Kitchen Garden Forum

This year after harvesting the runner beans I intend trying an experiment.
I remembered when I used to dig being surprised by the huge tubers they produced, and so looked it up and they are indeed perennial though usually treated as annuals. As I mulch well with straw and grass clippings I have decided to try and overwinter them with a thick mulch and see what happens. Wondering if anyone else has tried this?

Have a read at this thread from last year

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7622

LOL Thanks Alan, just a thought ! Obviously they don't transplant very well and frost could be a problem. Like Plumpudding I have a rogue plant growing in my potatoes this year, a turks turban squash , it made its way through the potato bed and romped over the rhubarb and into the strawberry bed! A seed from the compost that found it's niche in the garden, lots of squash growing too !

A friend has had great success in over-wintering runner beans. She does it to save rare heirloom varieties, especially if she has only a little seed left. She grows the root ball in nylon hair nets then, in autumn, lifts the nets into a pail of damp sand and keeps them above freezing in her garage in a covered bucket.

She says, it works.

A word of warning: never eat the roots of runner beans. (Easily done.) They are fiercely hallucinogenic.

Thank you John, might give it a try with next years beans maybe an earlier crop too? Though hair nets are hard to come by these days, lol.