So today, with a bit of sun in the morning, I decided to build a structure for by broad beans to grow on and plant them. This year I’m using a variety of broad bean supplied by DT Browns by the name of Imperial Green Longpod, make of that what you will.
I had a bit of trouble deciding where to plant them as the garden is long and narrow with a high hedge on one side and the neighbours garage wall on the other. In the end I settled for putting them across the narrow end of the patch, which will eventually block some light to other bits of the patch, but any other layout would have been very difficult to work with. The structure for the broad beans to climb is a basic crook frame (for anybody who’s seen that episode of Grand Designs, ok so my gardening isn’t quite like the woodman’s house…).
The attached image shows the patch I’m working with. I’ve shaded in where I’ve already planted the Garlic and the Broad beans. The Lamb’s Lettuce which came as seedlings last September has survived the winter and can be seen to the right of the Garlic. Sad to think most of the bed was planted with seedlings back then and nothing else has survived the slugs and winter weather. The Lamb’s lettuce will be harvested for some salad in the coming weeks to make way for other things to be planted. The hedge mentioned above runs across the top of the bed as shown and the garage is on the other side of narrow grassy (increasingly muddy) path at the bottom. The top of the image is roughly North. The Sunflowers I planted last week are just off the image to the left in a separate bed.
ordinaregardener 
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