Many keen readers of KG magazine may remember that last year I grew wheat on my allotment plot in order to make my own flour for bread. Well, this year I have been growing winter field beans on the same plot. Here’s how I got on.
Now, I imagine you’re wondering why I decided to grow field beans. Well, the crop I really want to grow is wheat, and in order to get a high enough protein content in the grain for making good bread, the wheat requires lots of nitrogen. Beans are well known for fixing nitrogen in the soil, so they seemed the logical answer as an environmentally friendly way of providing lots of the nitrogen that the wheat will require.
Although the beans may not provide enough residual nitrogen to grow wheat to a milling specification with the correct amount of protein content, I hope the beans will at least reduce the amount of fertiliser I need to use. In this case, the fertiliser will be applied as
