The photo snap this month is of some ‘Stone Ear’ Broad beans (Vicia faba) germinating in the recent VERY wet Blue Mountains weather. These beans can normally germinate and grow in the cold down to about 2c but they don’t really like being wet in the ground and tend to degrade quickly and turn to mush if left in a cold very wet state. You can help them germinate better in wet weather by planting the seeds close to or on top of the soil surface so they get more light and air movement around them. The mesh cloth is there to help protect them from birds, rodents and marsupials who love them. ‘Stone Ear’ one was one of a batch of interesting bean varieties that were ‘rediscovered’ in the Andes during the early to mid 2000’s. They show the development of new varieties in a distinct and remote location. Stone ear has a very intricate pattern of dark lines that form on the surface of the bean when they mature. They have large nicely formed beans that taste great – but only in small numbers of 2-3 beans in small pods. But they are very strong growers and produce a lot of pods on each plant. Broad Beans (aka field beans & horse beans etc) originally came from Europe and were taken to the Andes by early travellers. They then spent the next 300 plus years being grown and selected by local farmers and so developed quite a few unusual unique local varieties with colour patterns on the beans.
It’s that time again!
This is just a quick reminder that the next scheduled meeting for the year 2022 of the Mid Blue Mountains SeedSavers is on at the Bullaburra Progress Hall this coming weekend.
Sunday 20 March 2022 from 10 am till Midday
Help celebrate the Blue Mountains Autumn!
Yes summer has been a washout… but we still have a chance to recover as we move onto our long calm Mountains Autumn period.
And there is a lot to catch up with.
We are still following generally recommended social distancing guidelines to help everyone stay safe.
Come along and talk about growing things with like minded people.
Hope to see you there celebrating the current productive growing season!
The address for the Mid Blue Mountains Seedsavers website is:
https://midbluemountainsseedsavers.org/
We do now have a Facebook page as well:
https://www.facebook.com/Mid-Blue-Mountains-Seed-Savers-1629533990602860/
These regular notifications are sent out directly from the website if you subscribe to that email notification list.
Mid Blue Mountains Seed Savers 