The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Bean counters There are so many varieties, here’s my pick
WITH rain, frost and occasionally snow this spring, runner beans seem a remote possibility. How can you think of sowing beans that’ll be ready to plant out in a fortnight? Even my fairly hardy peas are struggling. But hope springs eternal in the gardener’s dreams. Unlike April, May might not be the 3rd coldest one in a century, after all.
Selecting a variety is always challenging, with so many available. Do you go for your tried and tested or experiment? I like to do both since novelty doesn’t necessarily guarantee success and what works in one garden could disappoint in others. And how you plan to use the crop matters.
What are your priorities: a heavy yield, speedy growing, taste, or number of beans to a pod for storing?
The season and your individual garden determines most of that, but Which? Gardening regularly runs trials and you could find the results useful. Nearby friends can often recommend what works for them.
Traditional old ‘Scarlet Emperor’ comes up trumps every year for me, so it’s about to be sown. But I also like the sound of ‘Celebration’. It has won the RHS Award of
Golden Merit, crops heavily and has attractive, uniform, tasty pods.
But does it also have a decent crop of podding beans? I’ll give it a go, but keep the trusty ‘Emperor’ in reserve.
And there’s the vexed question of whether to make space for French beans. I reckon they’re much tastier, but unfortunately visiting deer think so too, though they eschew the runners.
Selfishly, I now keep the beans to myself in the more secure front garden, rather than the open kitchen garden.
A new runner/French bean cross such as ‘Snowstorm’ may prove my salvation and it is self-fertile so copes with a wet season when fewer pollinators are around. I prefer large root trainers to pots as bean roots rapidly emerge from the bottoms of pots.
Although beans all grow fast, it should be safe to sow now and miss any late frost.
Runners in their native South America are perennials and happily grow to at least 6 metres (nearly 20ft), but if you want to reach the crop, keep your bean structure to no more than 6ft-6ft 3ins. Nip out the leaders when they reach the top and this will also encourage lower side-branching.
Limiting the height of beans prevents a top-heavy, clump of vegetation.
This is destabilising, especially if using a pyramid-style bean structure, with 6’ x 6’6” canes converging at the top.
The more traditional design has 2 parallel lines of canes with others crossing mid-way up and secured by 2 horizontal canes, above and below the crossing point. Canes arranged diagonally along the lower outer half of the vertical canes prevents the structure from swaying.
What of an unwanted bumper crop? You can’t easily freeze a surplus as home-frozen beans are often pretty rubbery because you can’t get the temperature low enough, fast enough.
I reduce the size of the crop in three ways.
Firstly, harvest beans when small – 10-12cm, tender and very tasty. Secondly, snip off some of the flowers on a sunny day and use as garnish for a salad.
Thirdly, from mid-August onwards, I find it harder to see all the pods and some become long and stringy. Leave them to swell and grow beans and just eat the tender little pods.
Letting plants produce seeds reduces yield, but does that matter if you’ve too many pods in the first place?
And you’ll get an excellent second crop from the plants. I stick freshly shelled beans straight in the freezer – they are perfect for winter soups and stews.