Overwintering bean plants

[blueadzuki]

Hi All
Does anyone have any experience with how (common) bean plants handle overwintering indoors. To my surprise unlike most of my beans over the years (which at a certainly point, simply stop producing and curl up) Those few African plants I still have left (1 bantu, 3-4 fort portals) seem to be in a state of perpetual production, still cranking out flowers and pods on a near constant basis. So given that 1. they are still doing that 2. they are self pollinating, and 3. they are in pots (easy to transport) I was wondering if it might make sense to simply take the pots indoors once it gets cold, so as to have a supply of fresh green beans all through the winter. My searches over the web have been a little confusing; some sites seem to say that perennial P.vulgaris just plain don't exist (if you want perennial those sites say, grow runner). others seem to say they do, (such as something called the seven year bean). Anyone have any personal experience to clarify?

[zeedman]

If my memory serves me, I've heard the pole lima "Madagascar" referred to as the "seven year bean". Limas will over-winter if protected from freezing; I did so a couple times when I lived in San Diego. They are short-lived perennials. That was outdoors, though... vignas & common beans never made it.

In my experience, it would take a strong light source to grow common beans indoors. Given that, it might be worth trying... especially if it increases dry seed yield. Bringing pots in from outside might be problematic, though, especially mature plants. They tend to bring trouble with them. Two efforts of my own in recent years had minor infestations of aphids (on water spinach) and spider mites (on Egyptian spinach). Absent the predators which normally controlled them outside, both multiplied out of control, and caused me to terminate those experiments in mid-winter. Spider mites are pretty common on beans.

[Gianna]

A few years ago I grew a bush lima (seed from grocery store dry beans) that lived and were productive for over 2 years. Also in warm (frost free) Southern California. I finally had to pull them out because they simply were growing in the wrong place and had gotten kind of sprawly. I had no idea they would live that long. The vines tended to look better in winter - I suspect because of the natural rains.

[blueadzuki]

Well, I certainly know about the pest problem. For everal years, I had a pot of Clove/Tree Basil (Ocinum granitissimum) (which unlike most of the other basils, is perennial, it doesn't automatically senesce when the seeds are done) . Ever fall it would come in, and within a matter of weeks, it would get a devastating case of unshakable whitefly. one so bad that none of the standard whitefly treatments really made much of a dent in the population. it's spend the winter on the radiator, shedding curled up leaf after curled up leaf and infecting everything else (the reason I ultimately gave up after 3-4 years and let the thing freeze) come spring it would be a nearly dead, nearly leafless pile of sticks just barely clinging onto life, which would then take half the summer to spring back, such half the life it had left in it out to produce a new flower/seed flush, then go through the whole process again. In fact after about year 2 I'm not sure if the plant actually GREW anymore; it sort of reached a plateau where the net growth it would have had over the summer was consumed by what it lost over the winter.
There's actually one other problem to consider with regard to those two beans. Despite my best efforts the plants in the two pots have intertwined themselves between the pots, so getting them moved would probably some pretty good synchronized motion from me and my dad (the flowers are on the intertwined bits, so clipping them apart is a no-go) But I may still try; with no source for fresh Bantu seed, and the Bantu's being the best bean I had this year, the more seed I can pull out of the one I have left, the happier I'll be. Of course this may all be moot, for all I know these two are just unusually long season (I imagine a Ugandan bean could get away with that, in the full tropics (Fort portal is about half a degree from the equator), there really aren't any seasons to speak of, so what drives a plant to stop is unclear.) I did notice something that may indicate the plants ARE running out of steam; while the last flush of beans matured beautifully the seeds (especially on the Batu, dried down to only about half the size of the last batch). Though since the plants were also tangled up with each other, it could just be that the ones making seed now are different plants than those that made seed last time.)

[ottawagardener]

My understanding is that the 'seven year bean' was a runner but not sure?