The message OPLoc.36$sh.26@newsfe6-win
from "Butterfly" contains these words:

Thank you for all the lovely, warmhearted and helpful replies - I always
knew that gardners were lovely people! this is obviously a newsgroup I shall
want to stick around and enjoy - hello everyone!

Hello Butterfly. Do stick around.

Runner beans benefit from a rich soil, and need quite a lot of it.

Might I suggest that you get a planter and fill it with potting compost,
having mixed in some bone meal, some hoof and horn, some bits of old
woollies and if you have it or can get some, well-rotted animal manure?
Carefully place the contents of your existing pot in the middle and make
a 'wigwam' from three tall canes and tie them at the top. Three canes
may be more than you need, but the wind can wreak havoc with single ones
when it has a top-hamper of beanvine.

You can grow catch-crops of things like radishes in the top of the
planter, and at the end of the year, as runner beans are very tender
perennials, either take the planter into a shed or greenhouse and allow
it to almost dry out, or dig up the root and store it in dry sand in an
open polythene bag. (or it will go mouldy)

Next year, it will throw up several shoots, and you'll get beans in
profusion, and much earlier. The longer you can do this and keep the
frost from it, the bigger the root will become and the denser the patch
of bean vines each spring.

You will get beans even from a vine in a smallish pot, but the smaller
the pot, the more you will have bonsai beans.

--
Rusty
Open the creaking gate to make a horrid.squeak, then lower the foobar.
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