Runner beans like it rich and deep. Their feet like to run through the soil finding the good stuff. If you want tender beans you need at least 38cm of topsoil or compost before you hit any sort of compaction and a good layer of mulch to keep their feet well fed and wet through the growing season.
Space plants 15cm apart with 45cm between rows. You need a further 1.5m between double rows. If you’ve limited space, use a wigwam. Runner beans grow up to 3m tall, so the support needs to be strong enough to take all that leaf and bean weight in the wind.
Or there are a number of dwarf varieties: the bicoloured ‘Hestia’ is my favourite, or ‘Jackpot Mixed’ (all the colours from red to peach), that grow fantastically well in pots and look lovely in flower beds. If grown in the ground they’ll need low support, otherwise the beans sit on the soil and get munched by slugs. You can also artificially dwarf tall cultivars by nipping out the growing tip of the plant when it’s about 20cm high and then nipping out any sideshoots after the second leaf. This will also promote earlier cropping.
We love runner beans so much in the UK that there has been endless breeding. You can have fire-engine-red flowered forms such as ‘Firestorm’ or ‘Scarlet Emperor’, or purest white such as ‘Czar’, ‘Moonlight’ (crossed with french bean for tenderness) or ‘Snowstorm’ (again crossed with a french bean), or bicoloured such as ‘Painted Lady’ or the patriotic ‘St George’ . I like the white and bicoloured best as they have white seed, which is much more attractive for drying. If runner bean flowers make your heart sing, try ‘Sunset’, a peachy glow of a flower, or ‘Celebration’, paler peach, both pretty enough to be in the flower garden.
Likewise the Real Seed Catalogue’s ‘Gigantes’, with its extra fat seeds, is perfect for slathering in tomato sauce. It’s still not too late to sow, particularly dwarf varieties that are quick to crop. Rather than get stuck with a whole row of the same variety, see if you can swap with friends. Red- or white-flowered forms mixed with a bicolour look particularly arresting.
Flower setting – after pollination when the flowers start to fruit – can be an issue. If they don’t set – usually caused by very hot, or very wet, windy or cold weather when bees don’t appear – you don’t get pods. In hot weather, watering in the evening will make a huge difference. Alternatively, ‘Firestorm’ and ‘Snowstorm’ are self-fertile varieties that set whatever the weather .
