Anyone grow them? Wonder what you think of them? Only, just been reading Charlie Flindt's column for the Oct 21 issue of FW and he reckons they always give a disappointing yield but will carry on growing them because of their other advantages.

Always slightly dissapointing, you reckon if just one thing had gone better they would be fantastic but it never does get better. Super wheat after though. We will be back growing them soon when we quit organic and get full SFP.

I normally sow only in the autumn/early winter here, but due to excessive rain last back end sowed some on 12th Feb. They produced as good as the autumn sown. I am talking hundreds of square metres not hundreds of hectares - I have to pick by hand.

cut mine yesterday, about 1.5ton/acre not bad considering no inputs bar own seed.

 Yields wild in their variation. Seen land here do over 3t/ac, then fields do 1t/ac the year after. Wheat after no better than rape. Harvest often later than linseed. No decent weed control with the loss of simazine, and especially cyanazine. Cant grow them now as I just cant control the charlock in them. They were useful when the chemicals were inexpensive and of a different mode of action to the stuff that goes on the rest of the rotation.

i prefer winter beans, weeds are less of a problem with a good stiff spring harrowing, and usually do about 2t/acre. but they dont like wet land

Like Old McDonald, I have been picking some spring beans by hand!!!

The reason in my case is that I wanted to get an idea of the length of the growing season. We cannot over-winter beans here as we go as low as minus 30C. We can also not sow in February so cannot get the spring varieties in early. I sowed a trial plot in mid-April and they were ready to harvest in early September, about 140 days or so. As we are very short of protein crops here, we will now step this up to growing some field trials next year.

Do we have any plant breeders working with spring beans left in the UK?

Stuart Meikle:

Do we have any plant breeders working with spring beans left in the UK?

I think Limagrain (?) do a lot of pea and bean breeding, and we have an annual talk from the PGRO, but it's always about peas for here.

We are always told to avoid them like the plague in our spring briefings. They just don't stack up financially and too risky.

Stuart, Have you tried lupins? The white varieties are eaten here as a snack. I overwintered a trial plot (minus 6ºC is normally our lowest though) and again some spring sown - variety unkown. Plants yielded up to 300 seeds each which I thought would result in a very heavy crop per acre.

Lupins, yes did a trial plot of white lupins a few years back with our local research station. It went well but never really got moving. A part of the reason was that there was pretty well no research funding. As an aside, I know the research set up here well and much of it is now derelict, a national disgrace for a country that should be a major EU agri-food producer. One of the things that annoyed me about the new CAP proposals was to see the emphasis on R+D and knowing that the Commissioner was Romanian and his own country has dramatically failed to support its own R+D set-up.

From a soils/fertility perspective and simplicity perspective I have always been a fan of beans. It is also a crop I grew up with so maybe there is bit of sentimentality around - still essentially a peasant at heart! I also happen to think that a very simple system is what will work here, simple housing (it is a dry, windless cold), some (non-locals) are even talking of out-wintering, hay (continental climate that can produce 3-4 crops of superb lucerne hay), triticale/oats and something for some extra protein, although if you can keep the leaves on the lucerne, it may not be needed. One of the problems we have to resolve is to get people to understand the need for protein for animal growth, they expect them to grow on rubbish. If you look at my www.highland-agriculture.com website you will also see that I am also promoting the use of British breeds that we think will do well on a forage-based diet. All very old-fashioned I am afraid.

Pearce seeds do spring beans as far as i know.

just baled some winter beans here in NZ made into round bale silage, what it will turn out like is anyones guess, never seen it done before.