2016 Little Easy Bean Network - Gardeners Keeping Heirloom Beans From Extinction

[Blue-Jay]

Wow pretty bean ! How many seeds did you find ? I found outcrossing in my Landfrauen. About half the seeds must be a new color. My Tennessee Wonder had about 10 percent of the seeds different too. It will be interesting to see if your new bean will throw of something else besides your blue bean.

It a couple of weeks I will take photos of everything I harvested this year and put on my annual bean show here on this thread. It will be a bigger photo show than last year. Last couple of years we've been calling them The Bean Fashion Show.

 

[Tricia77]

I got quite a few beans from the Bantu outcross. I found three outcrosses this year! Maggies Cresent gave me a beautiful purple/blue outcross and Pisarecka Zlutoluske gave me a dark blue and brown outcross. All three were half runner vines.

Maggies Cresent Outcross
Maggie's Cresent Outcross by Tricia Rosamilia, on Flickr

Maggies Cresent Outcross by Tricia Rosamilia, on Flickr

Pisarecka Zlutoluske
Pisarecka Zlutoluske Outcross by Tricia Rosamilia, on Flickr

 

[aftermidnight]

Ohhhh, so very pretty.

Annette

 

[Blue-Jay]

Yeah very nice outcrosses. Beauties ! Will be interesting to see what they do next year. You might have more combinations from these.

 

[Tricia77]

Thanks! I know Seakangaroo got a similar outcross from Maggie's Cresent a few years ago and got many different varieties out of it. I'm really looking forward to next year!

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Ridgerunner,

Your two ambassadors of the bean world Malawi Pinto and Kutasi Princess arrived yesterday. They look healthy and happy. Thanks for a wonderful grow out again this year.

 

[Ridgerunner]

@Bluejay77 glad to hear you got them. I chose those partly because they had an unknown growth habit and unknown growth date. For both, 10 out of 10 seeds sprouted, you can't ask for better than that. And they produced really well, no drama at all.

I have the 32's, 38's and 39's totally sorted and the 27's at least sorted into solid and patterned beans. I'll try to sort the 27's further as well as I can. I'll just see how that goes. The next few days are busy so it will be a while. I'll have to make some hard decisions too.

I planted several a little close together, poles especially but even some that turned out to be bush. I could not always tell which bean grew on which vine so many are all mixed. I'll try to avoid doing that again next year. But this was my learning year on growing out outcrosses. I didn't appreciate how mixed the results could be.

Instead of getting different beans to grow from you next year I plan to just keep some of these and grow them. I haven't gone back and individually compared the bean I grew versus the results I got but practically none of them look much like the bean I planted. I don't have a lot of confidence there will be that much stability in these either the next round but the only way to find out is to plant some.

For a couple of them I only have a few beans, I'll keep all those and plant them. For the rest I plan to send you seeds. For some I'll send you all I have since I don't plan to grow them again next year and will give someone else a chance. That's going to hurt, some are really nice, but I only have room for so many. For the others I plant I'll keep some and send you some. I haven't totally decided which that will be. I want to get the rest of the 27's sorted and then finalize which ones I plant next year and some names. Not counting the 27's I've sorted the other three numbered beans into 20 possible segregations.

I plan to name the ones I grow next year and maybe some of the others but some I'll let others name several of them. Maybe that will be motivation to grow them out. I don't have much confidence that the bean we plant will be the bean we harvest after the results I got this year which makes it a little hard to name them. From what I saw this year I can see planting one and getting a few different beans. But eventually some will stabilize.

The adventure continues.

 

[aftermidnight]

@Bluejay77 the beans are on the way, forgot yesterday was a holiday up here so they went out this morning, hopefully they will get to you as fast as the ones I sent you last year . We had our first frost this morning so other then collecting a few more dried pods and pulling the poles my beans are finished other than the couple of baskets I have in the greenhouse. Already looking forward to next year, decisions, decisions, decisions what to grow.

Annette

 

[Blue-Jay]

I thought it is time for me to put on my annual Bean Show, as all the beans are now harvested and shelled. In the last couple of years I called my bean show "The Bean Fashion" show as it consisted mostly of outcrosses and new segregations produced by them. This year I will call it "The Big Bean Show". Starting today for 30 days I will put up entries eventually showing everything I harvested from my bean gardens this year. I hope you all will enjoy it very much.

This bean is called "African Cave". I"ve seen a similar bean listed once on the Purcell Mountain website called Cow bean, but they haven't sold it for several yeas now. I got the bean last October from a fellow in Guthrie, Kentucky. It's a true bush that grows without runners. It's pods are very round. Really reminds me of a snap bean. I planted about a six foot section of row and it produced just under a half a pound of seed. This bean held it's color pattern in our above normal summer heat, unlike Jacob's Cattle which turned and does turn nearly all red most summers here.

African Cave

 

[journey11]

So you think then it is heat that causes some of the spotted beans to come out solid? Definitely had plenty of that here this year. I grew Appaloosa 3 years and nearly all were solid orange except for a small few that had a squeak of white spotting on them the first year I tried. Most of the Giant Red Tarka came out solid red from the earliest dry pods I picked, but the seed that came later was about 50% of them white speckled. Exasperating, to say the least!