2015 Little Easy Bean Network - Old Beans Should Never Die !

[teamneu]

@Bluejay77,
I sent it in a bubble envelope, but I didn't get a tracking number...
I have some more of the Wrens Egg & IM, and will resend next week after I get it from the farm.
May-be it will show up, but it has been pretty long for the USPS.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I can try.

Personally, I think that is precisely what I have, a bean that is used to what I call "Andean conditions". Mottled Grey is one of Joe Simcox's finds, originally found in Fort Portal, Uganda, as was FPV and Bantu, another bean I have (and, of course, Fort Portal Jade, which you have came from there as well.) Fort Portal is a bit odd of a place, it's only about half a degree away from the equator, but it's about 5,500 feet above sea level, so it's quite cool. What I think happened is that, MG's original parent, and that off all the other beans that came from the Andes, and, unlike any of the others, MG never adapted to a different situation (say somewhere where it didn't have the option of getting 12/12 at a time when the temperature was still frigid (FPV, FPJ and bantua all produce fine, so presumably they did, or came from stock that already did).

As I said, this year at least I can take the pot inside to let anything that comes finish up. This may also allow me to look into way to deal with the other problem, how slow MG plants grow, as I said, only one or two plants look at all healthy, and those are also the only one or two that grew fast enough to actually develop climbing tendrils. Most of the plants do, and always have simply never gotten past being a short (maybe 9-12 inch) stalk. Big enough to make a pod or two, but not for anything like a full production. I suppose it is possible that MG is actually a mixed bean with some bush and some short pole in it, but I keep thinking that, if it there was bush (let alone if bush was the majority) by now I'd have seen a plant that branched a bit, and I haven't (a few vines have developed a second tendril once or twice, but mostly the plants are wholly linear) It looks like MG in addition to probably being photosensitive, has a very narrow window of temperatures it's likes. Higher than that, and the hear kills it, lower and the plants will not actually grow (and as far as I can tell, the temps where that happens are still well within those we people would consider pleasant. Basically if it is warm enough out you can get away with wearing short sleeves, it's too warm for MG, if you need a jacket, it's too cold) As is, I usually have to start them indoors about a month in advance to give them the time to get big enough to survive the transition outdoors. I think next year it may be worth it to start them even earlier, so they go out in the spring as nearly mature plants that can take advantage of the spring cool (at least that will work if I can get my indoor grow light fixed, so that I don't have to worry about the beans getting etiolated indoors and turning into seedlings with three foot stalks.

I may also already have a clue as to which ones work faster. I've noticed that when I do get seed back, it is invariably much shorter and wider than is the norm for seed (most MG seed is sort of kidney shaped, or kidney bean shaped without the curve). So I think the ones that work may be crossed with something else, and the short wide seeds can be used as a marker. By that logic, next year there should be more ones that "work" than there were this year, since there are a higher number of short wide seeds in the sample I am going to be working with (MG comes in two colors mostly, a black speckled tan (like Pebblestone) and a solid black. This year was a mottled year (where nearly all of the seeds were long and thin) next year is a black year (where the distribution of seed shapes is a lot more diverse there everything from a kidney shaped to something that is almost navy bean like)).

Speaking of differences I should also mention that the one plant that is healthy has a different flower arrangement than any of the others. MG tends to bear flowers more or less singly with the distance between two quite far. The healthy one seems more terminal with flowers in more of a cluster.

I think that, at the end of this, I will not, in fact have a working strain of bean, I'll have several isolated from each other by trait. A short fat seeded race that grows "normally" (within normal conditions here" and a climbing, long season terminal brancher.

Incidentally, one of the reasons I'm so frustrated with the deer that ate nearly all of my rice bean pods is that that particular plant turned out to be a bush type (rice beans are nearly all pole) as so the first patterned bush I've had (the last bush were incidentalys from tossed seed, so they were all the normal unpatterned red.) I'll have to remember to 1. make a note of that when I put them away and 2. put them in an envelope this time around since every time I use my sorting box, the box gets dropped and the seed re-mixed (with so few pods, I can basically save plant to package this year.)

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hi @teamneu,

Let's give it another week before we consider your seed package lost. It still might show up. Perhaps the mail was being a little slow out of your area for some reason.

 

[Blue-Jay]

All the beans that I planted around my house matured earlier than those I planted out in the open in my offsite bean patch in previous years. Could be what @Hal said about the light reflecting off my light colored house when he saw the photos of my tomato plants near my house last year. It gave the plants an increase in the amount of light they have to grow. I planted "Ganymede" a pole lima which matures it's dry pods normally about two weeks before our mid October frost. I was already harvesting some dry Ganymede pods in late August, and I had harvested all it's pods already about two weeks ago. Some of the bush beans had already produced all their dry pods about a month ago. My green seeded Fort Portal Jade had already produced all it's pods near the beginning of September and now some of the plants are producing a smaller second flush of dry pods. I also planted Kabarovsk that SeedO sent me last year, and it's pods from those plants were all harvested out about three weeks ago.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I've noticed that too. I got a peony from a friend and split the roots so the genetics are identical, planted one set on the south side of the house and close in and the other out in the middle of the yard where it drains fairly well and gets full sun all day. The one next to the house bloomed two weeks earlier. It could be the light reflected back but I think the heat reflected also made a big difference where that peony was located.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Since I was outside (and had my phone camera handy) here's are pictures of things as they stand

Mottled grey pot (the "healthy" plant is the one curving toward the left)

Close-up of flowers on the healthy plant (only one with flowers currently open)

the flowers may be a different color than normal too (most of the time MG has bicolored flower's pink on top purple on the bottom)

Comparison of pod size between FPV and FPVS

Actually I'm beginning to wonder if there is a difference after all. with the pods side by side, I can't help but notice that the pods are actually more or less the same size if you measure by nodes (that is, if you measure pod length per seed as opposed to the whole pod) I think that FPVS may not be so much a strain with bigger pods as one that can make more seeds per pod (3 versus 2) that could go a long way to saying why I couldn't tell the two apart by seed when they were mixed.

 

[journey11]

The USPS moves mail much more slowly as of late. They have changed their shipping routes to send everything through "hubs" (giant sorting facilities) which takes longer, but is more cost efficient for them. If I mail a letter to the next town over from me, they send it to a hub in Charleston, over an hour from here. I am still scratching my head trying to understand what the benefit of this is. They killed a lot of chicks in the mail this year. I lost all but a few out of 26 chicks twice. What used to take 2 days to ship now takes 5 and that is too long for chicks. I would not be surprised but what @teamneu 's package is just sitting at a hub somewhere, waiting to go. At least beans are unlikely to perish from the delay.

 

[Smart Red]

Is that a relatively recent change? I remember not long ago getting things shipped across country in 3-4 days. Now mail sent to the closest city takes 10 days. Phooey!

 

[journey11]

Is that a relatively recent change? I remember not long ago getting things shipped across country in 3-4 days. Now mail sent to the closest city takes 10 days. Phooey!

It has been within the last year, I think. If you do send something with a tracking number, you can see that your package sometimes just sits there for days until they get around to it.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Tell me about it. I was expecting a package of books today that did not show up I checked the tracking and it says the package is sitting in Jersey City......and has been there for about three weeks!

our local PO adds another layer of obfuscation on. They seem to have taken the view that all mail can sit around until they "feel" like delivering it (which they never do) Months can go by when the only mail we get is the presorted junk that requires no input from the post office.

And then of course there are the special headaches that come from buying things from outside the country. I have resigned myself to the fact that such things can take forever. what frustrates me is that even though I get (and usually pay extra for) tracking so I can have a clue when it is showing up (a lot of them are registered, and so need someone to sign for them, and the local PO has this nasty tendency of deciding that, if you aren't there when the package is delivered, you can NEVER get a second chance; the package vanishes into the bowels of the PO system again never to be seen.) it doesn't;t usually do any good since no one bother to scan the package until it's time to deliver it. A few days ago, I bought a book on ebay from the Ukraine. That usually takes 4-12 weeks to get here. I have had the tracking info for a week now but I fully expect that the first time I ever get any idea of where it is the day it shows up at my door needing a signature. That's sort of why for my Japanese book purchases, I use a service that ships everything FedEx. It's expensive as hell, but at least I have some idea of when the stuff is coming!