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  1. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    Do you know which tepary variety they are? Literally all I know about these beans is that they're from the desert and won't make many beans if they get too wet. That might make them a good fit for the sand at my house! Also, a random confession - at some point that word made it into my head as...
  2. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    I strolled into my zone 3 gardens today thinking I was going to do some casual weeding and maybe pick the few beans that probably ripened to dry since I picked last weekend. I was welcomed by a 60' row of Seneca Allegheny that all looked like this. Four hours later I had more than half filled...
  3. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    This is not something I expect to see in northern gardens! Beautiful!
  4. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    I don't intentionally pick anything as a shelly but always have a lot after the first frost in my zone 3 gardens. It's usually a small enough percentage of the total that I freeze them until I'm ready to can beans and then mix them in a little at a time. Last year with its crazy late fall was...
  5. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    I may not have any critters trying to eat my beans, but the end of this row got pulled out and smooshed when a bull got out and .. decided to knock them down and lay on them while he ate my mulch hay bale. What a jerk. Bright side: you can get a good idea of how I grow them in plastic mulch! I...
  6. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    These are all the ones the critters ate. The ones with * are old Canadian varieties from the part of Quebec that's near me. @flowerbug - I didn't get to try eating yours but I loved the tendrils. * St. Hubert pea (IA SSE HF) * Trapper pea (IA SSE HF) Flowerbug's Smooth pea (Flowerbug) *...
  7. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    I did transplants and put them in at maybe a 5-6" plant spacing, mostly out of habit from beans. The idea of dry pea hummus is what started this project. I've never done that, which I guess might have been a good step one, but if it doesn't work out I can always use them in soups. I also grew...
  8. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    How productive are those Tamila beans? They're perty. Only bean adjacent but I shelled my Amplissimo Victoria Ukrainkaya peas tonight. More than 3 quarts from a 15' row with extra wide plant spacing. Not bad!
  9. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    I plant some of everything and don't find that it matters. I tried selecting for reversals in my Turtle Peas once because the whole plant is prettier, and the resulting growout was not noticeably different. I'm nearly convinced that it's environmental. This variety has a TON of beans with...
  10. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    If I pick everything at once there's always some fuzzy pods near the bottom of the plant, but if I keep up with picking them as they ripen they stay pretty clean. I'm not very good at picking bush beans in waves. The beans inside these pods were perfect looking. I suspect the pods had some extra...
  11. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    Some treasures from the community garden plot I use for trials. These plants have decent soil but otherwise everything is working against them - hot weather, all the bugs at either end of the season, crazy weeds, etc. It's a great spot to see what a variety can handle. First, Jacob's Cattle...
  12. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    Unfortunately, no, I was working too much and didn't get around to it. My summer work schedule is one of the reasons I focus a lot on things that ripen to dry and then sit around patiently waiting for me to pick them. :)
  13. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    I'm partial to it because I lived a few miles from the town it's named for when I was a kid. ;) For a bean with local history, it could be kind of marginal to ripen the entire plant to dry there. Definitely a beauty though! I also like the shape, which reminds me of Dolloff, another variety that...
  14. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    Whoa, these look like black and white digital camo! I bet a big jar of them would look awesome. I like to grow Chester/Skunk every few years just because the black and white looks so cool when there's a lot of them.
  15. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    Man you weren't kidding about short windows. These plants are dried down and nearly leafless now and the first pod I tried to pick exploded! Maybe not quite a complete bean-flinging shatter like some plants do, but it definitely had ideas of doing that. Whoops! On the bright side, the beans are...
  16. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    As much as I hate to promote it, plastic mulch is great for water retention. Those Seneca Allegheny in my last post are in plastic mulch and I haven't watered them since planting. That includes several stretches that left the grass around the garden brown. I'm honestly pretty conflicted about...
  17. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    Yesterday was mostly about pea harvest, but here's an updated pic of my wall o beans (Seneca Allegheny Pinto) with some new cabbage neighbors where the garlic was last time. If you get closer, they do have a few new friends. Here's some cowpeas from @Zeedman with some pods. This is one of...
  18. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    I value mine at around $5/lb based on the logic that, if I wasn't growing my own, I'd be buying the local beans that sell for around that much in the bulk bins at the store. I was in an Aldi last fall that had canned black beans for roughly the price of a single canning jar lid, even before the...
  19. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    I really hate when beans are available for less than $4/lb. It completely skews my sense of the value of my garden. :-D
  20. jbosmith

    2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

    I don't know about the western great lakes, but there's regularly 200m ships in the St. Lawrence, and one over 300m made the news in Montreal a couple of years ago. https://container-news.com/largest-container-ship-ever-sails-the-st-lawrence-river/ That's a lot of beans right there!
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