question about tomatoes and dwarf runner beans

[katihannah]

Hi all

I have a quick question (or two) about my tomatoes and runner beans.
1. Tomatoes.... I have some tumbling toms growing in window boxes and they're doing great, masses of flowers, but not all of the flowers are turning into tomatoes, many of them are just shrivelling up and dropping off, is this normal or am I doing something wrong??

2. I have dwarf runner beans also in window boxes but they're not setting beans at all, just lots of flowers which again die then fall off, but not a bean in sight! What's going on? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

thanks

Katie

[ian digs]

Hi Katihannah. I don't know the answer to your question re: dwarf runner beans but mine did exactly the same. Being of the male type and not having much in the way of patience I dug them all out and started again with some 'proper' full size seeds.
About your toms. not all flowers will produce fruit, the poor little bee is in short supply this year and can't get around to every flower. I'm not trying to make fun of your situation but its true I'm afraid, on another site, which I'm a member of, they recently did a survey of bees and found there was only about a third of the amount that was seen last year. As bees are responsible for the polination of the majority of our food crops, we are in a very serious situation, which could lead to a severe food shortage.
Sorry to be the barer of such bad news but thats the way it is at the minute.

Ian

[heskie]

We had the bee problem (I suspect) with our Broad Beans, but runner and climbing French seem to be OK.

It can help pollination of both tomatoes and runner beans to do a fine (upward) spray of water on the flowers - I do it in the evenings, not sure if there is a best time of day.

[wyntermoon]

hi all,
we were told to tap the plants as this jiggles the pollen about, seems to of worked for us
we do it every year just in case and have always had a good crop, we even grew some in our living room one year doing this. hope it helps
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