perennial runner beans

Hi again after a long gap due to illness!
I had runners galore this year coming up from the old roots. Mainly due to ill-health I haven't pulled them up for 2 years now and some re-grow. They seem to be more resistant to blackfly and for each old plant you get about 6.
I shall let them go again this year and see if any infection/virus develops but it has saved all the faff of seeds and my freezer is full for no effort at all!

Nice to see you back, Vietta!

I'd totally forgotten about leaving plants to regrow!

I think, years ago, I just dug up some roots and kept them safe over winter, rather like begonias etc, to get them going again, but I really can't recall what happened!

One year when I grew runners up a circular wigwam I just pulled the canes out when they'd finished and left the bines and roots in place.

Because my compost bins were full I chucked all my additional green waste on top of the bines and just left it there over winter.

On moving the waste into the bins late the following spring I was amazed to find that all the runners had produced shoots, and not just one shoot per plant, but 4, 5 or even more.

Unfortunately that was also the year I decided to build a 'permanent' Munty frame for future runners, so they had to go - no obvious reason they wouldn't have done well except of course that it wouldn't have been possible to renew the thick layer of compost underneath where they were planted.