The Weather Where We Are: Holland

(from Granta this fall, by Maarten ‘t Hart)

    Here, in Holland, there is only one plant from which one can make reasonable deductions about climate change: the broad bean. The broad bean likes the cold and you have to plant it early. But not too early, because then it will rot in the damp, chilly soil. Years ago I used to plant it in the clay soil in my garden around the middle of March and harvest it in the middle of May. If I planted it a bit later to make sure it wouldn’t be defeated by cold and damp weather, it would grow well but then there was a risk that black bean-aphids would destroy it at the beginning of June. The black bean-aphid is a cruel organism. It appears suddenly in the tops of the beanstalks. Only ten or so on the first day, but an aphid becomes a grandmother overnight, so there are another hundred aphids the next day and ten thousand the day after that. Soon, large, jet-black squirming aphids completely cover the plants and transform them into cheerless phantoms.
    Planting the broad beans early prevents the aphids from striking. The beans are mature before the aphids show themselves. And if an aphid does appear, I can eliminate it by ruthlessly pinching the tops of the plants.
    What have I learned in the past seven years? That planting my broad beans in March is too late. Black bean-aphids will reliably appear at the end of May when the beans are still growing. What has also become apparent to me is that broad beans can be planted earlier, at the end of February–something that was impossible in the past. And even then I have to watch out for aphids because, since the weather in May is warmer and drier than it was, say, fifteen years ago, they show themselves much earlier and in greater numbers.
    Due to my experience with broad beans, I believe it is possible to speak of a subtle and irreversible change in the climate. By the end of February the soil has warmed up to the point that broad beans can be planted, and by the end of May it has been so much warmer in the intervening period than in the past that black bean-aphids are appearing earlier than before. Yet we must keep an open mind. The aphids may have mutated to the point that they begin to reproduce earlier. Perhaps we are planting better quality broad beans which can stand the cold and damp bettter than the kind we used to plant? Nevertheless I cling to the view that climate change is responsible for this revised strategy for the successful raising of broad beans. I’m going to buy a houseboat.

(translated by Michiel Horn)