It's sowtime!
Twenty years ago, legumes were not a big part of the Slav diet. But when Cat came along this changed. Until very recently she was a breeze to cook for because beans, lentils, and rice, with some corn thrown in, made up about 90% of her diet.
Now the percentage has fallen to about 70%, which still means demand for legumes in the household is pretty solid. Make that really solid since Cris likes to take homemade lunch to work and he happens to like green beans.
With such a background, legumes were bound to be a part of our food-growing plans. Last year, we had chickpeas, yellow beans, and green beans but we cut corners with the green beans, using sowing material from a store-bought pack — for cooking. Apparently, this is not a smart decision. Growing beans for sowing purposes is different from growing them for cooking.
We had quite a good crop of both chickpeas and yellow beans, which made this year’s plans easier — and potentially more expensive. This year, we planted more yellow beans, another variety of yellow beans, and green beans (proper, not from the supermarket).
We started discussing the procurement of a standalone freezer because the one in the fridge can’t handle the crop volume we pictured from this year’s sowing season. And then we learned that legumes are so great for the soil some people plant them to serve as fertiliser and not for crops.
We already knew from our research into amateur farming that beans release nitrogen into the soil, which is very gracious of them, but we hadn’t delved deeper into the benefits this class of plants can produce. The release of nitrogen was only the start.
Legumes, it turns out, don’t just release nitrogen. In fact, they don’t “release” it at all. Rather, they kind of capture it in the soil with the help of a special bacteria that lives in their roots. But in addition to that, beans, peas, and the like also improve the structure of soil, increase the amount of organic matter in it and make it more breathable. Now how is that not the best class of plant in the world?
Obviously, we had to take full advantage of this fact. We’d already organised this year’s crops in such a way as to make sure the most nutrient-demanding plants go into the beds where we had beans last year but we could do more — because there was free bed space.
So we sowed peas. Not for the crop. For the soil benefits. We sowed them in the bed that had last year housed the tomatoes, which are quite voracious when it comes to soil nutrients. Crop rotation is great. And the peas had the decency to sprout just now, so we could take a picture of them. Beans are slower to come out.
These little fellows mark a new stage in our evolution as food growers. We’re not growing them for food. We have tried growing peas for food before and the crop was not worth all the water and fertilisers. This time, however, we’re growing them as fertiliser and compost, two in one. We suspect we’ll have a massive pea crop. That freezer is definitely on the shopping list.
We could have stopped there but we didn’t. We still had half a bed to experiment with. So we googled what makes a good neighbour for peas. Corn, it turns out, does very well next to peas. As luck would have it, the two Cs love some sweet corn in late summer. So we sowed a row of sweet corn. Companion crops is the next fascinating topic we are getting ourselves educated in.
Here, have some falafel, made from our own chickpeas, onions, and parsley. We’re growing our own coriander, too, this year, for the full homegrown experience.