[VegPlotter]

Hi Everyone

I've been reading the topics here in grow your own for a while but this is my first time posting as i've searched the archive and can't seem to find the answer.

This is my first year growing 'Masterpiece Green Longpod'.  The plants have been growing tall and strong and it's had plenty of flowers.  Had plenty of bees around them in May and i've kept them well watered.  I seem to have good healthy beans forming at the bottom (now about 4inch long) but further up the flowers either have small shrivelled looking beans or very dried out flowers with no beans.  What's going wrong??

I am growing the vegetables in my garden and have rows of broad beans in 2 different areas but both seem to be effected.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Julia

[Yorkie]

Don't know but welcome to the site 

[Goosegirl]

Don't know your locality but all I can think of it that it could be the cold winds we have been having. Having said that, I live on the flat and don't have much between my beans (Bunyard's Exhibition) and Ireland but they are ok (so far). How about giving them a good feed.

[Gandan57]

Have you pinched out the tops of your plants? As your beans sound similar to mine.

When mine started flowering, I didn`t pinch out the tops and they then grew maybe another18 inches and some are now five feet tall. More flowers appeared on this spurt of growth but they are behind the earlier ones. So now I have pods low down that are days away from picking, but higher up the pods are only just forming.

Like yours some of the top flowers may not form pods at all, but I regard any as a bonus because if the tops had been pinched out that growth would not be there.

[4th season allot]

Its normal to pinch the tops out to stop blackfly attack [they like the new shoots].
Pinching tops out encourages more stems to grow from ground level from same bean.
Each stalk can only feed a limited volume of beans . Broad beans are prone to snapping off at ground level in high winds.