Runner Beans can be eaten young as green beans or string beans. Harvest them to eat as green beans when they are 10 -15 cm long. If you let them grow, they can reach a length of 30 cm!
The pods are then too fibrous to eat, but the husked beans are tasty. The runner bean has a more pronounced flavour than the string bean. Both the string bean and the runner bean are almost always grown against poles.