Beans means late summer; tall structures teeming with fruit. They mean my mother patiently hand-slicing runner beans into her colander for our weekend lunch.
In the desolate brown-earthed early spring, the arrival of the bean poles is the first unpacking of garden promise. There, among the old year’s haunted chard, the new year’s allotment starts to take shape. We first build a skeleton tent, like at sea scouts, signalling summer; a living wall of giving.
It is then we know how the year’s plot will look (we shift the sites for the structures around, looking and listening for different harmonies). This year an 11-pole tent is balanced by four pyramids of peas and sweet peas, the most densely packed ever. We had too many flowering plants – though I re-homed half, like kittens.
I mostly use saved seed: there is always abundant ‘Cherokee Trail of Tears’ , blue ‘Blauhilde’ and creamy ‘Gold of Bacau’.
This year I impatiently sowed a nursery row while waiting for the poles but wood pigeons cropped along it like kids eating corn.
As I write, I have a bag of beans in the fridge, bright green and blue and yellow, a pick ‘n’ mix. The hazel is decked with twisting vines and multicoloured flowers. I am trialling ‘Painted Lady’ from Mads McKeever (brownenvelope seeds.com). They will push on now till early autumn.
I never got into growing runner beans. I am unsure why. I am usually keen on growing memories. Maybe they get too big and there’s too many even for me.
Some time in mid-September, Howard will visit and roll his eyes at the thought of more beans. So I will save some good-sized pods for seed. I’ll strip the poles and pack away the sticks – and 2018’s hot, dry summer.
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