greyhound wrote: ↑Thu Apr 02, 2020 2:11 pm
planting runner bean seeds in pots never worked for me, the best way to start them off
is to fill a clear plastic bag with dampened down compost, put the amount of
beans you need plus a couple extra ones in tie the top and put it on your window sill,
in no time they will start germinating then plant them in pots until time to plant out.
guaranteed to work.
Couple of tips that have worked well for me this year. I only have a small garden, but grow lots of runner beans and the last few years, many tomato plants. Last year i tried a new variety of Runner Bean e.g Firestorm. Purchased at a very reasonable price from Amazon, planted them in compost in pots and after around 3 weeks on being on my window sill, nothing happening whereas my normal old faithful ''Scarlet Emperor'' was doing ok in same compost, same sort of ports on same window sill. Went onto the Amazon site and many reported the same problem. I happened to mention this to my 91 year old cousin who said ''Did you soak them in water for a couple of days before planting them, if not then give that a try'' Well I took the beens OUT of the pots and soaked them in water for 2 days, re-planted them in the compost pots and low and behold, all starting to come up within a week with around 9 out of 10 coming good, result ! Done the same this year using Runner seed, some from dried pods of from 2 or 3 years ago kept at end off the growing season and yes after planting after a 2 day soak in water, again coming along nicely ! Same goes for tomatoes, took ages for them to come up last year and not many came up in proportion to amount of seeds planted, so this year, around 2 to 3 months ago I purchased a pack of ''Money Maker'' seeds from Lidl for only 29 pence, said 80 seeds on the packet and read on the net about soaking them before planting, so I thought I would give that a try, well tipped the seed into a cup, well covered them with water for one day, then removed the seeds from the cup via a tea strainer into 20 little peat filled pots. OMG, within a few days they germinated so quickly, problem though, around DOUBLE amount of around 150 little plants came up " Oh well getting ready now to move into bigger pots, shame non of my neighbours are interested in having a few of these tomato seedlings, gave away large pots in the pots of fairly large plants and both neighbours let them die through lack of water !