Jackie France celebrates the eccentric gardeners among us, those who garden with passion, purpose and a healthy disregard for convention.
Hands up, honestly: do you like fresh beans? Are there hands at all?
I hated fava beans until I tasted home grown fava beans. I didn’t even know what they were. These delicious little green morsels are not covered in plastic wrap. They are not only “fuzzy green”, but sweet and have an unknown taste. They were so soft that they fell apart with the first bite.
“What are they?” I asked.
My hostess seemed confused: I used to write professionally on gardening topics years ago: 25 ways to train lentils not to eat parsley, 10 tricks with fruit flies. I even collected rare fruit trees.
“They’re just big beans,” he said as the shock of my ignorance wore off. “But I choose them young.”
Broad beans are one of the few vegetables that grow in winter and in early spring, when the previous summer’s crops like artichokes and asparagus go to seed.
When I tasted those fresh beans, straight from the garden, none of their flavor had been lost in the chill, and I picked the plastic skin too small to grow them, I was hooked. I understand why eccentric gardeners take extra care.
Cultivation of beans
First, prepare the soil, dig well. A sprinkling of wood ash helps prevent brown spot on broad beans, such as a garlic crop grown before planting broad beans.
I want to harvest the garlic around December and then grow a fast growing heat tolerant crop like bok choy with lots of food. Weeds can’t get it, and digging up bok choy and then mulching makes it perfect for broad beans.
Sow the seeds early enough in mid-fall to ripen in the spring, or in early spring if you have a long, cold early summer.
Remember that broad beans do not lay eggs in hot weather. Plant at the right time, or not at all.
Put high growing varieties. Low-cost beans don’t need stakes, but the plants have more access to sunlight and will produce more if you let them.
Feed weekly to extend the slow harvest season. But the key word is slow or you will get lots of green growth and little yield. Use compost if possible. High nitrogen fertilization does not give a good yield, only a good yield.
Don’t worry about aphids on the upper leaves. Spray them, or even cut off the ends, wash the aphids and remove the tender young leaves.
As soon as the first flowers appear in the spring, mulch. This keeps moisture in the ground and improves the soil, but also keeps the soil and plant roots cool when the weather warms up. You grow broad beans instead of two to three months.
Choose young beans for best taste. Eat the beans inside the pods, but baby beans can also be eaten whole, pods and all, though only a day or two after they’ve been harvested. Harvesting encourages plants to produce new flowers and pods. Choose often, even every day.
Guests can also enjoy peeling the beans and picking their own beans at the start of the meal.
If several caterpillars are grown by accident, save the seed for planting next year, as long as it is an old variety and not a hybrid. You can also dry them to add to soups and stews, where cooking for a long time will soften them properly – but first remove the “plastic” skin, awkward but necessary.
And yes, it’s all a lot of work, work for eccentric gardeners who like to be in the garden or eccentric cooks who are more interested in flavor and texture than appearance. A plate of eggplant, even with lemon, olive oil and garlic, is not worthy of a photo. Happiness is in eating.
Eccentric crops for eccentric farmers
For some reason, March is the time to plant other “eccentric” crops, such as English spinach. Why not plant silver beets that can be grown and eaten year-round?
Or buy frozen spinach?
Easy: English spinach, grown in cool, cool climates, is sweet and tender. There is no silk beetroot. Frozen spinach looks more stalky than green, plus it lacks flavor or texture.
English spinach only needs full sun, watering weekly while it’s growing – stop in winter when it’s no longer growing, and after 30 seconds, no more than when you’re roasting, steaming or adding to casseroles at the last minute.
Garlic can now be planted. Yes, it’s cheap to buy, but once you’ve grown and tasted fresh young garlic, you’ll always grow it.
You can also plant Russian garlic, which forms large but mild cloves, but is best picked in late winter before it forms its papery skin around each clove. Use it as a garlic-flavored onion, add it whole to long-baked muffins, or bake it in thin slices and spread it on top of toasted bread and a wonderful milky one with the addition of rich Greek yogurt.
Try the early onions. The best is “smooth white”, quick to cook, sweet and flavorful, but just sharp.
Most farmers never try this. It needs real eccentric farmers to spend time caring for them, watching them grow and then sharing the bounty with friends.
