Rating runner beans

The girl looks puzzled when I give her a beige, dry pod that’s longer than her hand. Her eyes widen as she opens the pod and grins. “I’ve got magic beans,” she squeals to the other elementary students. Soon all the kids want runner beans to plant (and some to stash in their pockets). The beans are perfect for the school garden—the big seeds are easy for little fingers to plant, and later in the summer, the kids can hide in the green, flower—adorned teepees.

I love growing runner beans. The plants provide so much food and beauty that I feel my garden would be incomplete without them. Yet, runner beans aren’t ubiquitous in gardens, particularly market gardens. To share the joy, I’ll describe the many benefits of growing runners and provide tips on how to grow and harvest the plants. I’ll also let you know the results of my variety trial for SFC. I had the great fortune of comparing eleven (yes, eleven!) varieties of runners. Scarlet Runner is just one of several varieties of these amazing legumes.

First, a brief introduction: Runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus) is a separate species of bean, different from ‘regular’ green, string, wax or dry beans (P. vulgaris). It is technically a perennial but is usually grown as an annual crop. You can however, dig up the roots in the fall, overwinter them inside and plant them out the following spring. I’ve tried this but never found it as successful as just planting the beans each spring. 

Runners are the ultimate multi-purpose plant. From the roots to the flowers, they help improve the soil, provide habitat for hummingbirds and other pollinators, and add beauty to your garden. All parts of the plant are edible from the starchy roots to the leaves, from the flowers to the beans. (Disclaimer: I’ve never tried the leaves or roots and don’t know if those are simply edible or actually worth eating).

Why grow runners?

Here are several reasons to grow this crop—starting from the roots and going up.

Nitrogen-fixation. As with other legumes such as peas and clover, runner beans fix nitrogen. When you harvest the beans, you are, in a sense, removing much of this nitrogen, but there is still an advantage in that you don’t need to give the crop N (as fertilizer or organic soil amendment). It will fix enough N from the air to meet its own needs.

Ease of cultivation.  Runners tolerate cool soil better than the more common beans. I plant them later than peas but before I plant common beans. Soaking them for a couple hours before planting will speed up germination but if you do this, keep the soil moist until they emerge. 

Vining. The word ‘Runner’ in the crop’s name comes from the fact that it grows rapidly. Runners are vigorous climbers and can reach more than ten feet tall. If you don’t provide structures early enough, they will wrap around each other forming cords of twisted stems. This growth habit can be used to cover fences and provide shade and wind protection for other crops, such as summer and fall plantings of salad greens. 

I make bean teepees by pushing saplings (8-12 feet tall) in the soil all around my runner bed. I tie the tops together with jute or cotton twine. This structure is cheap (free), simple and can withstand gale-force winds. The beans often outgrow it and form a fringe over the top, but that isn’t a problem. Once the season is over and the beans are harvested, the biodegradable teepee can be put on the brush or compost pile.

Flowers. The colour of the gorgeous blossoms ranges from scarlet to salmon to white; they are definitely one of the most spectacular garden flowers. They’re also edible. What makes the flowers even more beautiful is how they attract hummingbirds. When I work in the garden near the runner beans, I constantly see and hear hummingbirds buzzing about. You play an important ecological role by planting runners. The flowers provide food for many wild pollinators, including bumblebees and hoverflies (which consume aphids and other garden pests).

Beans. The beans can be used at three stages. Young pods can be eaten like green beans. If they’re large (i.e., 8-12 inches long), take the time to remove the strings at the sides of the pods. As soon as you notice the beans starting to swell the pods, these will be too tough. Then it’s time to wait for the beans.

Once the beans fill out the pods, you can shell them (like peas) and use the fresh beans. Cook these and use them in bean salads or any recipe that calls for beans. Whatever you don’t use in the summer can be left to dry on the vine. With 7-10 large beans in a pod, it takes only a few minutes to shell enough for a meal. Dried runners are great for winter soups, chilis and stews. I treat them like other dried beans by soaking overnight, changing the water in the morning, bringing to a boil and then simmering until tender.

Varieties

Compared to common beans, there are not many varieties of runner beans. Many seed companies will just sell one or two types (and one will likely be Scarlet Runner).  It’s worth searching for other varieties to bring more colour into your garden. I compared 11 varieties of runner beans for Small Farm Canada that were available from Canadian seed companies. If you want to find more runners and more modern varieties (bred to be productive and stringless), check out British seed companies. To find Canadian sources of the following (and other runners), visit the Seeds of Diversity’s seed finder (seeds.ca/seedfinder), search for Runner bean (under ‘R’ not under ‘B’ for beans).

Performance

Ranked from my favourite to (shall we say) least appreciated:

Sadie’s Horse Bean had high yields of tasty beans. Both the beans and the flowers have a range of colours and patterns. It is a highly productive variety, said to have been saved by a family in North Carolina for more than 100 years. If you try to find seed for this, be sure you’re planting a runner bean. There is a variety of common bean with the same name and, just to confuse things, the term ‘horse beans’ usually refers to fava (broad) beans.

Black Coat dates back to at least 1654. It has deep red flowers and is a bit shorter than most of the others. This variety matures before all the other contenders in the trial--a particularly valuable trait if you want dry beans and have either a short season or wet falls. Black Coat has smaller pods with fewer beans per pod. Nonetheless it produces a heavy crop of delicious black beans. 

Celebration is an extremely high-yielding variety with tender green beans. It has salmon-coloured blossoms. 

Aintree is a modern variety with stringless pods. The flowers and beans look like those of Scarlet Runner but, compared to Scarlet Runner, Aintree’s pods (i.e., eaten like string beans) are more tender and the yields of pods and dry beans are higher.

Scarlet Runners are tall, productive heirloom plants. The beans are purple with black markings and the flowers are, you guessed it, scarlet.

Scarlet Emperors are very similar to Scarlet Runners. This traditional plant also has red blossoms and purplish-black beans.

Sunset has beautiful salmon or peachy-pink flowers with moderate yields of beans.

Painted Lady is another heirloom. It has multi-coloured flowers with red sections, white parts and

sometimes salmon or pink sections as well. The beans are tan with dark markings. I found this to be slightly shorter than most other varieties and the least productive of the full-size types.

White Half Runner is a shorter variety that is said to have white seeds and flowers. The seed I bought, however, seemed to have crossed with another runner. I had some plants with long runners reaching to six-feet tall whereas other plants were short and had almost a bush-type growth habit. Also, the ones I grew had both red and white flowers. It was also low-yielding.

Pickwick Dwarf and Dwarf Bees were similar and I’m ranking them the same. The idea of a dwarf runner bean sounded like a good idea. The plants won’t shade anything else in the garden and a teepee or trellis is not needed. These two varieties are highly productive given their small size (e.g., 2 feet tall). They are both covered with red blossoms early in the season and later have many beans. The problem was that the beans were almost as long as those of full-sized plants. As a result, most pods touched the soil or mulch. The plants produced many beans that then rotted or were eaten by slugs. I have since heard that these varieties do very well in pots.

Saving seed

It is incredibly easy to save seed from runner beans—just let the beans dry on the trellis or teepee and shell them. It is, however, very difficult to save true seed if you are growing more than one variety (or if your neighbour is growing a different type). Runner beans are pollinated by hummingbirds, bumblebees and insects that can carry pollen a long way. If you want to save seed that breed true the following year, you should ensure there is no other variety grown within a quarter mile.

Another option is to let them cross. I didn’t save seed the year I conducted the trial because I didn’t want to have any of the dwarf beans contribute to the gene pool. The following year, I planted out a number of my leftover seeds from my favourite five varieties. I had a beautiful mix of red, white and salmon-coloured flowers. I let them cross and saved the colourful seed (for both winter stews and spring planting). From now on, I’ll keep saving seed from my mixture of plants and selecting for the characteristics I care about, including earliness, high productivity, great flavour and tender texture. 

— Janet Wallace