Beck's runner bean project (P. coccineus)

I would like to save seeds and work toward a vigorous and productive runner bean for my local gardening conditions. I may eat some fresh but primarily want them for storing as dry beans. Runner beans always seem to struggle to set and mature pods for me in our hot summers, so I'm hoping these might produce something for me to save from in the first year and build toward more productivity.

Here's what I'm starting with:

British Pop runner beans from Adaptive seeds: P. coccineus. A genetically diverse mix of British-type runner beans including Tenderstar, Prizewinner, White Emergo, and Polestar and more, adapted to the PNW. Long green pods, beautiful large beans in purple, tan, white and black with some mottling and speckling. Good for eating as fresh green beans, fresh shelled or dry beans. May also have better cold tolerance than other beans.

Scarlet runner: P. coccineus. A diverse North American heirloom. Slightly smaller green pods and beans, black with red mottling or tan with black speckles. Perennial often treated as an annual in northern climates. Sometimes grown for flowers, so hopefully it is not a low-yielding line but either way it may be able to donate pollen.

Some thoughts,
I know beans don't exactly cross at high rates but I hope it might be high enough. I don't think I want to try hand pollinating them. There are a lot of bees, hummingbirds and other pollinators in my garden, so I'm hoping they can help me out and that might help the natural crossability to come out, so to speak.  

I've read you can dig up the roots of scarlet runner and store them over the winter, replanting in the spring for a plant that bears flowers and pods much sooner. I may try saving the roots from my favorite plants and replanting them the next year. Over time this might end up selecting for plants with better storing / more perennial qualities and would also result in backcrossing to my favorite plants.

There are bush beans in my garden as well but P. vulgaris and P. coccineus are not likely to cross and I don't think I need to worry much about this?

I'm open to any thoughts or discussion about this! I'll try to post pictures and progress over time here too.

It's too late for this year, but maybe next year you could add in a packet of the mixed coccineus beans from Going to Seed: https://goingtoseed.org/products/bean-runner-2025 for even more diversity.

And I think runners cross-pollinate more readily than do common (vulgaris) beans.

I tried scarlet runners last year even though I'd read that they don't set well in heat. Not wanting to just believe any old thing I find on the internet, I decided to try it out directly for myself. Unfortunately... on this one the internet was correct.

The summers here scorch hard - high 30s celsius (that's around 100 F) every day. The vines grew well and flowered profusely. They're quite pretty and the bees were all over them, but there was no pod set at all. As of aug 1 there wasn't a single bean on a teepee of 16 vines, even though they were 10 or so feet tall by then. But then the weather suddenly cooled off, with the daytime highs being low 30s C (85-90ish F) instead. Immediately they began to set pods. Heavily. Got enough off the last couple feet of vine growth for a couple pots of chili, but if they had set like that from the start of flowering then the harvest would have been massive.

So they're already a marginal crop here, and with things heating up their future prospects aren't good. A heat-tolerant runner bean that doesn't quit setting above 30c/85f would be the holy grail of legumes!

Christopher, thank you for sharing that source, I wasn't aware of them. Those beans look really interesting, the dark tan with the brown flecks are really striking! That's definitely a promising future addition to the mix.

Mike, thanks for sharing your experience. A harvest just as the season cools off sounds promising, actually.

improving a marginal crop a little bit sounds good to me. Maybe nothing comes of it but I gain nothing if I don't try. I may have to try growing for more than one growing season to get mature seed but if I do, it should already be somewhat improved for growing in my garden.

That would indeed be the holy grail! One can hope, haha.

These photos show the diversity of colors and patterns in my starting population of 'British Pop' mix from Adaptive seeds.

I find them really appealing, and they leave me dreaming of bean salad....