Make Insects Your Next Meal

Mealworms have been consumed by humans for thousands of years, and there are many good reasons to give them a try.

My own thoughts on the matter are that I strongly endorse Entomophagy as a way of life, and am in no doubt that future generations will not think twice about insects derived fats and protein as a part of the standard diet – particularly for those of us with Western lifestyles (and attitudes).

But for now it is quite the taboo, this eating insects thing. It comes up every now and again in places like the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization, which gets a heap of publicity in the mass media for a week or two then goes away. Very few people that I discuss this with actually take me up on it, and give them a try – even when they agree with the reasons why.

This article is all about the practical aspects of preparing, cooking, and eating mealworms. The information is based on my own personal experiences, starting in 2011. So this will complete the two part series – how to eat them correctly, following on from how NOT to eat them. I will include references to the academic literature where required, and I’d encourage you to do your own research on the matter if at all in doubt.

How you go about farming mealworms for consumption will be covered in great detail for a future post, so for now just sit back and prepare to try something completely different, and hopefully not unpleasant.

How to Prepare Mealworms

Seeing how these mealworms are for you and not the fish, we will need to be very particular about how to prepare them – so two goals here:

• Kill the mealworms in a humane manner
• Ensure the mealworms are as hygienic as possible before eating them

These are the steps you take to do that

1. Collect Your Ideal Mealworms

The Darkling beetle remains in the larvae form for up to 90 days, so what you are looking for are mealworms more or less of the size and vigour as in the video below.

As in the video, get the quantity of mealworms you want into a paper or plastic cup and cover them over with a breathable lid, even some newspaper with an elastic to keep it firmly in place will do. Remove any mealworms that are not moving, damaged, or transitioning to the pupal stage.

2. Purging (Internal Cleansing)

Now according to some Online sources, you don’t need to purge the mealworms before you eat them, but if I’m going to clean my shrimp (prawns), then the same goes here. Additionally, some of the literature calls this out as a fairly standard practice from Africa to Australia (FAO 2010).

Leave your cup of mealworms in the cupboard for a day or two, making sure they have zero food with them. At this stage they are ready to go (jump to step 3 below), but if you want you could also try to flavour your mealworms prior to cooking – add in a couple of small apple pieces, carrot, crushed cinnamon sticks, parsley, and so on. What you get from doing that is the flavour of that food going into the mealworms. As they eat it they start to taste like it, just in the same way that beef, lamb, and pork can be affected by diet.

Avoid citrus as your ‘finishing off’ food

I’d suggest you avoid any citrus and overly watery foods – things like watermelon won’t work. All that liquid disagrees with them in a  big way, and after a couple of days it will make them dead and therefore, inedible. I lost a few batches just by having too much orange mush in the cup with them.

My own favourite is cinnamon, so if you are unsure then start with that.

If you do flavour your mealworms, keep them eating it for 2-3 days, then remove all food for a day or two.

3. The Freezer

Put your mealworms into the freezer for 1-2 days at a temperature of -10° to -20° Celsius (0° Fahrenheit). There are some articles out there suggesting 15 minutes, but I can assure you that mealworms are very well adapted to shutting down (but not dying) in cold temperatures, in fact one way to prolong their larvae form is to put them into the fridge for months at a time. I once had them in the freezer for 8 hours and after 30 minutes at room temperature were all back like nothing had happened!

This step will ensure that the mealworms naturally shut down and remain in that state for long enough that any chance of returning have gone. It seems a little cruel until you consider how we dispatch some of the other animals we use for food. Insects might not feel pain as we know it (further reading with Smith 1991, DeGrazia & Rowan 1991, Gherardi 2009), but we should handle them as if they do.

You can leave those frozen mealworms for up to two months in the freezer, and if you plan on freezing them in batches then make sure to date the containers so you know what’s what. After a couple of months they will still be OK for the compost, for fish, or the chooks. And make sure you keep a lid on whatever container you use to avoid freezer burn.

This is what mealworms look like when frozen. Now let’s cook them!

How to Cook Mealworms

The first step here is to boil your frozen mealworms, to ensure they are clean of dirt or potential parasites (such as described in Omoto & Cartwright 2003). Keep them in the boiling water for 3 minutes, then drain out on a napkin or cloth. You can then go on and use the water in the compost bin, as it will have taken enough nutrients to still be useful.

Pat them dry and remove any mealworms that are obviously damaged or discolored.

Recipe 1 – Dehydrated Mealworms

This is a very easy way to cook mealworms and they taste great also. If you have yet to try a dehydrator, they can be used for plenty more things than preparing insects – drying fruits, vegetables, nuts, meat, ETC.

Ingredients:

• Mealworms (easy huh!)

Method:

1. Add mealworms to the dehydrator
2. Leave them in there until golden brown
3. Lightly baste with Olive Oil, add a pinch of salt
4. Eat while warm

If you don’t own a dehydrator, you can substitute the oven grill just as easily – just keep the heat to about 50°C (122°F).

When they look something like this they are ready to eat.

Remove the head and legs if it helps (it did for me), but after a while it didn’t make any difference.

Recipe 2 – Mealworms with Garlic and Chilli in Butter

This is a recipe for mealworms that results in a lovely snack. I like to add salt at the end because it makes the whole thing feel like eating little roasted peanuts.

Ingredients:

• Mealworms
• Chilli Peppers sliced – with or without the seeds as per your preference
• Garlic diced
• Butter – salted or unsalted as per your preference

Method:

1. Add butter to a moderately heated pan, allow to partially melt
2. Add the garlic and chilli, sauté
3. Add mealworms and mix well. If the mealworms start to ‘pop’, turn the heat down
4. Fry until mealworms are crispy
5. Season to taste

Keep a close eye on those mealworms as they cook – if they start to pop then turn down the heat. I’d suggest you sample one before finishing up, because their taste will change depending on how cooked they get. My own preference is to leave them on until crispy.

This mealworms are glazed just right, so eat one or all.

Recipe 3 – Mealworm Marrinade

This is more about flavoring mealworms than cooking them. Kind of like the thing you can do by adding cinnamon and so on during the purging phase. The following preparation makes for an effective marinade, and is one I’ve used on many occasions.

Ingredients:

• Mealworms
• Parsley chopped
• Lemon Juice
• Tabasco sauce
• Pinch of pepper
• Garlic sliced

Method:

1. Add all the ingredients
2. Close the lid and throw into the fridge for 3 hours
3. Remove mealworms and cook or eat raw

So Where to Get that Next Meal?

So folks thanks for getting to the end! I hope you are thinking long and hard about Entomophagy and mealworms in particular. You can raise and make them into a meal all from your own home; they taste good, and are nutritionally excellent. There are plenty of recipes out there if you take a look, as more and more people get curious enough to give it a go and share their experience.

Bon appétit, and If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments sections below.

Shrimp are related to Mealworms – are they really that much different in your eyes?

Further Reading Of Interest

• http://ns2.entermediahosting.com/sites/default/files/groups/33045/documents/Edible%20Forest%20Insects%20-%20Humans%20Bite%20Back.pdf
• http://public.wsu.edu/~omoto/papers/ABLEgreg.pdf
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mealworm#Pupal_stage

Related articles

• Mealworms: The Other-Other-Other White Meat? (blogs.scientificamerican.com)
• The Sustainable Meat of the Future: Mealworms? (blogs.smithsonianmag.com)
• Mealworm is the new beef: Scientists say eating bugs is better for the planet (thesun.co.uk)

The forest floor is filling with valuable plants – a Globe Artichoke just starting off, with stinging nettle in seed, and nasturtiums making their way.

A food garden is not always so pretty; the lawn is not cut clean, lumps of compost surround plants, cut broad bean stalks are laid straight back over the soil to create a green manure. Dandelions allowed to grow unharmed – heaven forbid! Sometimes messy is good, just like now. Maybe I’ll mow the lawn when it gets quiet, like in Winter…

We all love to start our day with a cup of coffee. We all love to relax with a cup of coffee in the evening. We all love to invite friends over for coffee, or go out with friends for coffee. But when the drink is drunk and all that remains are the used coffee grounds, what can you do with them? Probably more than you’d think….

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevensnodgrass/4012313426/

1. Use as a Clothing Dye

Your coffee grounds can be used as a cheap and easy colour dye. To make the dye, soak your used grounds in warm water for a few minutes. You can either apply the dye to clothing finely with a brush or spatter it on to create a messy look. If you want clothes to appear drenched, heat up the grounds in a large bowl of water and dip the clothes into this.

2. Dealing with Garden Pests, Part 1: Cats

Sprinkling your garden with coffee grounds is an excellent way of stopping cats from burying excrement near your plants. Cats do no not favour the smell of coffee, so you can use your grounds to protect the garden that you worked so hard on.

For a greater effect, try mixing the grounds with the remains of citrus fruits, such as oranges and limes – also offensive smells to cats, believe it or not!

3. Dealing with Garden Pests, Part 2: Slugs, Snails and Ants

Unfortunately, slugs and snails love to feast on your precious plants. However, coffee grounds are both acidic and abrasive, which will ensure that these creatures don’t even think about going near your flowers. Construct a protective barrier around your perennials in order to deter the slimy vermin.

Coffee grounds are also great for keeping ants at bay. If you have an unwanted nest in your garden, sprinkle grounds around this.

4. Clean the Fireplace

Coffee grounds can make cleaning the fireplace a much easier job! All you have to do is sprinkle the fireplace with damp grounds before you start your regular cleaning process. This will prevent ashes from rising, allowing you to complete the task without breathing in an unhealthy fume of charcoal.

5. Soothe the skin

Used coffee grounds can also be combined with olive oil to soften up areas of dry skin. Mix the grounds and the oil together and gently rub this over any rough patches of skin. Leave to soak for a few moments and then rinse away with warm water. This method can also be used to decrease the severity of spots.

So from deterring garden pests to dying your t-shirts, you can see there are plenty of inventive uses for your used coffee grounds!

Have you come with any clever ways of using coffee grounds? Tell us in the comments section.

Greg is currently studying creative writing at Bath Spa University and has previously written for Coblands.

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So this was the last day of Summer for 2013 – the 27th of March. Sure it was a month past when Summer should end, and at 35° Celsius it was a nice one to go out on.

It was a tough Summer this one, plenty of long hot days and too little rain. It got to the point where I had to use the mains water, as the two IBCs had ran dry, and all those olive barrels, and the tire ponds. When every source of harvested water was gone, out come the chlorinated wonder (Melbourne city mains water is also world class drinking water – but chlorine ain’t too good for soil).

Small plants need special care over a long dry stretch, and even with my best efforts, I lost a fuschia and a freshly planted olive sapling (yeah don’t plant trees in Summer Duh). Number one lesson – plant stuff in Autumn!

So now it is over, time for the soil to heal and those plants to take what they can before Winter. It felt like the whole garden  let out a sigh of relief, pleased with the coming sleep.

Something is better than nothing

A thick layer of mulch between the soil and the sun makes a huge difference, so use it if you can. Anything from pea straw to hay or sugar scraps, wood chips, cut up pieces of last year’s broad bean harvest, and the stalks + leaves of Jerusalem Artichokes works well.

A good layer of mulch leads to biological health of the soil, whereas an exposed topsoil will quickly fall away in vitality and water holding ability, leaving a lifeless dry sand that is hard to fix once broken.

One of the tricks that worked really well this year was to add a handful of fresh vermicast into a 10 litre bucket half full of rainwater, then once that was diluted, to soak sugar cane mulch in there until the bucket was full. I then applied the wet mulch around the base of fruit trees, and that works a treat.

It worked so well that I’m going to try it on a larger scale, and add some additional ingredients like urea (Mmmm where do you think I can get me some of that , chicken manure, fish emulsion and so on.

There is plenty of time to prepare for next Summer down here in Australia, and just a little bit for you folks up North.

So folks, Summer is dead. Long live Summer!

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A lovely sight – did you know that arrowroot is a tradition treatment for spider bites? Never one to rush to label something ‘ironic’, but can I, can I??

Can’t say I’m a fan of the arrowroot tubers, although every now and again a small piece will find a way into my salad (sometimes the leaves also). Very filling, due to the starch I suspect.

As a plant they are handy. They are a perennial,  drought proof , and provide a biomass that the chickens love with enough leftovers for the compost. Weeds are unable to find purchase as the tubers rise above the soil, and in sufficient density makes an effective wind break.

Worth a try – and spiders like them!

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They say education is the key blah blah blah.

And so what an opportunity to teach the  next in line to the throne of Genziuk (South East Melbourne Realm).

What started out as the simple disposal of used coffee grounds into some compost bins ended up with a lesson about how it all works.

Now let us go out on a quote:

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+Shane Genziuk

When I give tours of my place I’m usually asked why there are stalks of some dead plants all over the place. Now as unsightly as they are (normally explained away as ‘permaculture is in the eye of the beholder’), the stalks are the only above ground remains of the mighty Jerusalem Artichoke.

By keeping the dead stalks there over the Winter, it is very easy to find the delightful tubers just beneath the surface. They will keep all Winter in the soil, and what you don’t collect will start to grow anew from mid-Spring.

You can see below how the tubers spread under an irrigation pipe. Only thing you need to be mindful of with Jerusalem Artichokes is that they will become invasive if you let them, so don’t let them!

Any shoots coming out in mid-Spring that you don’t want? Pull them out in good time.

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This seems to be a recurring theme…

I plant a fruit tree, then some time later, it grows fruit.

What else was to be expected?

Well you see, I was one of those kids that didn’t get outside much, let alone tending trees.

Still surprised they grow so well in my care.

So the latest member of the fruit bearers is the Lemon – a Lisbon to be exact.

And here is the next batch growing right now – this time from a Lemonade Lemon tree!

Starting a conversation about my attempts to grow prickly pear go something like this:

“I cut off one of the pads as a cutting,” says I.

“To grow?” they ask, brows furrowed.

“Yes…” Here it comes, but they mean well.

“You mean prickly pear, that cactus weed? You want to… grow it!?” Shock, Horror, et cetera.

History of  a Weed

It is somewhat understandable that prickly pear has a bad reputation here in Australia, having found ideal growing conditions and no natural enemies, it rendered whole agricultural areas unusable. An excellent summary of the ‘fight’ against prickly pear can be found here. I guess it would have been easier to change our habits and  harvest it to eat like they do in Mexico, having recognised it as a valuable alternate food source, but that is a whole other issue.

Just the fact that we use terms like ‘war’, ‘fight’, and ‘battle to eradicate’, in describing our relationship with a plant is at about the same level of reason as when discussing our need in the West to incorporate Entomophagy.

Interestingly, this fact sheet from the Mississippi State University calls out the creature that solved the Australian issue – the Cactus Moth (Cactoblastis cactorum) as the bad guy in all this, and not the other way around.

Prickly Pear in Permaculture

Just so you know I’m not the first one to stumble across the idea – here is bushcraft guru Tony Nestor:

It is not just the fruit that is edible - you can also eat the cactus pads (Nopales), which the video below will help you with, and here is a recipe for the Mexican dish, Nopales Salad.

So what we have is a cactus plant that can grow quickly in poor soil and conditions, produces plenty of edible fruit, and  gives you pads that can be eaten like a vegetable.

How to Grow your Own

This is rather easy – just follow the steps below:

• Twist off a whole pad from the plant. I’m assuming you either have one already or sighted on in a neighbours yard and obviously asked their permission before turning up while they were out and basically stole it (OK that was me just projecting here).
• Be very mindful of the spines – use thick gloves or tongs are good also.
• Once you have the pad, put it straight into a pot of damp soil, something local is the best, however if you have to make a mix then get equal parts sand (propagating sand if you have it) with free flowing dirt.
• Keep the pot out of direct sunlight and with the soil moist, but not too wet.
• After four or five weeks you will have a rooted cactus pad.
• Either leave in the pot to grow there (will severely restrict its growing capacity), or plant out to an appropriate spot in the garden.

I hope you have enjoyed this article on how to grow prickly pear from a cutting. Having done some research in preparing this story for your good self, I discovered the history behind the Australian slang word ‘Cactus‘ and what it actually means. Having used the term for close on 4 decades now, well you really do learn something new everyday…

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I’m finding it difficult to not enjoy myself when in the company of pet chickens. They scratch around making perculular noises, moreso when they are inside their run and not outside their run… Salt is louder than the others combined. In case you were wondering – Salt is the white one, Chilli is the red one, and Pepper is the black one.

They started off as Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, but it was too hard to keep track of which one was meant for which meal. Plus the kids didn’t like those names and helped me come up with the new ones. Looks like backyard chicken is off the menu boys!

OK try it now. Watch for a couple of minutes and see if you can get angry.

Nope – it can’t be done.

Salt and Chilli have taken a liking to the trampoline. Pepper may have also but she is too fat to get up that high. Pepper may infact be a dwarf turkey, but don’t tell her.

Could you imagine something with that head standing 3 meters over you? It would be called a Dinosaur!

I was very tempted to buy a Silky hen at the Queen Victoria Market today. So close that the $15 was in my hand. Something held me back but not sure what. The city of Glen Eira will let you keep 6 hens without any licence, so that is not an issue. Are three pet chickens enough for one small suburban block?

Maybe not, but it is enough to make me laugh. And eggs. Can’t forget those eggs.

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Ready, Set, Collect

In Melbourne, there is a six week window to collect all the leaves you are going to collect for the whole year. Piles and piles of dried leaves just there for the taking – if only it were that easy…

There is competition for the best spots (just like fishing), and those council sweeper trucks get the idea to go clean them up before you get the chance. Then there is the threat of a strong wind blowing them all down the drain, or a heavy rain washing them all down the drain, the property owner putting them in the bin (yes it breaks my heart), or using one of those blower motors to… blow them down the drain!

But if you can find an untouched, unloved corner where those leaves are just left to rot – jackpot baby!!!

Here are some of my most recent leaf collecting adventures, and this time I brought a little helper…

I wrote a post about collecting leaves last year (2012) and it did generate a heap of comments and questions via email. This is a very cheap and easy way to get all the carbon components for your compost and leafmold in the one product. Leaves have a carbon to nitrogen ratio of anywhere between 40 to 80:1, which compared to coffee grounds of 20-24:1, or grass clippings 20:1 makes them a ‘brown’ compost ingredient.

If you have ever noticed your compost smelling badly and not breaking down those ‘green’ ingredients (like when you throw kitchen scraps in the compost and it turns into a mass of rotting muck, never to become soil), then you need to add more things like leaves.

But now back to the adventure.

Spending time with the kids

It might not seem like it at first, but collecting leaves on a misty Sunday morning is in fact more fun than going to the movies, and it is free except what it takes to get to the site. All you need to do is get the rake out of the shed and some plastic bags, then head off in the direction of the biggest group of deciduous trees. We are very lucky here in Melbourne, with what are a large variety of well established Oak, Elm, Maple, and so on, both within the city proper and surrounding suburbs.

There is a reason why the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne are known as ‘the leafy suburbs’. Not only are they leafy, they are also the most well to do parts of the city, and what generally happens is that the folks there don’t get out on the street too early on a Sunday morning to clear out the carbon gold just waiting for me and the leaf master.

Now when it comes to kids collecting leaves, you give them a rake and a plastic bag, and they do the rest. If they are slow or get distracted don’t yell, whatever. You can see this child (AKA the leaf master), in particular demonstrating the ‘Noski’ Dance. It is also the first animated GIF to grace this site, and most likely the last…

Sure we had a car full of plastic bags full with leaves, and just check out what was going to be waiting for us the next week – all those brown leaves still to fall

A rake, some bags, and a helper – get to it

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Happy to be adding apples to the list of fruit I can grow in my own backyard. It took a couple of years, and it is all up from here. This dwarf gala (M9 rootstock), will produce from 18-27 kilos in a regular year, according to Patrick Whitefield.

Now I love my apples, and that might not be enough in my household. So I went and planted 6 other dwarf apple trees just in case…

Apples – go plant some!

Five more dwarf apple trees to join the Gala and Pink Lady:

• Golden Delicious
• Jonathan
• McIntosh
• Snow
• Tsugaru

Will keep track of my new friends to harvest time, hopefully in 2 short years. To be planted over a thick base of vermicast; quality worm poo created by the power of coffee grounds.

This brings the number of apple trees in my yard to 7 now, the forest garden is getting serious…

So why so many apple trees? They are low maintenance, easy to maintain, easy to train to shape, the dwarfs only get to 2.5 meters, and they make apples!!

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From creamy Blue to Purple, and back again. One of Spring’s most delightful plants - Centaurea cyanus (AKA Cornflower), is a prolific self seeder and inspiring sight in the garden.  Able to tolerate the often brutal Summer conditions of Melbourne, drought tolerant, low on soil resources, and a lovely tough mulch for the Winter.

Broadcast a handful of seed with fellow annuals and meadow grasses, and you will be repaid year on year in visual delights.

And while you are waiting it out in the Northern Hemisphere – here are those flowers in the meantime.

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Lemon Grass (Cymbopogon), is a species of perennial grass that make an effective ground cover, pest deterrent and bee attractor all in one. I consider it well worth having in the forest garden, but can it grow from a store bought cutting?

Now having done it (and excitingly waited to have enough proof to get this post published), growing Lemon grass is fairly easy to do from a single piece. The example below is from a store bought stalk that had no roots attached. I sat it in a glass jar, half full of filtered water on the window sill over Winter and early Spring, and this is the result. Took a couple of months to start growing roots so don’t be in too much of a rush – it will happen.

Good strong root growth right out of the water and about to go into a pot.

Here is an example of a lemon grass stalk with the root still attached. If you want to try and grow lemongrass, look for stalks that have any piece of root still attached, for potting straight into soil.

Or if it needs more development – wrap in wet paper and keep warm and humid within a plastic baggie.

OK so not so difficult, and worth the effort to do it for little cost at home. Get growing!!

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So as we head into another Australian Spring , I thought it would be a good time to show a couple of images of the tire ponds.

They have exceeded my expectations, and if you recall the post I wrote about how I built them, it was in response to the plastic lined ponds just not performing well enough.

These ponds are bullet proof, with no signs of leakage. The fish are still in there, the duckweed is making food for the quail, the solar pumps are somehow still working, and plants are now growing up around the sides, masking what some people consider to be the unattractive sight of tire treads.

So far so good – next pond update next year!

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Here it is folks – the aphid armagedonator. Commonly known as the ladybug or ladybird, the Coccinellidae is a top class predator of garden pest insects. Pretty much anything that wants to suck the life your of your plants is fair game, as is the case in these images (bulk of aphids are on the right).

Our friend the ladybug is making a meal of aphids on my Gala Apple tree. Soon the fruit will set and another Summer harvest will be assured, so delightful to pick a home grown apple warmed by the sun.

So you see the problem with spraying the life out of anything that moves? You kill the aphids, sure that is great, you also kill their predators (ladybugs, spiders, parasitic wasps, lacewings and hoverflies). The predators and their larvae die, their lifecycle is disrupted, the aphids will return due to their strength of numbers, and what is left to eat them then? More pesticides become a poor substitute for natural controls, ignoring a few hundred million years of Nature’s R&D for a few centuries or ours.

You don’t need to use commercial pesticides in your garden, just provide a nice home for natures little helpers.

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Parsley is a glorious plant to grow in your garden, and not just for those delicious leaves.

You see, this special herb is able to bring up nutrients from deep in the soil, where other plants can’t reach. These nutrients go on to feed the parsley and surrounding soil, but then when the plant dies back (after 2 years), that goodness breaks down into the topsoil for all to share.

Those long taproots help parsley survive pretty much any weather conditions. They are able to draw up so much moisture that if sharing a pot with another plant, it might well die of thirst.

As these things grow up to 4 feet and will self seed to weed like proportions, you might on occasion need to cut them back. If you do, cut the stalk at ground level and leave the roots in the soil. They will continue to draw up nutrients for you.

More than just a herb – it is a nutrients retrieval device!

Broad beans are one of the best plants to grow in the garden – and here are some of the reasons why:

• They grow quickly to produce a high energy crop
• Provides a useful windbreak
• Once grown, the plant becomes useful fodder for chickens, quail, and as a green manure
• The flowers attract bees in high numbers, and they flower heaps. And they smell nice for people too!
• Return nitrogen to the soil (a wondrous trait of legumes)
• Easy to save from seed, and repeat the cycle

Now on this last point, here is a tip for saving those broad bean seeds.

If you leave the pods long enough, they will start to go black and very dry. This is OK, in fact, it’s what nature intended all along.

On your strongest growing and most productive plant, wait until the pods get as hard as thick plastic, then remove and open up.

What you get is beans ready to regrow into broad beans plants. Just put them a few inches deep in some moist soil and leave it be. From then on it is just a case of waiting for the miracle of germination, and the cycle begins again.

Broad beans will grow in just about any climate all year round, and this is a sure way to keep an ongoing supply of them in your garden. All that nitrogen going back into the soil is food for all the other plants in your garden, especially when grown around established fruit trees.

And if you suffer from gout like I do and can’t eat many beans, then the nitrogen fixing benefits and those other things I mentioned above should make this plant a mandatory element in your garden.

You growing broad beans – how do you save the seeds?