Hello and welcome to Organic Edible Garden. Now that it's coming into winter, it's time to plant our broad beans. And although these can be grown most year round, they do better in the winter months where they don't get affected by brown spot or chocolate spot as they do in the warmer times. We're also going to look at saving some of the seeds from the beans we grew during the summer months. One of the most important things when planting broad beans is having good drainage. And this bed is raised so I don't think we've got a problem with this. A lot of people think soaking them overnight is good for them and helps with germination but I think in our climate, there's enough moisture in the soil to get them growing without that. If you do have a bed that doesn't have good drainage, you can always start them off in punnets, and once they've germinated, put them out after that. Broad beans, like any other bean or pea, like a slightly alkaline soil. So this time of year I usually dress the bed with a handful of lime per square metre. The next thing we do is plant the seed, but before we do it, we just go and check some of the seeds. If any of them have a piece broken off like this one, they're only going to rot in the soil, so we'll just throw them away. When planting broad beans, you want to plant them to the depth of the size of the seed. So usually about this far down is enough. Also we'll plant them about a hand space apart. Even though broad beans are really trendy at the moment, they're not really my favourite vegetable. But I do grow them for 4 reasons. Firstly, by putting them in the soil their nodules on their roots fix nitrogen back into the soil. Secondly, you can dig them back in and they make a great green manure crop. Thirdly, I like to pinch the tips off and use them in stir fries or even raw in salads. And lastly, and even most importantly, is they flower when not many other flowers are in the garden and this brings the bumblebees in. The bumblebees need this pollen and nectar at that time of year to build up their colonies. Your broad beans will grow reasonably tall so it's best not to plant them in a really windy area. You can grow the dwarf variety but I find they're not nearly as prolific as the tall ones. You can also put stakes in the ground and tie them against stakes, but I find by getting the broad beans as they grow and nipping the tips out, that will make them much stockier and sturdier. You can do this all season long and at the end of the season you'll have a stocky broad bean hedge which can take most winds. These were my scarlet runner crop and now that the pods have dried on the vine, it's time to pick them. I usually choose the strongest pods and leave the little ones. This is not a job you have to do every year. If you dry and store them correctly, these bean seeds will be good for the next 5 or so years. The first thing we want to do now is take the beans out of the husks. It's really easy to do. Just open them up and pop them in a jar. And then the Borlotti beans, which we harvested about 8 weeks ago, and have just been drying in a bucket under a verandah, are ready to harvest as well. And now comes the important part. These guys now have to go in the freezer for between 3 and 5 days. But to do so, they've got to be dried and the moisture content has to be about 7 per cent. And this is really hard to tell, but there's an easy way to do so. What we do is we get a hammer, and if we hit the bean and it squashes, it's not ready. But if it's dry enough and we hit it, and it shatters, the bean is then ready to go in the freezer. The reason we put it in the freezer is there's something called a bean weevil, and if you don't do this, by springtime you'll come along and there'll be holes all through your beans which they would have eaten. And remember use this technique for things like your broad beans or any other peas or beans you grow.