Winged bean flowers …and the first bean.

I had big doubts whether our winged bean plants would make it or not, because, as usual, I didn’t plant them out soon enough, and the plants were stunted. Nevertheless, I halfheartedly put them in the same large pot that houses our purple brinjal plant, because that pot also has a climbing structure that the beans could use. If they didn’t make it, I reasoned I could still make use of legume plants’ nitrogen-fixing abilities to help the brinjal plant.

I’m always thrilled to see these frilly-edged beans develop.

Well, after many weeks of the winged bean plants weakly winding up the stakes, they suddenly seemed to switch gear into Full Steam Ahead growth and grew bigger leaves, and stronger stems, until they reached the top of the trellis. After the usual dithering-about period, they then decided to start budding. That’s when I went into expectant-parent mode and waited none too patiently for the first bean to develop. That took more than a week, but finally, it’s here!

I find that the growing season for these beans doesn’t last that long but have yet to learn how to plant successively successfully. We’ll get a few meals out of them, though.

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