09-07-2005, 01:52 PM
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The message
from (Nick Maclaren) contains these words:
In article .net,
Oxymel of Squill wrote:
:-(
row of broad beans, planted last October (was there really any point in
overwintering like that?) has empty pods. Little black dots where the
beans
ought to be. There were one or two pods earlier in the year with one
or two
beans, but nothing since.
anyone tell me what's gone wrong? Is there a witch nearby?
In my experience, overwintering broad beans is a pretty futile activity,
as at best it produces a crop a fortnight earlier, and it is as likely
to simply waste seed and space. But some people seem to get it to
work.
My early ones have been a disaster, and I didn't sow them THAT early.
The problem has been the utterly miserable spring, which both caused
a lot to rot after germination and before developing a stem and caused
very poor setting (lack of bees).
I sowed both overwintering broad beans and early ones not so far further
north, just in S. Lincs. Both have done OK but the overwintering ones
have been far better, with a really heavy crop. The stems have gradually
gone completely black but late enough not to affect the yield. I haven't
had a failure yet with overwintering except for losing every single seed
to mice/voles one year - a very neat double row of deep holes appeared
where the seeds had been. I've had good strong plants which have
over-wintered well since using roottrainers.
Janet G
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