Recommendations for Runner Beans

[oxbowfarm]

I've no idea. Certainly bees are attracted to white flowers, but I've seen pictures that show how visibly white flowers are often patterned in ultra-violet spectra that bees can see and we cannot. I doubt runnerbeans are so decorated whatever the color they show us, but maybe a white flower would be enough? It seems like it would be worth a trial.

[raymondo]

I'll checkout some white flowered cultivars for next spring.

Edit: Found one called White Dutch. Anyone tried this one?

[Walk]

Our white-flowered and white-seeded runner variety is Grammy Tilley. I've seen both bumble bees and hummers working the blossoms. Since runners prefer cool weather to set pods, they did poorly in last summer's heat, despite the abundance of both bees and hummers in the garden. I hope I can increase our seed stock this year.

[diane]

After the discussion here about Insuk's Wang Kong, I bought a package at Seedy Saturday today. There is a sample bean taped to the package - a small bean.

I have been reading a long thread about this bean on the gardenweb forums. It includes the history of the bean by the Korean man who helped name it after his wife.

Everyone getting seeds commented on how huge the seeds were. I figured my seeds must be wrongly named. Then one person wrote that his big seeds were 2 cm long. Well, maybe I do have the right seeds because that is how long mine are.

[12540dumont]

This is an Insuk's Wang Kong runner, it is perennial and comes back from the root.
This is it's second year in this same location.

Hummers and buzzers, bumblers flock to this gal.

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[12540dumont]

This is a Tarahumara Runner. As you can see, it's all red and very short.
Still loaded with bumblebees. Also it's second year.

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[davida]

Feb 17, 2013 15:35:54 GMT -5 12540dumont said:

This is a scarlet runner, it is perennial and comes back from the root.
This is it's second year in this same location.

Hummers and buzzers, bumblers flock to this gal.

Beautiful!!! How tall is the fence/trellis?

[12540dumont]

This is Bianchi di Spagna, big white flowers! Huge white beans.
(Solstice Seeds). This is also it's second year, without replanting.

All runners cross only with other runners. If you worked really hard at it you might get to cross with something else, but that's way too much work for me. I now have a cross between several runners, and I think the Blackcoat that I got from Ox is also making big fat roots. The beans that come back from roots, fruit much quicker than the ones that come from seed.

The beans are so big they are a mouthful all by themselves.

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[blueadzuki]

Out of curiostiy (since I will probably be ordering it myself) has anyone tried the Georgian Runner bean I linked to at the beginning of this thread, and if so, what did they think of it's performance?

[ilex]

Of the few I've tried, the best performer by far was Tarahumara Bordal.