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, they're certainly easier to peel than grapes).But don't despair if your beans have matured more than you would have wanted. Just cook, peel and mash the beans into a tasty puree.Broad beans are a simple crop to grow, but you do need quite a long row

by the hedge to harden them off before planting them out.We've had mixed results with broad beans. I usually sow them in autumn - trouble is that they need to get established as soon as they're planted otherwise the mice can dig them up and eat them. As well

.I love the way home-grown salads start off as a meagre collection of leaves in spring, then steadily grow as tomatoes, broad beans and other ingredients are ready to harvest. The watercress growing in my pond is always the first leaf crop I pick, followed

to grow fruit and veg. We have runner, French and broad beans, spinach, chard, courgettes and some wonderful raspberries originally grown by my granny.The runner, French and broad beans were heavily infested with blackfly when I visited two weeks ago. But

chemical reaction is taking place creating allicin".So, now we have the science bit out of the way, this broad bean and pea hummous is a great way to use three seasonal ingredients. Taken and adapted from The Garlic Farm Cookbook.Broad bean and pea hoummous

It's the ‘Gourmet grower’ and ‘Allotmenteer’ packs that I'm finding most useful. Early potatoes planted this week will have produced tasty new potatoes for harvest in June, while broad beans sown outside into warm soil should have their first pods for picking

with questions on how best to overwinter it. He's hooked.Wary of low light levels and leggy seedlings, I've set up a small lamp over my heated propagator. It looks a bit like an SAD lamp for plants, but hopefully it will do the trick. Tomatoes and broad beans

. Seedlings need watering, as do flowering broad beans and garlic.I'm anxious to get tender crops planted outside so that I can set-up an automatic watering system in the greenhouse for my tomatoes and cucumbers. Chillies, sweet peppers and aubergines grow

, amaranth, squashes, broad beans and also lupins, which they harvested for their seeds.The terraces proved perfect for the production of food. The stone walls would warm up quickly, creating a warmer microclimate within the terrace and enabling some crops

of generous triangular zigzags, just for fun. And doing so has really jazzed up my display. Now I can make patterns with lettuces at the feet of broad beans with tall peas shooting up behind. It’s a bit like planning a mixed herbaceous border, but with veg