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Colourful Fine Beans

Today Pete will be talking about the French Fine Beans currently in season.


'' We are growing five varieties of climbing french bean this year available as a mixed 500g bag. We've got a Borlotti Fire Tongue Bean, Gold Field Yellow Bean, Carminat Purple Bean, Selma Zebra Bean and a Cobra Green Bean. ''


'' The plants look a bit ragged at the moment because we have been through and deleafed them. French beans really do like to hide and make for difficult picking. When they grow they can become a super jungle and the plants get covered by huge green leaves. We have experimented this year with a little bit of deleafing especially around the base and going up the column of the plant. ''



'' As we're taking off a few of the leaves we are trying to be cautious and sensitive to the photosynthesis requirements of the plant not to set them back too much and what we are finding is that there absolutely fine. The beans are producing really well, we are not finding any drop in the yield and it does make the picking process easier ''


'' Anybody who has grown French beans would know you have to manage the top of the plant or you will be 15 feet in the air trying to pick so we go through once a week and prune the tops. This encourages more lateral side growth with not just a single stem but a good 5 or 6. That’s partly the nature of the plant and also partly the encouragement the plant receives by us taking off the growing tip''



'' I’ve grown Borlotti Fire Tongue Bean before, it is a very productive bean in fact, it’s a great taste and you also get this lovely red patterning on the bean which is visually appealing. You could leave this to form beans at the end of the season, this is essentially a haricot bean so you could get a harvested dry bean for storage throughout the winter if you wanted to do that as well. ''


'' We don’t do that here at Canara as this is premium growing space for us. As soon as the summer crop is done we turn around and put new crops in for the winter, but if you are a garden grower you could pick throughout the summer and leave several on for dried bean storage for the winter. ''



We hope you have enjoyed reading about the climbing french beans available from the farm and we look forward to sharing more with you. See you soon!

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