[tosca100]

 Our neighbour was asking us what was wrong with his runner beans today, as they are producing few flowers and no beans, and very few last year. Unfortunately, these beans are not any old beans, they are descendants of his father's beans. His father died 48 years ago, and the beans have been collected every year since for sowing the next year. Now he is worried that this is the end of the line. He doesn't grow anything else, just the beans.

Can anyone give any wise advice? Or do you think this is the end of the line for his Dad's beans?

I wish he hadn't asked really.

[Aunt Sally]

A photo of his plants if you can, please.

Are his plants producing lots of leaves?

Has he changed the way he grows them in any way?

[tosca100]

A photo of his plants if you can, please.

Are his plants producing lots of leaves?

Has he changed the way he grows them in any way?

Will see what we can do. Thanks.

[azubah]

Could be due to the weather. If it goes sunny and warm they will produce flowers, but if we don't get any more summer he might be unlucky.

If he does not get any good seed off them he could try to keep the roots alive over the winter the same way as you might keep a tender fuschia or other plant which would not survive in the cold ground...ie before the first frosts pot some strongest ones up and keep them in a frost free place, and fairly dry, over the winter. Remove most of the top growth first, of course. They would sprout again next spring when it is warm enough.

[tosca100]

After prodding, OH says it has been three years that he has had very few beans, not  enough to eat really. He works shifts so I don't know when we will next catch him.

[azubah]

If they do not flower well on a regular basis, perhaps they are a poor variety and he would be better off without them.

[New shoot]

I think he will want to keep them as they are a family heirloom  

If they are declining in vigour, which is quite likely given they are such an old strain, he could try growing another similar looking variety with them to cross polinate them and bring some new genes into the mix.  I appreciate they will not totally be 'dad's beans' anymore, but it could help your neighbour keep this old strain going. A few seeds sown now should give him flowers to polinate the original beans before it is too late

[JayG]

Is it possible, as I think Aunty was hinting at, that in an increasingly desperate attempt to keep the "family heirloom" beans going he has been feeding them too much so they are producing much more leaf than flowers?

(Alternatively, are they growing so weakly they could perhaps do with a good feed?) 

[tosca100]

Thanks all. He is on nights so will peer through his fence when I take the hounds out.

I live three down from him and have loads of flowers, maybe the bees will do the business before the rain starts again. Meanwhile I will pop a couple of seeds in a pot to get going for him. As I said, we will speak to him when we can, but if he has grown them in the same spot for 48 years the ground may have given up I suppose, or he might have changed his fertilizer.

[azubah]

Aaah..you might have the answer there. The ground does get tired if it is over used and not fed properly.