The broadest of beans.

(or fava, for the Americans).


Here are my chunky little broad beans growing away. Not bad, huh? I was hoping for masses, too many too eat! I was hoping for enough that I could freeze half a kilo or so of shelled beans. But I don't think that's going to happen. Not enough growing, plus they seem to be getting some weird disease. You can see the leaves yellowing in the picture above.


We are going to get a couple of meals out of them, though. This is what I've picked for tonight. They'll go with pasta and asparagus and garlic and brie. Local asparagus is in season right now, so I'm gorging on it. We can get asparagus from Thailand all year round, but it doesn't taste as good and the carbon footprint that goes with it must be enormous! With the exception of garlic we don't buy imported fruit and veges. Yum. I've eaten a few of the little beansies raw so far and they are delicious. They're too little to have skins on them.

A note on their size: I grew Coles Prolific variety, which is, I guess, a close relatives of the Coles Dwarf. Dwarf relating to the size of the beans, not the plant. What a gyp! There's only a maximum of four beans per pod. Next year I'm going to plant me so good old-school giants.

These are probably my most successful gardening exploit so far. Now fingers crossed for my ten tomato plants, my two butternut pumpkins, and the leeks (which aren't looking so great... I think Perth is a little warm for leeks). And the zucchinis which will go in next week.