By Tryharder
Essex, United Kingdom
ID this crop please,
Seen this crop growing in farmers field on Isle of Wight and no idea what crop it is!!
Lots of blackfly but really pretty flowers,
Probably going to be some
Thing really obvious when I hear,
Thanks in advance
- 23 Jun, 2019
Answers
yes either broad beans or field beans for animal feed. they smaell wonderful.
23 Jun, 2019
Also useful as a nitrogen fixing crop for fallow farming ground
23 Jun, 2019
Tick beans for stock feed.
24 Jun, 2019
all the legume crops including clover are excellent nitrogen fixers that's why they were rotated around the fields. Rhizobium bacteria are the fixers and live in root nodules. When I taught I always grew beans and wild vetches to show the students the nodules which we then crushed and looked at the bacteria under the microscope. I am still trying to get most of the vetch out of the garden as their pods ejected seed some distance. The pods came in useful when teaching seed dispersal. oh those were the days!
24 Jun, 2019
We have these beans on the field next to us, whether grown for human or animal use (probably the latter) they are shorter than the usual kind grown in the garden and sadly - not an insect in sight to feast on the flowers! Yet to see if they will be ploughed in or harvested.
24 Jun, 2019
Black fly is a common pest on broad beans - preventable for home growers by pinching out the tops when the have reached flowering.
24 Jun, 2019
We had lots of these grown round where we used to live. We were told that they are allowed to dry off before harvesting. the beans are then ground up to make a flour and sold to Saudi Arabia. Not sure we believed it. BUT, if you take the pods of these beans when the beans are still small, then they are very edible.
24 Jun, 2019
Broad Beans I would think.
23 Jun, 2019