Planting Runner Beans

Up till now, I have had my Runner Bean plants growing in pots. This way it is easier to protect them from weather and animals until such time as they are strong enough to fend for themselves. Now I have planted them out into one of my raised beds - the one in which I erected those 9-foot Hazel beanpoles.

The beans had certainly developed some good roots already! I had to gently tease them apart for planting singly.

I put one bean plant at the base of each pole, so that's 14 plants.

I like to plant my beans quite deep, so that their roots are well underground, where they will be cooler and will have better access to moister soil that has not been dried out by wind and sun. I usually set them so that the first pair of leaves is just above the soil surface.

Doing it that way also has the beneficial side-effect of making them less vulnerable to wind damage. Immediately after planting, I gave the beans a good drink of water, to settle their roots well into the soil and to lessen the transplant shock. It is normal for them to droop a bit after planting, but they usually pick up within an hour or two. Of course, if any of them fail to "take", then I always have plenty of spares waiting in the wings!

By the way, this year I have two varieties of Runner bean - "Scarlet Emperor" and "Painted Lady". The former has plain red (scarlet) flowers, but the latter has bicolor pink and white flowers.

While I'm on the subject of beans today, here's a couple of shots of a different type of bean. They are my Broad Beans (aka Favas). As you will be able to see, they are looking strong and are now producing lots of flowers.

The first row of plants has reached about half a metre in height, and the second row is at about 35cm.