Next year i'll be spraying my broad beans

It's a dreadful year for blackfly in Kent.  No slugs though - there's always a bright side

Wow, New Shoot! The ladybird harvest alone is worth it!

The plants look taller than I expected. Can you give some advice on when you sowed and the spacing between seeds?

Wizard beans get quite tall Snoop.  They have clusters of small pods up the stems, so although both pods and beans are smaller, the eventual harvest is way better than conventional broad beans.  I hope you have a drier and less flood prone winter this year, so you can have a go yourself 

I sowed in October last year and this is a picture from my diary on 16th November showing them just as they were coming up.  It was 3 rows and they were planted about a hand span apart.

New Shoot, do you know if the seeds keep well from one year to the next please?

I save seed each year, so not sure.  However, a furtle in the cupboard where the seed box lives turned up the remains of the jar of last years seeds.  I have half a dozen sitting in some wet kitchen roll to see if they are OK.  If they germinate now, I can't see it making much difference in their viability at planting time this autumn 

We get bean weevils on our site, so I always put my saved seeds in a sealed jar, with as little spare space as possible.  The weevils emerge and quickly die, then I pick the seeds through and discard the munched ones.

New shoot my BBs look like yours but the difference is I only got a tiny crop. They are still there and basically serving as a big ladybird housing estate. Once they have left I will cut them down and keep the roots in situ as apparently they fix nitrogen.
I companion grew nasturtiums, and the blackfly completely ignored them!

We've had blackfly on our runner beans this year for the first time, but the two beds of broad beans haven't been touched, which is a mystery...

We use some 'eco' spray, which unfortunately doesn't have a label any more, but they all went pretty damn quick...

Quote from: sunshineband on July 12, 2015, 18:38

New Shoot, do you know if the seeds keep well from one year to the next please?

I save seed each year, so not sure.  However, a furtle in the cupboard where the seed box lives turned up the remains of the jar of last years seeds.  I have half a dozen sitting in some wet kitchen roll to see if they are OK.  If they germinate now, I can't see it making much difference in their viability at planting time this autumn 

Forgot to update this    They germinated, so yes, they keep