This beautiful climbing plant (up to 2m) is also known as the Hyacinth bean. It has edible pods and seeds: you can either pick the young pods and cook them whole or leave them to mature for sliced beans or leave them even longer for dried beans. The leaved are purple tinged and give this plant an ornamental quality as well. The flowers are perfumed and can be purple, red, pink or white! You will have to wait and see. A wonderful choice Price for 30 seeds
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Lablab Beans can have very lush growth but very few flowers (or no flowers at all) if the nitrogen level is too high or you fertilize with a nitrogen rich product. LabLab plants produce their own nitrogen so additional fertilizer is not usually needed.
High nitrogen levels can be offset by adding potassium and phosphorus. Potassium phosphate is one way, but lots of bloom formulas will do fine such as a tomato feed. If you look at fertilisers they have an N:P:K ratio on the product packaging and you are looking for a much higher K number, a highish P and the lowest N (nitogen).
There are non-chemical ways of doing this. Banana skins are particularly high in potassium and can be composted down to make a high potassium feed. Compost made from general food waste is also higher in potassium but composting food can attract rodents. Adding wood ash to your compost heap can also raise the potassium levels – you can top dress the soil over the autumn and winter with wood ash where you plan to grow LabLab next year and the winter weather will break it down. Using Greensand is another option.
