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Scarlet Runner

Richard Bell’s Wild West Yorkshire nature diary Sunday, 3rd August 2008

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THE SCARLET RUNNERS, growing on a wigwam in the large bed, are just starting to produce small beans but we’ve already had a boiling from the white-flowered borlotti beans, which we’re growing up a garden arch across the path, which is a way of saving the space taken up by a wigwam of canes. Borlottis can be used when young like runner beans, they can be left until the beans develop and you can eat them like broad beans or you can dry the beans for storage in jars to add to soups and casseroles. You could leave one plant to let the pods fully develop and then save the beans for planting for next year’s crop.

The Sutton broad beans, planted in the autumn to provide a slightly earlier crop are still producing pods. The Sutton is a miniature broad bean, suitable for smaller plots. We thought they might be a bit disappointing at first, as the plants were so small at about a foot high, rather than two feet or more, but they’ve cropped for a month or two and the beans are tender.