This year I got very excited about the prospect of growing broad beans. 
There were two aspects to this.  Frstly I like eating broad beans,  although I probably have never had them in any quantity and most of the broad beans I have used have been frozen which I always double pod.  Secondly I heard that they were good for returning carbon to the soil and so would make a positive addition to them compost once they had finished.

I planted the beans higgeldy piggeldy in spaces around my garden and then once they were up and growing I realised that they should have been in neat rows for staking.  Neat rows were formed by transplanting some and others were left to do their thing – whatever it ending up being….

My gardening is all trial and error and I really didn’t quite know what to expect.  I also hadn’t seen too many bees around the flowers although there are often bees in the borage which is in a different part of the garden.  I had to laugh at myself heading out with brown sugar and water in a spray bottle to spray over the foliage to encourage bees and realised I was way too late and it was completely unneccessary as the beans were already growing.

I now have beans galore – I didn’t realise that there would be so many!  Even the plants that I didn’t stake have grown relatively upright and are covered in beans.

Here on foodlovers we have recipes for

broad beans with asparagus and pasta ^[1]
pasta con primizie ^[2]
soupe au pistou
^[3]
I know also that I can steam them and serve them as I would other vegetables.

But what else???  Broad bean ideas gratefully received!

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