Not GAMCOD on Skye plot - Year Two

I've decided not to do a new not-GAMCOD plot after all this year; I just have too many projects on the go! Also I don't think I will be able to make it look very easy, as although not cold enough to qualify, my climate is still rather challenging! I thought I'd revisit my original GAMCOD strip from last year instead, and see if I can do better, and how much easier it is the second year.

First of course no real digging! The plot was just left overwinter with whatever weeds were left after the attempts at harvest last year. I was hoping to plant it up with some fruit bushes, but that hasn't happened. This is still the plan longer term, so one thing I have done is start to improve the edges to the plot. It was left with a step where the turf was cut away, which just bugs me! There is no particular reason though, there are advantages and disadvantages for the step: It's not really big enough to be a navigation hazard, but I prefer things to be smooth flowing. I cut another spade width of turf around the North edge of the strip and inverted it, inserting some comfrey roots transplanted from elsewhere in the field. These will grow vigorously enough to keep the grass away in a year or two and provide a border that can be cut for mulch handy for the bed. The underside of the turf was easy to ramp down with a stamp of my boot.

planting a comfrey mulch border

After planting my main potato bed I found I had quite a few potatoes left over (a mix of pink fir apple and 'Skye blue') so I stuck them in the North side of the bed - just scooped a spade of soil up on the bed and buried a potato in with a trowel. I can put some mulch on the top of them to help feed the soil a bit and pull the soil down to earth them up in a few weeks. In the basket with them are some nice silverweed roots which got stuck in as well.....

left over seed potatoes

I also planted some fava beans - these are seed that is getting a bit old now, but should be fine. Last year the mice had the lot before they grew, I think there are still some mice in the area, so I'm not sure whether these will survive, but the seeds won't grow in the packet and are a bit old to give away as gifts now, so nothing lost! I found a nice bent stick that was perfect for making bean planting holes.

handful of beans

I didn't even bother weed out the buttercups much - which I may live to regret!  I haven't really got a plan as such, I'm just winging it, and hope to get an extra harvest for little effort.

(edit - typos!)

I'm trying fava beans for the first time this year.  I got them a couple of years ago, seed saved by a good friend from her garden, so hopefully she'll have good advice on them for me.

Good luck Nancy, keep up the hard work  I've found the only way I can direct seed peas or beans is to cover the bed entirely with insect mesh, and make sure to bury the edges.  I even had mice/rats dig out transplanted sweetcorn seedlings to nibble away what was left of the rooted/sprouted seed!  I can take the mesh off after the seedlings are 5ish cm tall or so.

Well the fact I haven't updated this thread just shows how little attention I've been paying to the strip!

As mentioned above I did earth up the potatoes at the same sort of time as I earthed up the main beds of potatoes. They are looking pretty good and showing signs of flowering.

The fava beans sprouted pretty well and so far I seem to be getting good survival. The only other thing done earlier is that I transplanted some of my asparagus plants from my old polytunnel site into the strip - mostly on the uphill bed, but a few on the down hill bed too at the end of the potato row where I ran out.

The beans seem to be losing vigour a bit - they are smaller than my main bean bed and the leaves are getting quite yellow. I would associate this with a lack of nitrogen in particular, which suggests that they are not fixing nitrogen very effectively. I haven't dug up one to look at the nodules, which i think may prove interesting. The beans are flowering, just looking a bit pathetic. I'm thinking that the soil here is maybe even more acidic than my main growing bed, and that may be part of the problem.

yellowing fava bean plants

I planted out my runner bean plants into the other bed. It is really a bit late for me, bearing in mind how cool our autumn is. The pods tend to rot rather than ripen, but it's a while since I tried runner beans, so I'm still hoping for the best.

Laying out the bean plants

I popped them in around the asparagus plants and watered them in. The asparagus are still pretty small, so I don't think they will get in each other's way too much. I managed to dig up a developing potato as I was planting one of the beans I tucked it back in and expect it will be OK. Maybe the beans will feed the asparagus a little. After watering in the beans I poked in some hazel sticks as a trellis for the beans to climb up. The sticks are not very tall, and I tied them together with an old bamboo cane.

runner bean trellis

The comfrey mostly seems to establishing nicely around the edges. I didn't quite get all the way round done, but I have got some more coming up in my roots bed, so I may try and transplant that before the end of the summer.

So the fava beans did turn out a bit disappointing in the end - very few beans set. I'm suspecting super acidic soil affecting nutrient takeup. I want to take a sample of soil from here and compare the pH with my main growing area. I thought the pH over the field was consistently poor, but maybe I've improved that in the growing area, or maybe it just varies due to something else in the soil.
The potatoes still look good -  at least one nice bunch of berries set. I'd still like to play with true potato seed and see if I can find some potatoes that do particularly well here.
The runner beans are looking hopeful - just starting to flower. They also survived the gales we had earlier in the week pretty well, which I'm a bit surprised by, considering how roughly I threw up the climbing poles. Too early to say whether I'll get much yield though.

My favas are drying on the stalk, I feel like they did well for being something I've never tried before.  We intend to make a Moroccan bean dip with them.  I also have 2 more that I planted in mid July which will grow and flower and hopefully make me some more beans in autumn, and that's when I'll use the whole lot of them, five plants in total, they don't take up much room each, and doing great in a large pot.  How's your new polytunnel coming along Nancy?

Good luck with the new beans!

Riona Abhainn wrote:How's your new polytunnel coming along Nancy?

Thank you for asking! It turns out that I needed to order some more anchor posts after all, and I'm waiting on those (and some other bits) now....Hopefully progress in the next week. I'll update mypolytunnel thread when I've got more progress to share.

I think I've got a good chance of a bean harvest! This definitely looks like tiny bean pods to me

I ended up with three fava plants, and am growing 2 more, once I harvest those in Oct./early Nov. then we'll see how many I have, I mean they don't go very far, next year I'll plant more.  We're going to make Moroccan bean dip with them, hopefully it will be enough, I let them dry on the stalk for easier harvest, but the autumn ones will be picked before drying since it won't be dry outside.  .  What will you use your beans for Nancy?

Hi Riona - Picked green I cook fava beans with peas as a vegetable with a simple dinner - that seems to work just as well with field beans as with broad beans. If they are mature then they go well in a stew. I'm looking forwards to trying chickpea (gazpacho pea) recipes like falafel and hummus. I gather a lot of UK beans are exported to Africa for that purpose.

The runner beans can be picked green - I love runner beans as a green vegetable, so am excited to possibly be able to grow them here! This year as the first year, my focus will be on trying to get some mature pods to save for seed for next year. You can use the mature seeds like kidney beans in stews - they need cooking well in the same way to destroy toxins, but green we eat them raw (they make a nice salad) or just lightly cooked.

We had some light frosts this week and the bean vines have pretty much given up the ghost, so I harvested my runner bean pods.

sad runner bean vines

All in all I'm not too disappointed. The beans grew and set pretty well considering how late I sowed them. I think if I had my act in gear I could plant them at least a month earlier, which would make a whole lot of difference to the yeild. As it was I have a few handfuls of lovely beans to replant next year.

large bean seeds

There is a lovely variation in seed colour. The white and grey ones are already turning beige as I remember them from planting. Funnily there doesn't seem to be any black seeds set, which is a bit of a surprise. I do still have old black seeds, and maybe they are just not viable anymore.
Question: whether to get more fresh seed, or plant all the old seed next year in the hope that a few germinate and grow?

Nancy, I would do a "test" to check any old bean seeds we had.  Using 10 seeds makes the math easy, wrap the seeds in some damp paper, place them into a plastic bag, set somewhere warm and start checking for any sprouts in the three or four days, if no sign after about 10 days, forget trying to plant those seeds!!

I would also "test" any off site material given to us for garden use.  Prepare a few small cups with the material and drop a fresh green bean seed into each.  Wait for the plants to appear, observe the overall plant growth, any of the "forever" chemicals in the off site material will show very stunted growth patterns.

Heddwch

Thanks Deane! Yes, it probably makes sense to test them rather than getting caught out with no black seeded plants again next year. I may just sow them all separately as well as a few new black seeded bean varieties.



heddwch a diversion....I never know how to pronounce Welsh, it's a bit like Gaeilc in having different uses for the letters I know in English.

Soraidh!