Non-climbing borlotti beans

[onetriangle]

Hi,

My first post! Only one growing season under the belt. Plenty of good results but plenty of lessons learnt and desperately needy of advice. Grateful for any help on this:

I tried growing borlotti beans last year and liked them. So want to try again this year. But I expected them to climb and they....didn't. They just sat there about 10" high...plenty of pods for the size of plant but just squat things. They were Lingua di fuoco, I think. Are these supposed to climb and if so has anyone any ideas please on why they might not have?

Thanks!

[zazen999]

Some do, some don't.

Whose seeds were they? Ie T&M, suttons, etc etc

[VirginVegGrower]

I grew dwarf, as in non climbing. There might be clues on the packet.

[onetriangle]

Aha, right, found the old packet and yes, there are clues! So it's T&M and it is billed as "Climbing Bean Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco (Firetongue)". So I'm guessing there must be something wrong in my technique here!

[zazen999]

Did they have something to climb up? If they did, and they didn't wind round it and climb, then the seeds were not climbers. Probably a bad batch [a dwarf batch] from the supplier.

I'd ask for a replacement pack of seeds.

[onetriangle]

Yes, they had a trellis plus some split canes and twines to get them up to the base of the trellis. I tried winding them onto the canes over and over but they just weren't up for it.

Thanks for advice. I've bought some new seed from Suffolk Herbs so hopefully these will do better!