Broad beans

Octraine,the ants will use the Blackfly.They appear usually when they are in flower.The ants will milk the aphids of a sticky honey type solution that the aphids produce.You will then find that your Broad beans flowers will be infested and then your crop of Beans.At the first sign of Blackfly pinch out the tops of the Beans.Some people cook and eat the tops if they are not infested.Use either a jet of water to wash off the blackfly or you will need to spray with possibly an organic spray of some sorts.If we get heavy rain that sometimes washes them off.
We left them one year as we didn't want to spray and never had a crop of beans.Other years we have found the rain washes them off.It is heartbreaking to lose a crop because we don't want to spray.Good Luck

 

Hi Kandy, thanks for your reply.

Sorry to sound a bit thick, but do you mean the ants will eat the blackfly.

The beans are not in flower, and there's no sign of blackfly.

Could you clarify this for me? Thanks again.

 

No Oktarine the ants will not eat the blackfly.If I am right in my thinking from what I have seen in books and on the TV the blackfly give out this honey dew stuff which is actually Aphid excrement {Poo} from out of their bums.It is a food which the ants {usually black ants} like to feed on so they often transfer the blackfly from one bean plant to the next one.

Keep a look out for the flowers on the beans and then watch out for the blackfly as often as you can.Take out a couple of inches of the tops of the beans as that is often where the first sign of the blackfly being presant.

If you grow the Winter broad beans they are often in flower before the blackfly are airborne.It usually only effects the spring sown ones...

You are not thick you are just learning about the joy of growing your own vegetables :D

 

Ants seem tohave disappeared, and plants are now in flower!

Luck seems to have been good .

 

Just keep a look out,the ants and black fly will be back no doubt about that