The more you eat, the more you…. Oh for goodness’ sake. I wasn’t going to go there. I was actually about to make a finely gauged and sensitive point about how growing beans will indeed make your heart swell with joy, as they are among the prettiest and most productive things you can plant on your plot; and eating them is good for your heart in the medical sense, too. But then you had to go and take it into the gutter. Honestly.
Regular readers of Greenery will know that this year’s growalong is beans! Beautiful, jungly, flower-spangled, glossy, nutritious beans in every shape and size: and there are a *lot* of types to choose from. So many, in fact, that this is likely to become a two-year growalong: this year we’ll be exploring the wonderful world of climbing beans, while next year it’ll be the turn of shorter, stockier and hardier broad (fava) beans, Martock beans and the like, plus a few more ‘out there’ varieties.
There is a smattering of botanical, not to say geographical logic behind this division into beany camps. Climbing beans are from South America and belong to the botanical family Phaseolus, while broad beans and similarly low-growing, sturdy cousins like Martock beans are Middle Eastern and from the genus Vicia, an entirely different branch of the legume family. I’m also going to throw in (Chinese) soybeans next year as I’ve always wanted to have a go at growing them in the UK: that’s another branch of the legume family again, being Glycine max. And, just for fun, yardlong beans – another Asian bean from yet another genus, Vigna – and lablabs, from south-east Asia (Lablab purpureus, if you’re interested).
Incidentally this, right here, is why we have Latin in gardening. We refer to all these things as beans: but it takes quietly precise Latin to sort out the confusion and make sense of them all.
Anyway: that’s for next season. This year, we are all about the South American Phaseolus family, The long, slender, immature pods we know (inexplicably) as French beans have been popular in the Americas for around 5,000 years. So the story goes, they were brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus in the 15th, or maybe 16th century. A long time ago, anyway.
Since then beans have become such a staple of European cuisine that it’s hard to imagine a menu without them. Baked beans, haricot beans, kidney beans, green beans: this is the most versatile of foods. Beans can see you round the year in various different guises.
Their subtropical origins tell you a lot about what these plants need: warmth, a steady temperature (so no yo-yoing between day and night) and plenty of sunshine. They are really quite easy, and very rewarding to grow, producing lots of lush, satisfyingly jungly foliage and very generous harvests.
We’ll be going into the hows and whens of sowing and growing as we make our way through the season: but in the meantime, here’s a walk through the many different types of bean we’ll be growing this year. They’re all well worth some garden space: the difficult bit is deciding which ones to leave out!
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