Let me explain.

Last year, I had a bumper crop of climbing beans.  I picked baskets full of delicious stringless beans every two or three days.  I gave them away to family and friends and truly didn’t know what to do with them, they came up so fast.  And all this from a patch of a dozen or so magic climbing beans. It was a roaring success!

Now this year, as I didn’t want to grow my beans in the same place I prepared a new bed in another part of the garden.

What a fiasco!  My beans plants were scrawny and miserable. The leaves were reduced to lace by an invasion of some nasty leaf eating insects.  And obviously the yield was very poor. It was a total failure and my beans were complaining!

Why did this happen.  What was different?

Well, it appears that they were unhappy with their new location and they told me so in no uncertain terms.  They had quite a long list of complaints and I’ll mention a few.

Firstly, they were too close to a group of trees and they clearly did not get enough sun – whereas last year’s beans were in full sun. (Did I detect signs of jealousy?)

Also, the soil was not as rich as the soil in the first bed. (Definitely signs of jealousy)

Well, in my defence, I had run out of compost. But I learnt the hard way that beans are not to be fooled.

Anyway, lesson having been learnt I started all over again and went back to preparing the original bed in full sun where I had previously had so much success.

I carefully composted the bed till the soil was dark and friable. I put up a fence for the beans to climb on. And then I planted exactly 20 beans.  Talk about Jack and the beanstalk!  Then I sat back and waited.

Silence!  Not a single moan or complaint!

Now I don’t want to talk too soon – let’s just say that my beans shot up in record time. At present they are climbing all over the supporting fence and the leaves are big and healthy.  I am now waiting for the first flush of flowers.

(And this in a very quiet whisper as I don’t want them to hear: I’m hoping there won’t be any chewing insects on the leaves.) But I’ll report on any new developments as to the  progress of my organic beans in due course.