Hi Nancy,

Runner beans use pollen from other runners at a high rate making crosses likely. I only grow one runner per year. Bianco di Spagna did well here in Graham WA in 2009 except that the direct seeded plants were cooked by the July heat and did not set many pods. Those started in pots set a lot of pods before the heat kicked in.

A couple of common beans that cross excessively are Goose/Ma Williams and Jeminez with its various spellings.

Dick

I've grown Anellino Stortino di Trento Striped a couple times. It is not a pole bean. It is more of a half runner. It tastes good, but I did not get a good harvest from them either time. It was hot both years. Maybe they would do better in your climate?
Remy

uncle steve is an italian pole bean i got from my great uncle steve. he was very italian, being born in sicily. it has grown very well in the detroit area where i grew up, and did alright in the U.P the 10 years i lived there. the season up north was just long enough for me to save seeds. some years, it was close. it will take cooler weather better than the hot weather found in the south or deep south. meraviglia di venezia did well in the north and has done ok here in lower michigan. its early for a pole bean, and should probably do well enough for you. garrafal oro did well the one year i grew it in the U.P. i'm sure it will do well where i'm at now. i grew green anellino a time or two. it did ok in lower michigan. i gave it up for beans i liked better. most pole beans will take cooler weather better than hot. production pretty much shuts down during the high heat summer weather, and will pick up again later in the year if you keep them watered enough.

keith

Thanks, Keith, I really like the Uncle Steve's you sent me. The first year I grew it the yields were incredible- I was overjealous in saving seed and should have eaten more. I'm just curious about some other Italians as well. I've seen some good comments about special taste and texture in the anellino beans. I've heard negative comments about Marvel of Venice getting tough and wonder if that is the general impression.

In the PNW we never really see night temps consistently above 50*F, some parts of the country can't imagine that I suppose. So heat is not a problem really, though we have made it up to 100*F daytime for 2-3 days at a time a couple of times a summer. The IWK does great here, since runner beans like cool temperatures. I gave up on growing cowpeas and limas since I think they need a lot of heat, and I have the impression yard long beans do too.

i would not agree that marvel of venice gets tough unless people are just waiting too long to pick them. picked when the pods just start to swell, they are fine. kinda like the uncle steve beans. i've grown them 5 or 6 years now. my wife reminds me to grow those big yellow beans each year.

keith

Keith are your Marvel of Venice black seeded or white seeded? Are the seeds flat or kind of roundish?

DrLoyd I've grown Ma Williams many times without crossing. Maybe there is a more aggressive pollinator in your region that likes the flowers of that bean?

mine are white seeded. purchased from seeds from italy. more flat than round i'd say.

keith

Comparing the white seeded to the black seeded Marvel of Venice is one variety earlier then the other? Comparing pictures of these two varieties they pretty much look the same.

Annette

Well, I bit the bullet and ordered from Gourmet seeds, I decided to try the pole black-seeded Marvel of Venice and yellow Anellino beans, and the rest bush beans since I already have the Uncle Steve, Super Marconi, and lots of runner beans to take up my trellises, and also Grandma Robert's Purple Pole beans which do great in short seasons, cooler temps, and yield great.

Bush beans I ordered are-

Bush Snap Bean Garrafal Enana
Bush Snap Bean Marconi Black Seeded
Bush Snap Bean Speedy ORGANIC

The last one was a mistake I didn't catch when ordering, their webpage is very confusing since the order box closest to the entry belongs to the one above and I mis-ordered, it was supposed to be bush Marvel of Venice nano.

Oh well, I hope Speedy is good. I usually use Contender for an early bean. I'm going to grow more bush beans this year but will probably plant them in chicken wire boxes since the voles were especially terrible last year. I hope the bush Garrafal Enana can compare with the pole bean. Beans are getting more ground since last year was such a terrible tomato year, very cold in June and July, and I'm tired of fighting the weather and building structures.

Can't a vole get through chicken wire? What if you got a cat, or a terrier? There are metal mousetraps that catch rodents alive if you don't want to put out poison or snap traps that could injure a pet or child.

I traded for a few of the black seeded Marvel of Venice while in Ky at Bill Best's place. I'm looking forward to seeing how they compare.

DarJones

Happyday I once had a single plant with pods that looked a lot like Uncle Steve's in my Goose/Ma Williams patch. Other than that I have not experienced any problems. I do grow runner beans as a barrier. The following quote is from Bill Best:

"Beans are not supposed to cross since pollination occurs prior to the bloom opening. And bumblebees are not supposed to be able to fly because of the way their bodies are constructed. However, bumblebees do fly and can rip open bean blossoms while pollination is taking place and cross pollination can and does occur. We have found that Goose Beans in particular are prone to cross, and we would recommend that they be grown in as much isolation as possible if you intend to save seeds of this variety."

Dick

Happyday- I do see some nice plump voles that might have a squeeze, but I suppose you're right, and 1/2" hardware cloth is very expensive. I have 2 cats plus a stray that is here daily, one cat is quite a hunter and I saw her catch one, came back in about 5 minutes, and all that was left was a skull. Ewww. I like to plant carcasses (and spoiled meat) down the tops of vole and mole holes in hopes of spreading some disease, or at least stopping the tunneling in that area.

But the vole damage has been getting worse. They nipped off about 5 large squash plants at the ground, like they do the pole bean stems, I think because they don't like stems in their way, not to eat them. I put a 4" galvanized nail (warning: danger) and sprinkle cayenne pepper in each pole bean hole so I can get any plants up at all, then wrap each stem in aluminum foil after that. It actually works pretty well. But bush beans are harder. I may try thickly interplanting with greens, that may slow them down.

I tried trapping voles with mouse and rat traps under inverted tubs. They work a time or two then I stop catching any, maybe they smell suspicious. I tried poison bait in pop bottles with the ends cut off, as I don't like the idea of the stuff in the soil and didn't want the cats to get into it. I have no way of knowing if it succeeded at all. I'm going to try getting a fertilizer wand you poke into the ground and hook up to a hose to put water into their holes and drown them some. It might slow them down a little. I also tried planting some gopher purge and encourage garter snakes by building up some piles of brush near my beds and putting down some tarps or newspaper (which can also encourage voles unfortunately); I've seen a lot more snakes since, it seemed the cats were wiping them out at first. Or maybe the cats lost interest.

Thanks, Nancy

Looks like you tried just about everything, Nancy. My sympathies. I posted because I've read that a mouse can squeeze its body through a hole the size of a dime. Basically the body can fit through any hole that the skull goes through.

Probably the aluminum puts a funny taste in their mouth. Maybe steel wool? A dozen hungry rat snakes? Weasels, a mongoose? I don't know but I wish you success. There is a poison gas bomb that you can light and throw down a mole or gopher hole but you are not supposed to use it in vegetable gardens. Maybe a flea bomb would annoy or sicken them.

Happyday- I actually wondered a little about pet ferrets, but don't know if they would come back after you put them down a hole. I was remembering something I want to try next summer, putting on a layer of gravel or lava rock, shoveling it in all over the whole bed, and seeing if it made a difference.

Fox urine?

Probably cheaper and more effective than gravel

As beans go, "Italian" aka "Romano" (flat podded) pole types such as Jeminez, Garrafal Oro, and Super Marconi (black seeded) are my favotites.

Marvel of Venice (black seed) aka Meraviglia de Venezia Bobis Nero is not one of my favorites.

Gary

hemnancy, I have pet ferrets and they are no good for what you want. First of all you would have a hard time finding a ferret that knows what live prey is, and second of all, they would likely get out of your yard faster than a blink! (Lost one to the neighbor's dog)

Ferrets pattern on food when they are small, so unless they were fed prey when just a few weeks old it's quite difficult to get them to switch. Mine do eat prey, but they don't know how to kill. I've thought of putting a ferret in a bathtub with a live mouse, so the mouse can't get out, but it seems rather cruel.

I don't know of anyone who breeds ferrets in the U.S. that teaches them to hunt these days.

Forget about ferrets for voles.

fertilizer wand you poke into the ground and hook up to a hose to put water into their holes and drown them some.

May I suggest that you hook up the downspouts of your house roof to barrels with hoses at the bottom that run down the voles tunnels and drown them out that way. It would be less expensive than paying for hundreds of gallons of utility water. You could hook downspouts directly to hoses of course but the pressure could cause erosion. If the downspout goes in the top of the barrel and runs out a series of hoses at the bottom it will control the flow.

Tormato, thanks for the input, I already ordered them so I will see how they do. I hope the bush Garrafal Enano compare favorably to the pole Garrafal Oro.

happyday- I'm on a well, so I don't pay utilities, just electricity. But I really want to try the gravel. There's a lot of gravel around my driveway and I was noticing there are no vole holes there so think it might work well. And gravel doesn't dissipate over time.:-) It just makes it a pain to dig, but I will mainly put it in the planting holes. I did see an link to a gopher trap you tube video over on the pnwest forum that looked easy to set, I may give them a try.

I'm looking forward to the new growing season. I tried peas in my aquaponics system and they started blooming and setting seeds already, so they may do better than pole beans, which grew rampantly but didn't set many pods on.

Putting gravel in the garden will not keep voles out. Voles don't tunnel under the driveway because there is nothing to eat there and because the soil is continually getting compacted, not because the gravel is especially a deterrent in any way. You would have to turn your garden into a driveway, by killing all the food plants and driving over it everyday, to drive voles out. And then they would just move to where the softer ground and new food plants are.

If you put gravel in your garden, you will be sorry someday, and find yourself wanting to take it back out of the garden, and have to sieve all of the soil of the garden through a screen.

You might be better off to buy a few bags of Quikcrete concrete mix, and mix up a batch every day and pour a couple scoops into each new hole. Eventually the voles might get tired of digging out and leave. If you put a flag or wire handle into each plug you could find and remove them easily later.

Personally, I've had great luck with snap traps... but I went through quite a few different types/brands before I found one that was effective. The wood traps stopped working, I'm guessing because blood seeped into the wood, and the voles/mice were repelled by the smell. Never caught a one with plastic alligator-type traps.

My local farm & fleet had black plastic traps with deep bait cups, and very strong springs... can't remember the brand name, and its long since worn off. They came in both small (mouse) and large (rat) sizes. They were fairly pricey, so I just bought a few at first. Wow! I was having a serious infestation that year, and the traps were catching one every day. Sometimes I would clean & rebait them, then do other work in the garden, and hear them snapping behind me an hour later.

Pieces of dried apricot seem to be the perfect bait; you can jam them tightly into the bait cups, they last through the rains, and the scent seems to be irresistible. The traps are most effective under foliage, especially next to the stems, where the rodents run. I mark the locations with survey flags (also from the farm & fleet) and move the traps every few days when mice are active.