VEGETABLE SEEDS Aubergines Beans - French Beans - Runner Beetroot Broad Beans Broccoli & Rapini Brussels Sprouts Cabbage Cauliflower Carrots Celery, & Celeriac Chilli Peppers Courgettes & Summer Squash Cucumbers, Gherkins & suchlike things Fennel Flowers Grains Herbs Kale Kohl Rabi Leaf Greens for Cooking Leeks Lettuces Melons & Watermelons Mustard Greens ( for cooking) Onions - spring sowing Onions - overwintering Onions - special types Oriental Greens for cooking & salads Parsnips Peas Pumpkins & Winter Squash Radishes (salad, & cooking types) Root Parsley Salad Vegetables Sweet Corn Swedes Sweet Peppers Tomatoes : Bush Types Tomatoes : Vines - Cherries Tomatoes : Vines - Larger Tomatoes : New Centiflor types Tomatilloes & Groundcherries Turnips Unusual Tubers: Oca & Yacon

The Czar
This UK variety of runner bean is hugely productive. It grows really tall and bears lots of white flowers that set long pods.

We particularly like Czar because as well as vast numbers of nice flat green pods for normal use fresh, it will also later make fat white seeds that are very easy to dry and shell out of their pods.

The dry beans can be stored and boiled just like butter beans - we always set aside a few plants for dry bean production as they are so delicious cooked that way.

But we eat lots fresh beans each year too in the normal fashion. It makes so many!

Order RBCz - 50 seeds (approx) £2.10

Greek Gigantes NEW TRAIL VARIETY FOR 2013
Here we have a few packets of a very special and rare runner bean from the mountains of northern Greece, which has been bred over hundreds of years for the enormous buttery seeds, rather than being bred for the pods as we have done in the UK.

The seeds are alarmingly large, being about twice the size of the Czar above, which itself is a pretty big-seeded variety amongst normal runner beans.

They are fantastic in soups and stews, and the staple ingedient in delicious dishes such as:

• gigantes in savoury tomato sauce
• gigantes dressed with lemon juice, oregano, olive oil, & salt, in a salad
• gigantes paté (a bit like hummus) made with garlic and olive oil

You can find loads more mouth-watering recipies on the internet or in greek cookbooks by searching for 'gigantes beans'.

You grow them up canes just like a normal runner bean (so easy if you are used to that), but leave the pods to go brown and papery, then shell out and collect the seeds. They can be dried for storage or used fresh. They swell up even bigger when cooked.

Now you might think they look like lima beans - but this is a common misconception; they really are true runner beans, which of course are much easier to grow. And the mountainous areas in the far north where they are from are quite wet and cold at night, so we think they should do well in many parts of the UK.

We have made up just a few packets this year as a trial - so please email us to let us know how they do for you.

Order RBGk - 18 to 24 huge seeds (approx) £2.35