Anyone else seeing very early climbing bean harvests this year?

[RhysParticipant]

I am delighted this year to have harvested my first Cobra beans on June 29th, 54 days after sowing my own biodynamic seeds indoors.

It may well be this has nothing to do with home made seeds from biodynamically grown plants (sowing, howing, watering and harvesting seeds on fruit days), rather being thanks to the very warm May and June we have had and/or the super duper compost I appear to have made over 2016/17.

Interested to hear if anyone else has had equally quick harvests without using biodynamic disciplines…..

[StringfellowParticipant]

Hi Rhys. No mate, mine are way behind so well done that man. Plenty else coming ready though which is a joy to behold.

[ElizaDParticipant]

Been harvesting my dwarf cupidon beans for a good two or three weeks now and just getting small beans on my climbing Cobra and cosse violet which should be ready in about a week or so. A good couple of weeks behind you but to be honest I was slow getting my climbing beans planted out this year as I knew the dwarf would be cropping. My first outdoor cucumber has just been brought in though!

Regards
Eliza

[RhysParticipant]

Funnily enough my cupidons will be ready in about a week after being sown 12th May. Small beans already formed. They did sit idle for 10 days after transplanting, possibly root bound, until I gave them a dose of liquid seaweed, which fired them away, so I do think a dwarf harvest in late June/early July is realistic.

Sadly, runners have not been setting well with the heat, so I have taken to spraying the flowers each evening to try and cool them down. There are about 10 set, which is rather pathetic for 16 plants!

[ElizaDParticipant]

Hi Rhys, I haven’t bothered with runner beans this year. Sowed my dwarf beans in April and covered with plastic sheeting just as an experiment – worked well too. I may well just sow dwarf beans next year as the climbing beans always seem to reach their cropping peak as I am about to go on holiday! Anything else of yours really early this year?

Eliza

[RhysParticipant]

Tris

It is a bit of an odd year this year – seems to be either brilliant or bust for me! I already have Tigerella tomatoes ripening after sowing on March 10th and they live outdoors! 3 other strains look fantastic, the best ever,and three others have had BER so the crops will be smaller. Already harvesting the red alerts and maskotka sown in late Feb.

Beetroots have been/are looking awesome from all sowings, lettuce has been fantastic, as were radish and spring turnip. Carrots are the earliest I have grown yet and the maincrop stands look great. Parsnips have formed great roots but the plants are still quite short due to the drought.

First Early potatoes were the worst I have ever grown – lovely tubers but hardly any of them. Not the seed as they produced brilliant crops in pots in May and June. Drought and heat at the wrong time or the horse manure? I just hope to god the maincrops are better and that we get some deluges in July and August.

Garlic were quite poor and I lost a bunch of onions to allium leaf miner. Those that survived look good and replacement sets have all fired.

The beans are equally odd: superb french dwarf and climbing but runners failing to set due to heat at night.

And seeds have been germinating so fast I can scarcely believe: 2 days for June lettuce in modules and 2 days for turnips I sowed when Kollerstrom suggested last weekend.

I will quite happily accept a boringly average leek crop!

[RhysParticipant]

Hi Eliza

Yes, the raspberries and cherries were ridiculously early, starting in mid June. The spinach went to seed late May, as did the pea shoots. We had Boltardy beetroot ready by the end of May, but this is my first year getting a good crop, so I do not know how early that is.

I sowed my cucumber a bit late but it now has plenty set and loads of flowers. It grew 5ft in about 4 weeks! Long Green Maraicher from the OGC.

Ditto courgette only went out last week of May, but I will cut first fruit this week and the leaf stand is the best ever. Good compost seems to make a huge difference there. Some Italian sounding strain from Seeds of Italy.

How about you? And where are you based? (I am in NW London).

[ElizaDParticipant]

Hi Rhys

I am in Somerset. My raspberries started ripening third week in June so nearly as good as you. Some of my cucumbers are in large pots this year and doing better than the two plants in a raised bed (marketmore, organic seed) put outdoors late May. The first harvest is from one of the potted plants. I planted radishes around the potted cucumbers and had huge juicy roots as these received lots of water!
I have had about half a dozen courgettes from two plants also grown in large pots this year too.
My garden is crammed with way too many lettuces of many kinds and as you say these have been so lovely this year even though it has been so dry. My family and neighbours are very happy to get bouquets of many varieties of lettuce and radicchio.
I do not have any ripe outdoor tomatoes yet but I do have some readonably sized fruit so we shall see how the weather goes as to when these ripen.
Dwarf beans are prolific. I reckon if I was to sow a second crop of dwarf beans around this time next year I would be able to harvest after my holiday instead of coming back to almost finished climbing beans. Save the effort of putting in supports too.
Here’s to a good downpour on Thursday to save time and effort watering and glorious weather for the weekend! Happy growing!

Eliza

[StringfellowParticipant]

Good to hear these successes and some reasoning behind them…and the less than satisfactory grows! My first earlies taste delicious but like you Rhys, the number of developed tubers is rather small. I’ve taken to watering the front two plants of the row each time I’m at the plot, after a few days these then get pulled for tea and I then begin the watering of the next two; a tip passed to me by an old hand down at my site, and I’m always keen to receive tips.

I had to buy extra seed and resow parsnips this year, which was a long wait to not see anything come up, and they were fresh seed. I now have some strong healthy looking rows though. Intrigue is building for the mammoth red onion as they are bulbing up nicely and potentially have a further six weeks to enlarge further. Could become an annual regular.

So the lack of rain water is causing challenges this year, but no-dig helps a lot and I’m pleased to not be finding many slugs at all! Happy growing indeed.

[DinoParticipant]

Re parsnips, they were the first thing I sowed into my new no-dig bed at the end of March, but while everything else thrived nothing happened with the parsnips. Only eight weeks later did they eventually emerge and now look like giving some reasonable roots. Not sure what caused the delay in germination but that’s the longest I’ve ever had to wait for them to show up. Good job I was too lazy to put something else in! My first sowing of lettuce was also slow to emerge and was caught up by my second sowing a couple of weeks later. Maybe my compost was cold from sitting on a shady north facing concrete pad and took a while to warm up.

[DinoParticipant]

Also wondered if anyone has had climbing beans developing a slimy pale grey main shoot about four inches from the compost surface causing them to wither all the way up. About four of my six bean plants have done this. I’m putting it down to an excessively wet July.

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