On Fri, 7 Nov 2014 21:00:50 Ophelia wrote:



"David Rance" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 6 Nov 2014 15:11:17 Bigal wrote:

A good crop of runner beans thanks to a 5 year old bed of biochar.
(sorry, I just had to put that in.) So much so that I got fed up with
eating them, freezing them and picking them. I tell my neighbour to
help herself, but she is a bit loathed to do so. So I just let them
grow, thinking to shell them later to use the beans some other way. I
grew White Lady from saved seed, and a few weeks ago saved some more. No
black ones. During the shelling I found one that contained jet black
beans. In all my years of gardening I have never come across a black
bean before, and I don't ever recall my father doing so.. (Taking
account of the fact that the beans are eaten green).. By the time I
had finished shelling (between jobs) I had found a total of eighty.
Two of the pods were still joined on the flower stalk, which makes me
think that it was a single plant that produced them. Comments
please, and I am sure that it wasn't the black leaking out of the
biochar.

I have had some black runner bean seeds now for over ten years. They
originally grew from the usual two-coloured ones but I thought that
black was unusual so I selected them and now always grow them.

Occasionally they revert to the normal two-coloured seed but mostly
they are all black. And a pod of two-coloured seeds would come from
the same plant that produces the black ones.

I've no idea what variety they are.

Do they taste different and do they keep their colour when cooked?

No, they're exactly the same. Since we always eat them as young green
beans the seeds haven't yet got their mature colours. (This applies to
the normal coloured ones as well as the black.)

David

--
David Rance writing from Caversham, Reading, UK