Planting Broad Beans & Winter Hellebores | Autumn Allotment Diary

So the first thing that we did down at the plot today was plant our broad beans.

As it was drizzling I thought I'll head into the polytunnel and I'll get my broad beans planted.

Which I did, we did a good job of planting all them.

And the variety that I chose to plant was the Aquedulus.

That's the variety that I chose to plant down at the allotment.

As Aquedulus variety is a winter hardy variety of broad bean.

So if you're going to be sowing them now, which will be ready to harvest probably around June time, May to June time.

and they'll be ready to harvest before the blackfly appear which is even better one of the reasons why I grow them throughout the winter period rather than the summer they'll be ready to harvest before they start decimating them so yeah we've got all that to do and if you're growing them now you need a winter hardy variety if you just choose a normal variety of broad bean it won't be able to cope with the frosts with the cold with the snow And yeah, it needs a bit stronger bean to be able to get some great crops from it.

So that's what variety we planted.

And obviously it gives it an earlier harvest as well.

The best place to plant them is, I'd say at this time of year, is start them off in seed modules or in pots.

Get them to an established size, to a decent size and then think about planting them outside.

The reason why I don't plant them straight into the ground at this time of year is because there's not much food around for the predators like the mice, the birds.

the squirrels and they'll go foraging and they'll find your broad beans and they'll either eat them all or they'll eat the tops off them and yeah you'll end up with no broad beans so you need to start them off indoors in pots first get them to a decent size and hopefully get them established before you plant them outside because you don't want to lose them all when you're getting them growing and obviously growing broad beans now there's not much around to be growing at this time of year like there's only like your garlic your onions your shallots And it gives you something else to grow as well and just to fill a space in and hopefully make it look like it's a bit active down at the allotment.

So the best thing to do like I said is to start them off in pots because if the ground stays wet starting the seeds in the ground can cause the seeds to rot as well.

So you don't want to be doing that.

So we've sown Earl Eyes in seed modules, we've planted them in some nice compost, we gave them a good watering and if you want to you can also put some cling film over the top which will keep them moist, keep them that little bit warmer and speed up the germination of the plants as well.

So then you'll get some speedy plants and hopefully once they're big enough you can get them planted outside.

So that was our first job today, planting our broad beans, which we've filmed as well so that you can all watch it on Facebook once that is done.

So yeah, that's the thing, that's the first thing done.