In article ,
Farmer Giles wrote:

Runner beans would be my choice. Easy to grow, fewer pest problems and
crops for a couple of months at least - and you can also save your own
reliable seed. What can beat that?

Nope. Sorry. In dry or cold summers, they crop very badly.
Both broad and French beans are more resistant to dry conditions.

But Moonraker's points are also good - you can't eat their tops
as a first crop, and you have to start boiling them well as soon
as the beans inside mature. You can also save and dry (and eat!)
both broad beans and runners.

I disagree, and I've been growing them for forty years - most years with
an excellent crop. It's largely a matter of opinion, of course, but I
don't believe that French beans are anywhere near as good eating as
runner beans. And broad beans are ok if you want to produce tons more
composting material than food!

The OP was excluding taste, and I much prefer French to runner.
However, let's stick to the facts.

I am afraid that you are simply wrong - runners do crop very badly
in dry or cold summers. Many people around here do well, but my
soil is 60% sand, and I don't get a decent crop more than two years
out of three (and perhaps not that). That's over 34 years. The
reason that you and others haven't seen the problem is that dry
summers are relatively rare in the UK, and relatively short dry
spells (a few weeks) will cause trouble on only a few soils,
and when the evaporation is high. The same conditions make it
impractical to grow most salad crops, spinach etc. But the
executive summary is that runner beans do NOT always crop for a
couple of months.

Also, you can't eat runner bean tops the way that you can eat
broad bean tops.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.