I wasn’t able to find a 2025 thread for runner beans, so here’s a place to share reports for your GTS and other runner bean projects.
I just planted a diverse mix of runner beans including the 2025 GTS mix, the British Pop mix from Adaptive Seeds, two varieties from an awesome local seed grower, and some others I had collected over the years. This is my first year growing an intentionally diverse mix fully interplanted, and I’m looking forward to the beautiful chaos.
I split the seeds I have from each of these sources and shared a package with a friend to grow nearby and we’ll end up swapping seeds of the survivors.
It’s about 2-3 weeks early for direct seeding runner beans here in Seattle, but I figured I’d push my luck and exert selection pressure for cool soil germination and vigor. I was inspired to start now because a couple of runner bean tubers I overwintered as an experiment in my garden shed started to grow again a few weeks ago and I needed to plant them out to prevent them from getting root bound.
There’s been a very high demand for runner beans in the Seed Share Program, so we encourage everyone to return some of your saved seed this year.
This year my farm is growing a 100 ft row of runner beans to increase the seed stock for Going to Seed. The seed we’re using is roughly half from the 2025 GTS Mix, with more diversity from a few other sources. We are in particularly cool, damp zone in Corbett, OR, and we tend to wait to plant until the soil is 65-70 degrees F (18-21 deg C), which is mid-May to early June for us.
I’m very excited to include seed that Anna shared from the USDA GRIN collection. These varieties were collected in the 1970s in Mexico and Guatemala, pictured below. Some very interesting traits, little small beans, some larger ones, beautiful colors and shapes, and some with attractive little dimples.
I’m also including some seeds from @KayEverts who is nearby and has her own collection of diverse runner beans. Will take some photos of those soon. And also including just a few of our own collection which is a diverse mix of black and white runners:
Thanks, @suffling . I think paying closer attention to soil temperature is an area where my gardening could stand to improve. I’m always impatient to get things started in the spring and our damp maritime soils are slow to warm. There’s a balance between pushing the envelope and just throwing seeds away, hopefully I still get decent germination this year.
Here’s the final seed stock I’ll be planting for the GTS seed increase. Hopefully some of these traits will be seen in next year’s Seed Share mix. The population is composed of this most recent GTS Seed Share runner mix, selections from @KayEverts, and a few of my farm’s black and white grexes. The following populations were added at some point, some of which are diverse collections themselves:
Going to Seed mix, Sadie’s Horse, British Pop (Adaptive Seeds), Lofthouse Landrace Special, White Emergo, Royal Corona, Spagna Bianco, Moltovanesti Buffalo, Scarlet, Black Coat, 5 different USDA GRIN accessions from Mexico and Guatemala. I suspect that Sunset and Painted Lady were also included at one point, and likely a handful of others.
Update: despite sowing so early, I’m seeing good germination that started about 2 weeks after planting. Just measured soil temperature at 59 degrees F. Hopefully they have enough vigor in these cooler spring temperatures to outrun the snails and slugs. We’ve had pretty consistent favorable warm sunny days so I may have just gotten lucky this year.
Exactly that one, outrunning the slugs is difficult in cold temperatures. I have made mini greenhouses out of transparent bottles, just cut the bottom off with a sharp knife on the rim and leave the bottle off. The best are stronger bottles, then you can wriggle turn them into the soil.
Not landracey at all, i know. But it saved my harvest and that meant sharing with others as well.
Well, it’s been a month since first germinations and despite a decent amount of sunny weather, soil temperatures have barely nudged higher. Overall, the runner beans are doing decently considering their circumstances.
Out of 38 seeds originally sown, I’ve lost 4 plants. Another 7 have been damaged by snails and slugs but may yet make it as they’re starting to send up vines above the carnage zone. The remaining 27 are all healthy and starting to put on more vigorous growth. I seeded densely, so ~70% survival is perfectly acceptable even if the others don’t fully recover.
I’m looking forward to a wall of diverse runner beans this summer. Can’t wait to see the variations in color and form and return seed for the 2026 mix.
Starting my runner beans so early has led to a wide range of plant sizes as there was a lot of variation for early vigor in cool conditions. Right now nearly all the plants appear healthy, and the earliest are starting to flower, but heights range from about 1 ft (30cm) to 6ft (180cm).
Because it’s my first year growing these varieties, I’ll save seed from most that produce, but I’ll end up with a lot more from the more robust plants.
I love that you were able to over winter some runner beans i have been trying that by mulching with straw to no luck, considering making a cold frame for them… did you just dig up and move them to your shed? Im up on orcas so you’re only so slightly warmer than me! Lovely to see that fast germination in cold weather, ive found that with the bond and Scarlett runners before!
Yes, I over-wintered three plants on a lark before the first hard frost in December. I just pulled them up by hand and trimmed the stems + roots back and put them in a gallon pot with moist garden soil. It was kind of a rough process and some of the roots were damaged in the process. I would be gentler if I did it again. I left them in my garden shed until they started to send out fresh shoots in March, only bringing them inside for a couple days when we had daytime highs in the mid-20s F.
Interestingly, only one of the three survived transplanting and has put on fresh growth, and it was much slower to start growing even though the stems emerged before my direct seeded plants had germinated. It did send out three separate stems that are each about the median height when compared to all my plants (~2.5 to 3 ft). I’ll be curious to see if it catches up to the most vigorous seedlings later on. The other two roots had live growth points visible when transplanted but never came up.
I think the better goal is what you’ve been attempting. Getting them to overwinter in place without damaging the roots or transplanting might give them more of a head start over direct seeding.
