Gardening Tip: Sowing Broad Beans in October to overwinter.

This note applies only to gardening in temperate climes in the northern hemisphere.
It is fairly common practice to sow broad beans now, ready for cropping next June. However in the last two years my autumn sown beans have been devastated by a combination of very cold weather, strong winds, snow and slugs. The beans were easily surpassed by those sown in February which cropped at almost the same time.
So I shall skip the sowing in the coming October, especially since slugs have been a huge problem this year and are probably still lurking about in vast numbers waiting for the fresh new shoots to appear.
Nonetheless, it would be good idea to prepare the ground now while the weather is still fairly mild. What I usually do is take out a trench about 12 inches wide and 8 inches deep right across the allotment plot, add lots of compost in the bottom and backfill. Then in cold February it will be a quick job to pop in the seeds.
I wish you good gardening.

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