Outwitted by a runner bean

Earlier this year, before my runner beans had started to get a grip on their canes, I tried uncoiling them and recoiling the opposite way, ( whaddya mean get a life) they all without exception reverted back to coiling themselves anti clockwise looking from the top. Would they go the other way in Australia I wonder hmmm, now where did I put my medication.

 

:D:D

It is the same with Wisteria. The Chinese one goes ? and the Japanese one goes the other way. I can't remember which one went which way though.

Have you found your medication in the meantime, T Digger :D

 

You cant go against nature get a lile T Digger

 

Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one:o I tried it with Morning Glory. Then I read/saw somewhere that all plants have a natural "curling" direction and you can't change it. It's just a bit of a nuisance when young plants get blown off their supports and you can't work out which way to"curl" them back on the canes. I think it's got a posh name, something(phyto?) tropism

 

I need a life too then-I am constantly "helping" my clematis along.

 

I understand it to be following the sun.

So in the nothern hemisphere they go anti clockwise1

Not sure what they do if away from their roots though. Do they follow the sun or their genes?

 

So this is how you all unwind!:D:D

 

Cue Flanders and Swann song called 'Misalliance' on the subject.....

The fragrant Honeysuckle spirals clockwise to the sun
and many other creepers do the same
But some climb anticlockwise,
the Bindweed does for one,
or Convovulus, to give her proper name.
Rooted on either side a door
one of each species grew
and raced up to the window ledge above
Each corkscrewed to the lintel in the only way it knew
where they stopped, touched tendrils, smiled
and fell in love.

Said the right-handed Honeysuckle to the left handed Bindweed
'oh let us get married if our parents don't mind we'd
be loving and inseparable, inextricably entwined we'd
live happily ever after' said the Honeysuckle to the Bindweed.

To the Honeysuckle's parents it came as a shock,
the Bindweeds, they cried, 'are inferior stock,
They're uncultivated, of breeding bereft
We twine to the right and they twine to the left'.

Said the anticlockwise Bindweed to the clockwise Honeysuckle;
'We'd better start saving
Many a mickle mac's a muckle
Then run away on a honeymoon and hope that our luck'll
take a turn for the better', said the Bindweed to the Honeysuckle.

A bee who was passing exclaimed to them then;
'I've said it before and I'll say it again
Consider your offshoots, if offshoots there be,
They'll never receive any blessing from me'.
Poor little sucker, how will it learn
When it is climbing, which way to turn,
Right, Left, what a disgrace
Our it may go straight up and fall flat on its face.

Said the right-hand thread Honeysuckle to the left-hand thread Bindweed
'It seems that against us all fate has combined
Oh my darling, oh my darling
Oh my darling Columbine
thou art lost and gone forever
We shall never intertwine'.

Together they found them, the very next day
They had pulled up their roots and just shrivelled away
Deprived of that freedom for which we must fight
To veer to the left or to veer to the right.

Sorted
Robert

 

Runner Beans!!
Last year I grew some for the first time in yonks. I bought a very deep oblong plastic container, filled it with a layer of newspaper then alternate layers of well rotted manure and compost, I planted 8 beans and got a really satisfying result. Trouble was twould have been cheaper to buy them at the organic market!
This year, early June,I just heaved out half the compost and renewed it, planted ALL the beans I had left from last years packet, probably about 20, intending to chuck out the weakest. Well there were only 8 that grew! and all out of place to climb the canes I had erected, I tried to 'shift em over' but they wouldn't climb the frames, so I thought Soddit! leave 'em be. I have used half a container of Tomato fertiliser as I didn't grow them this year, and just kept watering. Well, they all found a cane of their own eventually and honestly this is the best crop of the 2 years, with no outlay!!!!
No, they don't taste of Tomato and are very green and a nice shape. Apologies to the purists XX Jan

 

Nice one Capney. You remind me a lot of my late, great and very much missed father-in-law. He knew all the old rhyming stories off by heart as well. All the grandkids used to sit and listen to them, enthralled.