A bean feast!

What a summer it has been!

This has been our hottest, driest, sunniest summer for a good 6 years and the vegetable garden has responded accordingly.

We have been harvesting different beans for months now. I grow most varieties in the polytunnel. The only reliable outdoor beans are the broad bean and they have cropped in abundance. The freezer has copious containers of podded blanched beans which I will use in vegetable curries, stews etc.

French beans are eaten as fast as they are produced and rarely, even in a good year like this, do I bother freezing them. I tend to grow the purple podded forms, they taste good and are so much easier to find and pick! Most of the colour disappears on cooking but they do look a nice dark green when on the plate.

Runner beans in the polytunnel have been cropping since July. This year I was more circumspect with my choice and number of plants. Runner beans can produce an abundance of foliage and this then smothers the flowers and encourages mildew. It is important that the plants are grown in a well ventilated spot. I chose 'Red Rum' and was initially concerned whether so few plants would produce enough of a crop. Instead I have had a steady supply over the last two months with a sudden surge in production at the start of September. It is likely that I will be freezing some of this later harvest.

I suspect that the very hot weather through late July and August, which took temperatures in the polytunnel above 30 degrees on most days, probably slowed production down. Now we are getting cooler weather and this is suiting the runner beans which are looking healthy and have plenty of flowers and beans setting. (We have already had a slight grass frost, so had the beans been outside I suspect they wouldn't be looking quite so happy.)

The borlotti beans are always a bit of a indulgence. I love the colour of their pods and really, for the space they take up, the crop isn't that good. You need to let the beans swell inside the pod and this requires time. Eventually a day comes when you know the harvest has to be taken and you have to accept that it is the size it is. In previous years I have been able to take two or three small harvests, this year it has been one larger one. I think the hot weather stopped new flowers coming and therefore the harvest is mostly beans which all set at the same time. However it's not a bad result and now the space can be cleared and I will put in some kale for the winter months.

What do I do with the borlotti beans? Rather than dry them, and risk losing them at the back of the cupboard, I cook and freeze them on the day of harvest. It is a perfect way of combining  beans and perishable vegetables to store as the base for a winter stew. Use an onion or shallot that you think might not keep, add some celery, courgette, fresh tomatoes from the greenhouse, aubergine etc. and add the podded beans. Cook for a while, allow to cool, bag up and freeze. The flavour of this stew base beats anything you can get in a tin!