Friday 19 August 2011

How not to grow mangetout

The mangetout has served us well but has just about finished now and the plants are drying out and yellowing. We grew two varieties: Golden Sweet and giant Bijou, both from Real Seeds.


Though the Bijou were impressive, and beautifully sweet, they were not nearly so productive as the vigorous Golden Sweet, which also tasted great.

I allocated them a large tub to share, erected a tall, narrow wire fence held up with canes for them to climb, and sowed one variety each side. It all started well...


But as they got taller the plants on each side of the support really started competing for the light - even in full sun. They all wanted to be growing on the same side of the fence, and despite attempts to rotate them regularly, retrain them and tie them back onto their own sides, the whole thing ended up leaning over so far I had to tie it to the summer house to keep it all from falling over!


What a mess! Next time I use a narrow support like this, I will grow mangetout on the sunward side and lettuces or something on the other!

3 comments:

Sue Garrett said...

Mistakes are how we learn our mangetout have been useless this year

Dan Martin said...

Is it not just the end of mangetout season? Mine went like this (and is now quietly rotting in the compost bin) but seemed to do pretty well earlier on. It felt like autumn earlier this morning in London, even though it's mid August - perhaps the mangetout body clock is all mixed up?

Nome said...

No, Dan, they've been out of control ever since they started to get tall! They've done pretty well really - we've eaten plenty - but they're just really unruly!!

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