I harvested my crimson-flowered broad beans yesterday. I planted them very late, deliberately so as to avoid cross-pollination, and they were flowering through the worst of the weather. Hardly any were pollinated, so I left them all for seed. The result is 20 beans, half the number I planted in the first place.
sods law Robert
Robert with the price of cattle at the moment you might be able to exchange 20 beans for one cow ;D
Lauren ::)
That wouldn't surprise me. When my brothers-in-law died we had to provide a cow for each funeral. In Freetown, capital of the poorest country in the world (last time I checked £1 was worth 3200 Leones), cows cost more than they did here, as thecity was under siege at the time. I wonder how the prices compare now; they must be almost unsaleable over here, if you can get them to market at all.
I'll buy some more seed, and plant it all. They don't have many beans to a pod, but they do have lots of flowers, so in a normal year, there should be lots of pods.
I got the POD catalogue today; crimson-flowered BB is 'very scarce this year'. I wonder why.
Poor pollination - fewer bees? One of the HDRA's (easier to type! lol) experiments for next year is a bee survey.
Honeybees won't affect small stands of bb's very much, as they don't attract them, though they will visit commercially grown field beans. Other pollinators will visit them, but in that dreadful weather, there was very little about. I think it must have had a major impact on some insect populations; I have Great Mullein on my plot, which is normally eaten to shreds in early summer by mullein moth caterpillars, I hardly saw a caterpillar on it this year.