2017 Little Easy Bean Network – Everything Beans, Post It Here & Join The Fun

[ducks4you]

I need to read through this thread! I planted some old lima beans seeds which sprouted a few weeks ago. I have some garden beans about to go in in another week, probably too late to really harvest, but we'll see. I used to have some scarlett runner beans and just read that they were planted in early colonial America and are from Mexico.

 

[lcertuche]

My Kentucky Wonders tall but just a few blooms and the pintos I planted to replace the Kentucky Blues that never came up are only about half as high but they are starting to put out runners. I only grow beans for green beans so I'm hoping they do something. I wish I had the room to grow at least a pound of seed but I'm lucky to have these I guess.

I love those multi-colored beans. Beautiful! I think beans are the perfect plant. Fresh green vegetable or dried beans for protein. I almost forgot they impart nitrogen which is always good in the garden.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

An off type seed in my Ugandan Speckled Grey seed yielded a bean similar to the pink one in your Rwandan mix (though I think mine is darker). I wonder if they are related. Rwanda and Uganda are next to each other, so depending on WHERE in their respective countries those beans came from......

 

[journey11]

Many of my Pixie are making runners now. I planted two long rows, about 15' each, so I'll thin out all with runners except for about 5 plants on one end. Those will get a teepee. That way I can observe what happens with both.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Pulsegleaner,

It would be interesting to know if your Ugandan Speckled Gray bean is related to my Rwanda Rainbow, and I suppose it could very well be possilbe. I'm sure all sorts of beans in Africa make the rounds from one grower to another.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@journey11,

So the Pixie bean is not actually a true bush type but probably a semi runner. It probably will climb on something a little bit.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

@Pulsegleaner,

It would be interesting to know if your Ugandan Speckled Gray bean is related to my Rwanda Rainbow, and I suppose it could very well be possilbe. I'm sure all sorts of beans in Africa make the rounds from one grower to another.

To be fully clear that particular one is probably NOT Ugandan Speckled Grey. Based on the results I have gotten so far, Speckled grey is sort of a synthetic mix. That is, when Joe Simcox originally got them he actually got several distinct beans which grow true, as opposed to one variable species, and only thought they were one type.

The major parts of the mix consist of a little less than 50% of tan beans with fine purple mottling, similar to Pebblestone, (actually these are themselves dividable into four or five kinds, which differ in seed size and shape and the plants in both habit and day length [the commonest one this year is small seeded. functionally bushy (in the sense that only one has made anything like a climber and even that is short) early maturity (for these, a lot of the Uganadan one are so long they won't set flowers until October) with 3-4 seeded pods with light red streaking (one downside, once they get their first flush of beans, these seem to conk out pretty quickly)

The other major component is a solid purple/black bean that seems similar to my Fort Portal Violet (quiet tellingly, it also has FPV's most distinctive trait, EXTREMELY strong purple mottling on the growing cotyledons.)

That leaves the few real outliers I got in the original seed. There were 18 purple/black seeds with light white/tan speckles, which are in this years growth (as of now only one or two have flowered or podded, and they seem to be vigorous viners. This may be a "bridge" or cross between the first two as they can or can not have the cot mottling (2 do, about 9 do not)

There were seven or eight smallish ones like in your mix. Most of those are a odd shade of tan (a tan with a hint of purple) but one or two were dark red (and one of those produced)

However as I said, I don't consider those truly part of the Grey race. Not only is the size a LOT smaller than nearly all of the others, but the flowers are white (they're purple for all of the others)

There might be one clue whether they are the same down the road, besides white flowers. I remember the red one had an odd trait, the seed colored up red VERY early, early enough that even ABORTED seed will be fully red.

 

[Blue-Jay]

What I am going to do with the Rwanda Rainbow is seperate all the colors and patterns and see if they grow true each unto themselves. Should be interesting trial next year.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Oh almost forgot, there were also two off types similar to the streaked ones in yours (though tan instead of yellow) Since neither germinated (well, germinated in a manner conducive for healthy development) I forgot about them.

 

[thejenx]

In my row of Prelude snap beans I noticed two plants with purple flowers, while all the others are white flowered.
Also, all the white ones allready have snap beans growing on them and these ones just have little baby ones on them. Is this what you would call an outcross?