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Runner beans II = no beans !!

in Talkback
A funny thing happened this year - I saved beans from last years (good) crop as I often do. I dug the trench, put lots of matured compost in (and some rotted down manure). Started them in our (very small) greenhouse, then planted them out. They raced away like good uns and in fact I have never seen 6 runner bean plants produce such an amount of lush foliage (there may be a clue there ?).
However, I got hardly any beans at all off them (unlike previous years). IIRC there were the usual amount of flowers earlier.
I wonder if it was birds eating the flowers (I can't say I noticed that) or summat else ?
Any thoughts folks (I don't want the same to happen next year !)
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Did you have plenty of flowers?
If not they had too much nitrogen, leading to too many leaves.
Potash would induce more flowers. If flowers have not set, they could have been too dry.
If the original plants were F1 hybrids, then they will not come true to type in the next generation, and that could be the problem.
I grow Firestorm, they dont need bees.
The more I read about saving beans the more I think its just not worth it.