Seeds: Feathergill's seeds
Date planted: 29 Oct 2010
Planting conditions: direct in position, in cheap store-bought compost.
Germination: 05 Nov 2010 (7 days)
Growth: Were roughly 20cm tall at 15 Nov 2010. Trailed tendrils up an old clothes line 04/12/2010.
Old washing line put to use as a bean trellis.Flowers: 10 Dec 2010
Strange but pretty purple flowers...First sign of fruit: 14 Dec 2010
Beans grow from behind the flower. You can see one here,the bright green stalk pushing the remains of a flower outwards.
Harvested to date: roughly 15 - 20 beans. (Note: beans are ready to pick when a beautiful dark purple color. They go bright green when cooked/steamed.)
Dark purple beans (with watermelon flower)Advice: Once beans start to show, continue picking them because if you stop, then the plant stops producing new beans.
This bean has a few more days to ripen.The purple colour starts at the sides and tips.
* You can also see signs of the Halo Spot disease on the leaf here.
Also, all of my purple king plants have now contracted Halo Spot - a fungal disease which shows brown dots on the leaves, each dot surrounded by a yellow 'halo'. Leaves yellow, die and fall off. I should have removed the diseased leaves/plant immediately but when I didn't it spread quickly to the others.
The disease can come dormant in the seed or can be caught by other means. It will spread quickly if the plant is watered over the foliage (the water splashes from diseased leaves/plants to clean ones). It is best to water beans (infact, many plants) close to the stems and away from the leaves for this reason.
So far, the beans have continued to grow despite the poor condition of the plants. But at the rate I am losing leaves I don't think it will keep it up for long.
Your mother would probably say that when the plant dies, it is a 'has-been'. :)
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