Bean Help

Newbie here so please excuse my ignorance.

I have five runner bean plants in a large tub in my garden. All was going well, until I noticed that the bottom most flowers were disappearing, looked like they had been kind of bitten off at the stem. As the days go by more and more flowers and now I only have flowers at the tops of the plants. I am in fear of losing the whole damn lot.

Obviously some sort of pest is having a munch.

Do any of you good people have any ideas which pest it is, and how to eradicate it?

Thanks.

 

Bees? Really? The little B's .

Thats the last thing I would have thought of. I was thinking Black Fly or something similar.

Great help, thanks. Hopefully I can look forward to a heavy crop from the top two thirds of my plants then :D.

Thanks again.

 

BTW. What is the best feed for runner beans?

 

There does appear to be a few blackfly, but not a smothering by any means.

Thanks again.

 

All you do here Tuma is make up a solution of water and washingup liquid and put it in a spray bottle,then just spray directly on the blackfly although they won't disappear they will be dead.And that is the job done.

 

I planted nasturtuns next to my runner beans, 1 plant on each side (well I allowed one to grow and have been busily ripping seedlings out since as I just grew those there last year). They have the blackfly and the beans don't. I've seen the bees falling out of my beans and the flowers end up on the floor, but they've been leaving the higher flowers intact Good luck with the beans, it's my first time of growing veg this year and yesterday we had our fist beans with our dinner, they were lovely.

 

To me this seems more like the natural drop of unfertilised flowers. (could well be wrong though!) If they have not been pollinated they fall leaving nothing behind. If they have been pollinated an embryonic bean is left. This is a common problem and can be helped by watering in the evening and mist spraying in the early morning and evening.

The fact that you are growing the beans in a tub makes maintaining some dampness at the base of the plants more critical.

 

Although I advised Tuma to use the washing up solution, this year I planted sweet peas between my runners Dave W and that seems to be working well,as you say Dave if you attract the bees the rest sorts itself.

 

My beans plants don't look at all happy. In fact they look as though they are dying, leaves are withering, and where there should be fruit is kind of burnt, singed, black stubbly bits. Nearly all the flowers have dropped/turned black or shrivelled. I s'pose I have around a dozen beans on five plants.

There does appear to be life however, as new shoots are appearing.

I wish I hadn't bothered now

 

This sounds a sily question, but I'm going to ask it anyway ...

Does 'green' washing up liquid also kill blackfly? I've got some bean plants on the go and have just noticed a couple of clumps of blackfly.

 

OK - I'll answer my own question. Those pesky blackfly don't like it up 'em. Green washing up liquid it may be, but the blackfly would disagree.

If they were still alive.

Which they aren't.

Hurray.:D

 

Hi Dave. I read somewhere that `misting` is an old wives tale and that it doesn`t work. Any thoughts ? Cheers...freddy.