Broad beans

This year we grew two varieties of broad bean, Witkeim in the field and Bowland's Beauty in the orchard. They both enjoyed the wet weather and grew very well. The Bowland's Beauty never got any Black fly but the Witkeim did and Mike experimented with spraying them with washing up liquid and elder potion neither of which seemed to do much good. Mysteriously the black fly disappeared after a while. The Witkeim beans on the left are paler in colour and although the pods are short they have more or less as many beans as the Bowland's Beauties.

The Witkeim were not as tall as the Bowland's Beauties and their pods

were mostly close to the ground so they didn't fall over. The Bowland's Beautie's pod's were more spread out on the stems and they collapsed a bit with the weight. This might

not have been a problem if they had been picked and not left for seed.

The rain last week brought on Chocolate spot and almost over night the leaves disappeared off most of the plants. You can see the Witkeim beans in the 1st of August post still had most of their leaves but by the time the photo here was taken on the 5th of August, they are gone. There were black patches starting on the pods so we cut them all down on Tuesday and we will hopefully get them inside today before the rain starts again.