Patridge bantam chicken poorly foot?

[Rona]

I chopped off my runner beans at the end of last year but left the roots in as someone told me they will set nitrogen in the soil if you leave them for a while. What with one thing and another I didn't get round to clearing them out to plant anything else and they've all grown back again this year. Although they didn't appear until after I planted out this year's plants, they have grown away really strongly and are doing better that the plants I grew from seed this year.

Anyone else been able to keep their beans going from year to year?

[Lesley]

Well done! - even if it was unintentional How lovely to have free goodies like that!

[chickencam]

There is an old chap on our allotments who does this every year.

 

We only grow climbing french beans Cobra I wonder if it would work with them too?

[Valkyrie]

My FIL did that one year with the same results as you. We both had a go the following year but without much success and neither of us has tried again. I think it depends on the winter weather too and if it is a particularly wet winter/spring, they tend to rot. I have clay soil, so it always holds too much water in winter, regardless of how fine the soil has become now. Nowadays I dig a great big trench and fill it with the previous years roots and kitchen waste then cover it over a few weeks before planting out. This year the runners are again pitiful, although they were very healthy early on with plenty of flowers - blackfly has been a constant pest despite many baths of washing up water! However the French beans are doing very well!

[Mutrix Farmers]

I did a smilar thing with a chilli growing in a pot in the greenhouse. I just didn't get round to throwing the plant away at the end of the summer after I picked all the chillis off. I noticed a month or so later that it still looked green so nurtured it through the winter to see if it would bear fruit the following year - which it did!

[Matthew]

I did a smilar thing with a chilli growing in a pot in the greenhouse. I just didn't get round to throwing the plant away at the end of the summer after I picked all the chillis off. I noticed a month or so later that it still looked green so nurtured it through the winter to see if it would bear fruit the following year - which it did!

 

Chillis and sweet peppers will always crop second year if you can get them through the winter