A Hill of Beans

It's always bothered me that the phrase 'A hill of beans' means something of little worth. You'd think after over 9,000 years of keeping the human race going, being one of the first (and most easily) cultivated crops & growing in the poorest soil (so no matter how poor you were, or how lousy the patch of land you had was, you could grow enough legumes to keep yourself going), the humble bean could maybe get a little credit.
It's okay, legumes. I'm a pariah too.
You can save & store any of the bean family, though Broad & Runner beans are kind of slutty, so if you're saving for sowing next year, you should grow them in isolation. French beans don't usually cross with each other, so you should be okay with growing different varieties of them together.

Beans are staggeringly easy to preserve. Late September/early October is the best time to be doing it, as you'll need to get them harvested before the first frosts. Like most harvesting, it's best done on a dry day. Beans are best dried on the plant, so check your climbing frames for pods that have started to dry out & turn brown. Pick 'em & pod 'em (but don't leave it so long that they split open & spill their seeds. That's pretty disheartening). If they're not dry by mid-October, then you can pull up the whole plant & hang somewhere sheltered to dry out. If you don't have that kind of space, pick the pods & arrange on cardboard trays (or anything that's breatheable, for fear of the dreaded mould!) somewhere warm & dry, making sure that they get plenty of air circulating around them.

Once dry, shell the beans. This is one of the most soothing things you can be doing in your garden in October, it's like shelling peas, only they're bigger, fatter & come in a variety of beautiful colours & patterns. The photo above shows one of my haphazard seed piles. Once dried I'll sort them into groups, but for now I just like the way they look together! There's a mix of Borlotti di fuoco, Orca, Kentucky Wonder Wax, Scarlet Emperor, Trail of Tears, White Lady & Cosse Violette

Once shelled, spread out on trays & leave somewhere for a week or two (depending on how dry they were to begin with. When they are hard & brittle, they're dry. Don't resist the urge to run your fingers through them, small pleasures are what life's all about.
Once dried, you can pack them up in paper envelopes for sowing next year or swapping with other veg growers, or you can store them in a jar & use to make soups, stews, chillies & other beany delights.

You don't have to just grow beans for podding either. All beans taste good dried, so if you stop harvesting your green beans at about mid August you'll get a good crop of beans for drying in early October. How cool is that?

A fair trade for a cow, if you ask me.

Gather Ye Rose Spuds While Ye May

Robert Herrick must be a-spinning in his grave...

Thanks to District (F)10* and a chunk of garden, we have far more potatoes than we're used to (previous years have involved growing spuds in buckets for salad potatoes or assigning a corner of garden for them. Either way they've all been devoured by mid September), so one of the tasks on my infinitely extendable list of stuff to do has been storing potatoes (I know how to party. Oh yes).

Not that you'll hear me complaining. Digging potatoes is the closest I get to feeling like a pirate. I don't mean that I drink rum while gardening (Czech dark lager actually), digging spuds is the closest I get to the feeling of digging up buried treasure!

Yarr!

These beauties are Blue Danube potatoes from Thomson & Morgan. They're surprisingly large, and lovely to look at. The deep purple-blue skin colour fades to less-exciting brown on cooking. Aww.
If you've got lots of spuds, you're probably best off digging them up in one go & storing them. Left in the ground they are likely to get nibbled at, or the ground will freeze solid on the day you're craving mash & onion gravy. So dig up your spuds on a dry morning, and leave out in the sun for a few hours, to give the skins a chance to harden up (and will store better). It's obvious, but I'll say it anyway, use a fork to dig up your spuds. A spade will only lead to tears, and ready sliced spuds. No matter how careful you are, you will always, always spear the biggest, bestest potato with your fork. You'll miss all the weird-shaped ones, the rotten ones (that burst when you pick them up), the ones that an industrious slug has made completely hollow**, but that perfect baking potato? Skewered through the middle like Ming the Merciless. Make sure you've dug up everything, and turn the soil over a few times with a fork. Anything left behind could end up harbouring pests & diseases.

Sort through your potatoes & any with nibbles, mysterious burrows, spongy bits, greenness, corky places or funky looking parts won't store & should be used up soon (after the funky bits have been cut away, of course. Mash or fritatta hides a multitude of sins). After all that, the actual storing part is a doddle. They just need is to be kept somewhere dark, and in something (preferably a hessian or paper sack, but an old pillowcase, T-shirt with holes sewn up or anything you can cobble together will do. Even manilla envelopes) that will let them breathe. Store them in shed or garage, anywhere dry, dark & away from frosts.

They'll need an occasional check to make sure that no slugs were bagged up with them (unless it's that Keyser Soze slug. Steer clear of that guy).

Next time - Beans!

*Otherwise known as The allotment. Our slightly bleak, windswept chunk of impenetrable clay soil. No extraterrestrials creatures or Neil Blomkamp running around, just huge, deranged hares skulking in the Oca.

**You'll be torn between hunting down the little bleeder & having a little Reservoir Dogs re-enactment with it and convincing yourself that Keyser Soze lives & is a gastropod

Hammering the Clamps

A special prize of a packet of seeds to whoever gets that particular pun...

The weather has turned here in North Lincolnshire, there's a chill in the air & blight on the tomatoes. So it's autumn, my favouritest time of year. Sod your sticky, sleep deprived summer and your colder than a well diggers arse winter, autumn is the time for me. The corpulent pumpkins dotted around the garden are ripening (some are so big that they've developed a gravitational pull), the bean frames are heavy with swollen, leathery pods of fat, speckled beans and I'm tearing around the garden digging, harvesting, clearing soil & working my way through the pile of produce that needs storing or preserving.

I've already blogged a fair amount about chutneys & pickles, but there are other ways of saving your home grown delights, and even some that don't involve vinegar (shocking, isn't it?!). This week, I've been making clamps.

A clamp is basically a way of storing root veg as far from marauding slugs & other root-chompers as possible. There are a few different methods, the most common being to put the veg in a pile in a dry, sheltered spot in the garden & cover with layers of roots & straw or soil, but I prefer to use boxes.
You can use wooden boxes, crates, banana boxes, basically anything you have lying around. I managed to fanangle a big, sturdy lidded beer box (it's basically a large plastic crate) which lives next to the wood store.
I tend to use sand when making a clamp, but you can use garden soil (you might want to sieve it or check for root-chomping beasties, though), shredded newspaper or straw.
The box can be stored in a sheltered part of the garden, or in a shed or outhouse. Anywhere dry and protected from frost. Wherever that is, be sure & put the box there before you start filling it - it will get pretty heavy when it's full!

Pretty much any root crop can be clamped - beetroot, carrots, turnips, parsnips etc. Make sure your roots are in good condition, no mysterious burrowings, nibblings, soft spots or brown bits. You'll also need to make sure that the thready end of root is still intact too. Don't worry about cleaning off the soil. Twist or cut the leafy parts an inch or two from the top (beetroot is less likely to 'bleed' if the leaves are twisted rather than cut). Put a layer of sand (or whatever you're using) in the bottom of your box and arrange the roots on top, making sure there is space between them.

Cover with sand, arrange the next layer or roots & keep on going until you run out of roots or space. Cover & make a note of when it was filled. With luck, they should be good for up to 3 months (so do it now & you can have have home grown beetroot for Christmas dinner!)

Next time - potatoes!