Broad Bean "Stereo"

% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.

This past week I harvested the first of my “Stereo” Broad Beans.

“Stereo” seems to be almost universally described as an “unusual” type of Broad Bean. In fact I have concluded that most businesses that sell this bean have started with exactly the same piece of text, and just altered one or two words! By unusual I think they mean “small”. The Stereo variety produces plants that are smaller and thinner than any other variety I have grown. Height at maturity is about 4 feet.

The flowers are also unusual in that they are plain white rather than the usual bi-colour.

 When the pods set they point upwards:

The pods never get very big – only about 10 or 12cm long.

They usually contain 4 or 5 beans:

The beans are small, green and very uniform in size:

I found that they cook incredibly quickly – literally about 2 to 3 minutes. The cooking process made them go an even brighter shade of green. I’ll describe how we ate them in another blogpost in a day or two.

I have been researching Broad Beans in general, and I was intrigued to see several websites advocating picking pods regularly (e.g. 2 to 3 times a week) to stimulate the production of further pods. Now, I have been growing these things for years and I have always found that the flowers (and hence pods) all come at more or less the same time. Occasionally you get a small second flush if you cut the stalks right down and let them re-generate. Could it be that these people are assuming that Broad Beans operate the same way as Runner Beans or French Beans? What is your opinion?