My neighbour grew enormous bean plants last year and it looked so easy, I decided to have a go myself. I’ve never successfully grown anything from seed, and the whole idea of gardening never appealed to me until I realised I could actually grow stuff I could eat. It began last summer when I bought a mixed-herb planter and discovered the joy of actually having fresh mint around to add to cocktails and salads. Sadly the herbs didn’t prosper (although the London squirrels still seemed to like them – I found one on the balcony, nibbling the rosemary). This year I re-used the wooden trough the herbs came in to make my bean paddy.The instructions on the packet said the beans should be spaced well apart but I only had a limited amount of soil and still wanted a serious crop of beans, so I just shoved about twice as many seeds into the trough and hoped for the best.
As the weeks went by the seeds sprouted into shoots and by July I was munching on my first ‘crop’. Weirdly furry, they otherwise looked pretty normal, if slightly bulbous, and they tasted really fresh and clean. I boiled them for a few minutes and then tossed them in olive oil with some lightly fried garlic and fresh mint: lush. And all the more satisfying that they came from my own scuzzy balcony-garden.
