are behind the Spring Onions and Elephant Garlic. This is the little Winter Survivors club area.

If you are in a similar situation, just take a garden trowel, dig down and lift the little plant up, being careful to not damage the roots. This is much easier if you have loose soil, If you don’t, just be extra diligent about the little plant’s roots. Then you just move them to where you want them. Like potting up other plants, just wait until they have some true leaves and are strong enough to handle the stress, but not so large that they have really set down deeper roots.

I’ll keep you updated in future posts about how these are doing. If you have any suggestions on what I can do with Broad Beans that might help me enjoy them a little more, I would greatly appreciate it.

Variety: ‘Windsor’

The benefit of these seeds surviving the winter and germinating on their own, means that I can continue to save seed of successive generations. This should produce seeds/plants more suited to this ground, and the conditions in my yard.