I knew it! My winged bean plants needed some criticism to get them to start fruiting. Or perhaps they just wanted to be the first veggie babies of September, after being excluded from the list of August veg babies…

The great news is, the winged beans are finally forming!

Almost 2 metres up, this was probably the first four-angled bean to grow.

This was the first bean I saw, originally with the flower petals still attached to the bottom half. Yes, I pulled the petals off... :)

And this is a picture of the winged bean flowers, and a possible reason why the beans have taken so long to form - look closely at the flower on the right and tell me what you see...

So let’s just backtrack and see how long the kacang botol vine took to mature:

• Planted in late February
• Started flowering in early June (just over 3 months old)
• Set fruit in September (just about 6 months old)

Is that normal? I know that other people also wait a long time for the four-angled beans to start appearing, too. The good thing is, I’ve heard that these plants fruit prolifically, so perhaps that makes the wait worth it.

I’m so thrilled the beans are finally growing! I was consoling myself with the idea of seeing what the plant tubers will look like if it came to the point where I would cut down the useless vines. Now I can have both!

© 2011 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.