I've experienced a lot of difficulty in getting King of the Garden limas to produce. They like heat. Can grow smaller limas, yardlongs, cowpeas, IWK, no problem. On the other hand it is too hot here to get favas all summer. They produce in spring, abort flowers all summer, and produce small pods with one or two seeds in fall.

I understand Chinese Red Noodle probably won't do well for me because our summers aren't hot enough on Vancouver Island so thought about trying to grow them in the greenhouse, any thoughts on this?
Then there's the issue of daylight sensitivity, how many hours of daylight/darkness are needed to produce results?

Annette

Annette,

Members of the cowpea family vary in day LENGTH sensitivity. Some require tropical day lengths of about 12 hours. Others are happy to produce at more northern latitudes with day length up to 16 hours. If you want to grow these in a greenhouse, they should be in direct sun as long as possible since that is a major factor in their growth and production.

DarJones

DJ, the front end of my greenhouse gets full sun all day so maybe this might work, it's worth a try since I already have CRN seed. I'll try a few in the garden also, hoping we get another summer like we had this year.

Annette

Annette, in reference to the other thread where you were wondering about daylength between your location and Georges, scroll down to the astronomy section on the left. Your days will be longer in summer and shorter in winter than Georges.

You both are very lucky, you could be growing cabbages and favas right now, while I'm under a foot of snow. Only things I'm growing now are paperwhites and hyacinths in the window.

Why not just try your beans, give them the best you can and see what happens. Sometimes a plant can adapt to conditions in ways someone else might not have reported.

Here is a link that might be useful: Great weather site

Actually, I had excellent results with several kinds of long beans here in SE Michigan in 2008, despite a very cool summer. I had decent results in September with my 2009 crop, despite a record cold summer, ONCE they finally began to bear. I made the mistake of direct sowing, and late at that, not until mid-June, in 2009, whereas in 2008, I started transplants in the greenhouse in mid-April and planted them out, already about 2 feet long, around Memorial Day. They definitely benefited from this, and started to bear in mid-July. I will definitely do the transplant route in the future, since my climate is just too unreliable.

The flavor of long beans is unique and delicious IMO --they have a mushroom-like flavor that I just love.

my uncle steve italian pole beans seem to do better in the north than in the south according to darryl (fusion power) who has grown them in alabama. the heat shuts them down. they grow well in the midwest great lake region where i live. not quite as well in calumet where i used to live. short season and cooler weather made seed saving difficult.

keith