November doesn’t seem a promising month to plant a vegetable. But I always make a late sowing of a hardy variety of broad bean called ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ whenever the weather allows. The resulting crop is not much earlier than my spring-sown crop, to be honest. But I usually get a heavier crop from these than my spring-sown broad beans. I believe it’s because the cooler weather allows the beans to grow more slowly, and as a result they develop better root systems.

You can’t just sow any old broad bean however. It has to be the very hardy ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ as this will stand up to the weather well. It survived the extremely cold winter last year, although mice burrowed under the snow in February and ate some of my young plants. Luckily the remaining ones grew well and each pod yielded an average of eight beans. Four short rows, measuring 7ft each, produced 24lbs and many went in the freezer.

The flowers on ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ are spaced quite closely together, whereas in other varieties the flowers are over 6in apart. So the potential is great. But your crop will depend on how well it is pollinated. If wet weather prevents the bumble-bees from visiting for a day or two, it’s quite possible to see the gaps on the stems where the beans fail to set.

Bumble-bees are the most frequent visitors to broad beans and in a recent Radio 4 programme, Flight of the Bumble-bees, it was said that bumble-bees are 20 times more efficient than honey bees when it comes to pollinating.

They have two major advantages over the honey bee.

First, they can fly in cool conditions because they have a unique ability to ‘rev up’ their flight motors chemically. This allows them to fly in temperatures of 10 degrees C. There are five species of bumble-bee within the Arctic Circle.

It’s just as well they can fly early because the queens hibernate without any food. When one emerges, she needs an energising drink of nectar and pollen for her new brood. So having some flowers that appear very early in the year is an enormous help. Favourites include crocus, winter aconites, the winter clematis C. cirrhosa ‘Freckles’ and hellebores. Their second advantage is an ability to buzz pollinate. They enter a flower and buzz and make a whining sound. This shakes off stubborn pollen from the stamens.

This means that some plant families like the solanums can only be pollinated by bumble-bees. Potatoes, peppers and aubergines belong to this family.

Roddy goes back to basics

Roddy Llewellyn is holding two “Back to Basics” days at Whichford Pottery on Thursday, November 26, and Thursday, December 3. The price of £95 per day includes a light lunch. Guests should arrive for a 10am start. (A charitable donation of ten per cent of all ticket sales will go to Shipston-on-Stour Home Nursing.) For further information telephone 01608 663108 (www.roddyllewellyn.co.uk)