The mung bean bed was a spur of the moment thing that paid off. I had a bed dug at the mid levels and a pack of mung beans that had beetles, which I was using for sprouts for the chickens. So I took a handful of beans down and tossed them on.
Growing mung beans
For a summer cover crop, they would take some beating! I just dug over a new bed, sprinkled the mung beans over, and lightly raked them in.
Here they are a couple of weeks ago. I think they are showing the effects of a trial magnesium (epsom salts) spray that I gave the left-hand side. Mind you, the right hand side has mixed in with the cucumbers in an indistinguishable jumble, and the vines have pulled some of them over. It makes finding cucumbers hard too, so note to self for next season.
Lately I’ve seen a few ripe pods – mung beans have the fortunate characteristic that the pods turn black when ripe. They don’t seem to shatter open either, so I suppose the normal procedure is to pull the whole crop when it has finished and hang it to dry. For now though I was keen to have a go with the current pods, so I picked what I could find and brought them up.
Here they are before…
… and after shelling, and the main picture is the sprouts from this batch – just enough for a stir-fry.
They have really been a good return for very little effort, although shelling them fresh off the plant is a little tedious. They were intended as a cover crop, grew marvellously even though they were sown too densely, and have ended up being a meal addition.
In addition I have ‘cleaned’ a spoiled bag of beans that I wasn’t going to use in the kitchen because of beetles, and I know that this first generation of beans haven’t been pesticide treated.
The mung bean bed in the garden is being attacked by grubs now, which are taking some of the pods and buds, but as the aim was just a green manure with maybe some overflow to the chickens, that’s OK. Meanwhile the resident predators might be getting a feed too. The bed is getting a good injection of organic matter, and going from the vigour, a bit of nitrogen fixation too. The weeds are completely suppressed, so it should be a good bed to dig over for an Autumn crop.
I’ll be curious to see how the bed ends up – there is no sign of the plants drying off yet, so I will keep opportunistically picking ripe pods until they pack it in.