Allotments 4 All

Might have been a bad year for lots of things but the beans never let us down!!!

 ??? ???

This is an industrial size bean slicer!!!  ;D

Congratulations on your beans.   :)

They look sliced up too small for my liking!

Only a Kenwood Chef with slicer grater attachment but does the job in about 10-15mins!

Normally takes ages with a bean slicer!

And you can put loads in one bag and take out of freezer and bash it to knock off how many you
want instead of them all tangled together! :D

Quote from: Paulines7 on August 22, 2012, 17:37:44
They look sliced up too small for my liking!

Taste better! ;D

They hold more butter!

Mmm, runner beans and butter!

I'm picking and eating them every day now. 
I love runner beans!

I grew some climbing beans called Matilda just because I liked the name, Had our first lot yesterday and they are lovely.All of my shelling beans that I had fron Galina and AJ are growing well. Just have to wait for them to get nice and big.
Help me out will you Dop I pick them when the beans are swollen to freeze straight from the pod and when I cook them do I add them to the stew at the end of the cooking

I was told by Italian guru to pick when the pods are just starting to go yellow and a bit translucent.
To add to stews etc I cook afor a few minutes in boiling water then add so I know they are properly cooked.

Thanks PL. I have probably already been told this before but have forgotten

Quote from: shirlton on August 22, 2012, 18:53:38
Thanks PL. I have probably already been told this before but have forgotten

Ten minutes cooking does it.  Glad the beans are doing well  :)

My runners gave well before I went on hols, but when I came back they had gotten too big to eat and now the plant is dying off. I am a bit disappointed really, I thought their cropping season was longer.

Pick the lot and see if you get new ones...

THat's the reason some folks do a double sowing of runners, if they do get a couple of weeks to sit with the crop on then they're done....I just wish I was seeing any likelyhood of getting my gigandas to crop this year.... even the ones in the GH don't seem to be setting much.... just picked a load of Cobras for the freezer, but all the rest of my beans are shelling ones adn in a lot of cases I'm desperate for some to dry out for seed.... there's a few Limas that look like they'll make it, the Bridgewater and Trail of Tears look OK, mennonnite Stripe is still at the massive fleshy pod stage..... just hope we've got two months left in the season and not one....

Chris...what colour flowers does you gigandas have?
I bought my giganda seeds from Greek deli and for my surprise they are doing very well. Once slugs left the young plants alone..they have really taken on and are covered with loads and loads of white flowers and plenty have set too. Loads of short pods that are slowly swelling and looks like there is 2-3 beans inside each pod..though some only seem to have just one.
I'm surprised how many bumble bees I'm seeing on the flowers..they seem to like gigandas better than ordinary runnerbeans. I wonder if there is more nectar in them or if the flower is slightly more easily accessable for them.. :-\

THe flowers are white on both my types (indeed they're indistinguishable so mixed up a bit.... wish I had bees, precious few this year and I don't grow runner beans... I generally get 3 beans per pod, sometimes more... it's a pretty big flower on a Giganda (for a bean anyway), and bumbles are pretty big for bees,

Started with Broad Beans. Flooded allotment, no sunshine, no problem - they seemed to thrive on it.

Meanwhile grew yellow french beans under plastic cloche. Fantastic yields they seem to love the rain.

While we were eating those we had purple french climbing beans; again loads. Runner beans still growing and hopefully going to give produce into October.

Just proves that there always some veg that love weather conditions.

Oh and also have loads and loads of apples coming and also eaten loads of cookers.

I'd have thought trad British native veg will have loved this... my celeriac and parsnips all look good, I had good carrots, plenty of broadies, the shallots grew like weeds....

A lot of my broadies just sulked. Red Epicure and Wizard (a field bean from Real Seeds) did well, but even Aquadulce produced almost nothing.