| I'm still relatively new as a gardener. I've been at it for a little over a year. But I got all of my gardening advice from the best possible sources - two seasoned gardeners in my city, and the John Jeavons book How to Grow More Vegetables (supplemented by a Rodale Institute guide to organic pest management). And according to my experts, beans are a summer crop around here. The exception is fava beans, which grow during San Diego's cool season.
As I've noted, my soil is LOUSY - particularly in one part of it we call "the Ladybug Patch." The soil there isn't just lousy. For many plants, it's lethal. Especially in the summer, when the sun bakes it into one big, hard adobe brick that water can hardly permeate. So far my efforts to add compost, worm castings, gypsum, and any other amendments has done nothing to change this. Building up that soil is going to be a very slow process.
So last year, I decided I'd plant my cucumbers, melons, and beans out there. I didn't know yet exactly HOW lousy the soil was. The cucurbits went out there so the dog couldn't eat them (the Ladybug Patch is the only part of the garden he can't get to), and the beans went out there to fix nitrogen into the soil. I planted all kinds of green beans, lima beans, and one lablab bean, arranging them so that the pole beans went near the fence (and a trellis I leaned up against it), and the bush beans were everywhere else.
Long story short, most everything died. One cucumber plant produced two pathetically small cucumbers. The watermelon plant lived longer than it was supposed to while producing nothing. The pumpkin plant actually gave us a softball-sized pumpkin, which we ate in a soup. But mostly, my plants all died.
The one exception was one bean plant, and I had no idea which one. I sort of assumed it was a lima because it was a pole bean. It just quietly grew up the trellis, where it hung out and produced nothing. Not even a flower. By the end of the summer, it was huge.
Look at the size of this thing! It's huge! It's like an unbreakable rope
Just as my "warm season crops" were all supposed to be dying (they didn't - the ones that did well, like the peppers, kept producing well into the fall), the huge bean plant started flowering. Big, beautiful, purple flowers.
Bean plant with flowers
Then, well into the fall, it began producing beans. They looked too small to be limas. I kept waiting for them to grow larger, but they didn't.
Beans
What I've learned this year is that, in our terrible soil, the plants that don't die CAN produce food... they just take a much longer time to do so than they are supposed to. I guess this bean plant is an example of that.
Once some of the beans dried, I harvested them, to discover they were lablabs. I only started out with two lablab seeds (given to me by a friend) in the first place, and I think I only planted this one. Thus far, the plant has given me between 1/3 and 1/2 cup of dried beans, and it's still going.
Lablab beans
According to Nourishing The Planet, lablabs are a native of Sub-Saharan Africa, capable of surviving long dry seasons. I'll say! They say:
The pods, seeds, and leaves of the lablab are all edible and utilized in a variety of different meals. The young pods are most often picked from the stalk and eaten like green beans or snow peas, but they can also be cooked and added to soups and stews. The leaves can be eaten whole or made into a seasoning herb for other dishes.
While the pods and leaves look similar to those of other legume varieties, they have much higher protein content and are an excellent source of iron. They also contain a good balance of amino acids, making lablab pods a good complement for cereal-based diets.
In India, dried seeds are split like lentils and used in making stews and soups. They are also sprouted, soaked in water, shelled, boiled, and smashed into a paste, which is fried with spices and used as a condiment. In Africa, lablab seeds are often boiled with maize, ground and fried, or added to soups as well. They are also included in traditional dish that is a mixture of maize, beans, bananas, potatoes, and green vegetables, all boiled down into a protein-rich paste.
I'm thrilled to find a plant that loves our miserably dry summers. Looks like we'll be planting more lablabs this year. Now, if we can just get them to produce in a timelier manner. |
