Runner Bean Glut, recipe, & how the bees swarmed in.

Hello,

This year, when I planted my runner beans, I decided to create a small area alongside the bean rows especially for sweet scented flowers.

Runner beans, as you probably know, need lots and lots of water & good pollination.

Anyway, to this end, I decided to plant a row of lavender bushes, some Stargazer Lilies and three wigwams of sweet peas.

The lavender began flowering about two weeks after the beans reached the top of the supports, just in time to coincide with the runner bean flowers appearing.

I first noticed the buzz & hum in the lavender bed, about a week later & then the lilies & sweet peas began to flower.

Now, I can't walk past these flowers without seeing & hearing masses of insects, and the runner beans have flowered and produced the biggest crop I have ever seen.

I planted two rows this year, and from mid June until now, I have harvested more than twenty kilos of lovely, tender beans.

I have also been able to enjoy the prettiest & sweetest smelling veg garden ever!

Just in case you are wondering what I have been doing with this glut of string beans, well, aside from giving some to family & friends, I have been making the most delicious & easy vegetable soup, great to eat now or to freeze for later.

Here is the recipe...

The quantities aren't important, just throw in what you enjoy most of.

 Slowly melt a tablespoon of butter & half a cup of olive oil in a large pan.

Chop an onion & add to butter, keep stirring.

De-string & cut runner beans into small pieces, add to pan.

Peel & chop a medium potato, add to pan.

Chop two or three leeks small & add to pan.

You can add more butter if required.

Add a cup of broad beans & a cup of peas.

Once the veg has started to soften a little, fill the pan with boiling water.

Add a veggie or chicken stock cube, salt & black pepper & some basil ...(dried is fine)

If you have a marrow bone, add it & remove it after cooking, it will give the soup extra flavour.

Bring to the boil, stir, turn down heat & simmer for about 90 mins.

You should have a really delicious summer veg soup, great eaten with croutons or some fresh crusty bread.

Bon Appetit!

My French Garden in Summer

Hello & welcome to my chats about my French garden and France in general.

Having been gardening here for a few years now, I feel I am able to judge what things are best grown in my soil, what will suit the climate in the Limousin and with regard to growing vegetables in our part of France, what is worth planting and what is not.

The first piece of advice I was given when I first started gardening in France, was to check out what my neighbours planted.

This also turned out to be the best piece of advice that I could have been given & it has stood me in good stead each season & saved me quite a bit of money.

It's really easy to get carried away in the garden centres, especially in early Spring when the shelves are loaded with all sorts of tempting flowers, bushes & veg plants. Why then, don't we consider that these things have been growing happily in heated greenhouses, watered & fed regularly and have probably never, in their short lives, encountered a biting East wind blowing in from the French Alps.

It's too easy to hand over the cash, stick the purchase in the part of the garden that will please us more than the poor plant, and, over the next few months, from a nice warm vantage point within the four house walls, sit and watch it gradually wither & die.

Mmm, it's too easy isn't it!

So, hopefully, I will be imparting my little pearls of wisdom about gardens and gardening in France, and I hope they will be, in some small way, a help to you when you arrive at your longed for French House.