Note to self: Just remember next year that as of 13th May 2010 we have had three consecutive frosty nights and yesterday was the coldest May night for 15 years. So, even if in late April next year you have a cold frame full of big strong healthy runner beans and french beans which are pushing up the lid of the cold frame in a bid to escape into the big wide allotment you must be resolute and patient. Tough love is called for. If you love them don't set them free. Keep them tucked up in the cold frame or greenhouse. Pamper them with a warm candle lantern on cold nights. Don't cave in to their pleas to be let out no matter how big, strong and hardy they may pretend to be. They are really just nesh wimps who are not ready for the outside world and they will shiver and die on the first starry night with a chill in the air.
This year's beans are no more. They are ex-beans. They have had it. They are not merely stunned or dormant. They are not pining for the cold frame. They have been and gone. The runners have run out. The french have stopped working. They are now climbing the great bean frame in the sky. Their shoots have shot up and shot off. They will push up the daisies but for them there will be no flowers. They have popped off without podding. The closest to toast they will ever get is brown bread. They have gone from beanage to carnage, bean bed to deathbed. They are has-beans. It has Bean nice knowing them.
Now all my hopes rest upon the back-up beans I have sown just in case of this eventuality.
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Being just a few miles away from you, conditions should be more or less the same here. But in a sheltered garden luckily I've had no problems so far.
ReplyDeleteI guess your new site being so open has not helped matters.
Sorry to hear about your beans. I've got some of mine still in the greenhouse, and the rest are yet to be sown. I've hardly got anything in the allotment yet, which is a blessing with all this frost about.
ReplyDeleteOne always forgets about the "Eisheilige" and "Schafskälte" (Saints of Ice and Sheep cold) - when I travelled back to Hamburg on Sunday, I saw a flock of sheep - without any wool on them, must have been pulled over their eyes - standing in the landscape, shivering. I spell the beans: They would have bean very delighted about a ray of sunshine, as your beans, as we all here... Britta
ReplyDeleteMy deepest condolences on the loss of your legumes.
ReplyDeletep.s. I like the word nesh.
Sorry to hear that, mine are still wrapped up waiting for space to become free.
ReplyDelete