Monday 3 May 2010

Our first broad beans at last, but where did spring go?

The broad beans are very late this year, but at last we harvested the first of them today, and they were very tasty, such a treat after the long wait since we sowed them in October.

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Within a couple of hours of picking them, we were enjoying the beans mixed into pasta with olive oil, garlic, lardons (bacon) and shavings of Parmesan.

Pepper plants update

Just when we were hoping to plant out our pepper plants the weather has suddenly turned cold and wet again.  The rain is welcome, to fill the stream and our water butts in the garden, but the cold (14 degrees C) is a bit unexpected after last week’s summer temperatures.  So for the next few days we’ll leave the pepper plants in the protection of the cold frame in the garden.   I discovered some whitefly on a couple of the pepper plants that had been in the mini-greenhouse on the balcony, so today I picked them all off, one by one – not easy to do with middle-aged eyesight!  I’ll check them all again in a couple of days’ time before we plant them out.

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Killing off the whitefly.

Courgette planting

Our courgette plants were getting much to big for the cold frame, so Lo Jardinièr planted them out today.  The weeds are doing well in the garden, too, but I don’t mind this poppy which is growing among the broad beans, I’ll leave it to grow.

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5 comments:

michelle said...

Lovely broad beans. They are so good with pasta, that's what I did with them last night as well.

The weather here as been equally fickle, last week it was cold and rainy, today it feels almost like summer. I expect that the rain will finish here soon, but maybe not . . .

Kate said...

The peppers look fabulous! Are any of them the yellow cornos? Lo Jardinier did a great job of the cold frame then. I have sown braod beans and they are about 4" high now. I will be eating the tips all winter.

Christine B. said...

I'll tell you where the spring went, it finally showed up here. We were able to eat outside for the first time this year: heavenly. Other than the mosquitos of course. No veggies yet, most unfortunately.

Christine in Alaska

Heiko said...

Ooh, we've been gorging on broad beans for the last couple of weeks already. They are my absolute favourite, hence we dedicated a 1st May party to this lovely veg. And aren't the weeds always doing well...?

Jan said...

Your 14 degrees sounds quite reasonable... 2pm and we've only got 7 degrees! Am going to wade through the mud in a while to look at our peas and broad beans as I think the beans are almost large enough.