Have you thought of growing butter beans? I never did until my son came home with a bean growing exercise. Instead of throwing it away at the end, I decided to plant it in the garden and see if it would grow.

The area I used was a corner of my property of 2 by 2 precast wall panels which proved adequate for the beans and tomatoes. July/August is planting time.

Regular watering everyday of 5 minutes in the morning and evening using the irrigation system worked well. The nice thing about growing beans is you don’t have to go out and tend them too often, once a week to check on them or harvest. No pesticide was necessary as not many bugs were interested in the pods. Some snails and aphids were present but not enough to bother about.

Not much fertilizer was used, only granule fertilizer a few times and that was it. Next time I’ll try out organic fertilizer.

One plant yielded enough beans for a family of three. The beans were harvested when the pod was approximately 15mm thick as the pod tends to be very fleshy. Here are pictures of the 70 pods harvested and the beans.

Cooking was done according to The New Cookery Encyclopedia by rapidly boiling the fresh beans for at least 10 minutes at the start of cooking time to kill toxic haemoglutinens. Cook until soft. I froze the excess beans.

Use mashed butter beans to thicken sauces for pizza, stews or soups.

Happy growing

Gail

Beans, Beans, The Musical Fruit

Beans, beans, the musical fruit

The more you eat, the more you toot

The more you toot, the better you feel

So let's have beans at every meal!