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

[flowerbug]

...
Then the #4 (#3 did not make it). These are black. If you open the pod early, they are black. No hidden patterns and no mysterious colors, just basic black. I've decided to call them "Midnight at the Oasis". I happened to hear that Maria Muldaur song recently and thought it would make a decent name.

@Ridgerunner

*bounce* bean pics! *bounce*

i like your names, but suggest avoiding phrases and instead use either "Midnight Oasis" or "Oasis Midnight" which are very evocative like that song. ok, since i had some time i checked google/google images to make sure those names were not used. "Midnight" is currently being used by Rancho Gordo for one of their black turtle beans. so perhaps the 2nd is a better one... just kicking some bean dust around here.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hi Ridgerunner,

I need to fill you in a little on Blue Jay. Some Blue Jay plants can develop a little purple stripping in the pods. Most are solid green, but on occassion the purple stripes does show up. Your spotted seed is simply the reverse coloring of the seeds. Cranberry beans do this and many of your mottled seeded snap beans like Blue Jay do this also. I grew Blue Jay this year and also have a small percentage of your spotted seeds. Those too are still Blue Jay seeds. Some of the pods as they dry also do as you say develop a purple blush. All the seeds you show in your post #389 are all Blue Jay. The thing that would make a difference would be climbing tendency or some other colored seed like black or brown.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@flowerbug,

I'm not sure that our common beans or even limas have the ability to produce nitrogren fixing nodules on their roots anymore. Soybeans can do this. I never use innoculants and I have excellent results. I only have poor results when the weather doesn't cooperate.

Have you ever done a soil test? I did one on my backyard garden space and found my soil PH to be 7.6. Optimum soil PH for beans is 6-6.5 PH. So last spring I applied sulphur to make my soil a little more acid and this fall just recently I applied the rest of it for an area of 300 square feet. I will soil test again next spring after the sulphur has had a chance to work.

I recently got a soil test on another one of my bean plots and found that everything was fine except the soil was very low on potassium. So over an area of 2,000 square feet I applied 12 pounds of Murate of Potash.

I think often times soil nutrition can be the cause of poor growth when you might not realize it.

 

[flowerbug]

@flowerbug,

I'm not sure that our common beans or even limas have the ability to produce nitrogren fixing nodules on their roots anymore. Soybeans can do this. I never use innoculants and I have excellent results. I only have poor results when the weather doesn't cooperate.

Have you ever done a soil test? I did one on my backyard garden space and found my soil PH to be 7.6. Optimum soil PH for beans is 6-6.5 PH. So last spring I applied sulphur to make my soil a little more acid and this fall just recently I applied the rest of it for an area of 300 square feet. I will soil test again next spring after the sulphur has had a chance to work.

I recently got a soil test on another one of my bean plots and found that everything was fine except the soil was very low on potassium. So over an area of 2,000 square feet I applied 12 pounds of Murate of Potash.

I think often times soil nutrition can be the cause of poor growth when you might not realize it.

@Bluejay77

they will form nodules if the bacteria are there, certain legumes are better at it than others, to double check my understanding i skimmed:

http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_a/A129/

which pretty much says what i have remembered from all my past readings.

i have so many gardens here of varying soil types that soil tests are very impractical. some are likely acidic (being more clay), others will be closer to neutral. i go by how various plants perform. i'm not seeing signs of deficiency when it comes down to roots, stems, flowers or pods.

my greasy beans hit the top of the 8ft fence in 4 or 5 weeks. nothing else i was growing showed any signs of trouble. the usual miscreants were around, damage levels normal in the beans other than the edamame. the weather was certainly the biggest wild-card.

this is an example of the contrast between my native soils (amended with some sand) and the worm compost and worms i use to put under the heavier feeding plants (onions, tomatoes or red peppers). in a normal rotation the beans will be grown in this type of soil after the second or third year.

all gardens are gradually improving as i get to them (some have had four or five additions of the worm compost along with other things) so they are quite a bit darker now. the worst soil garden i have inside the fence is the one next to where i grow the pole beans/climbers. and like i said above they've usually done well along there.

i guess what i'll do for next year is pick up some innoculant and see how it goes. the soybeans i pull up are loaded with nodules, the other legumes around also have them (alfalfa, birdsfoot trefoil, various clovers) it seemed very strange to me that the beans didn't have any nodules when i've pulled them up. this land was never used to grow beans in the past it was swampy woodland, a field to keep the bulls in or just a fallow field for years before we bought it.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hi Ridgerunner,

I need to fill you in a little on Blue Jay. Some Blue Jay plants can develop a little purple stripping in the pods. Most are solid green, but on occassion the purple stripes does show up. Your spotted seed is simply the reverse coloring of the seeds. Cranberry beans do this and many of your mottled seeded snap beans like Blue Jay do this also. I grew Blue Jay this year and also have a small percentage of your spotted seeds. Those too are still Blue Jay seeds. Some of the pods as they dry also do as you say develop a purple blush. All the seeds you show in your post #389 are all Blue Jay. The thing that would make a difference would be climbing tendency or some other colored seed like black or brown.

Thanks that's good to hear. I was worrying a lot more than I need to.

I had what I consider a reverse this year. All my Jas repeated but the very last pod I opened on the #3 gave me quite a surprise. As you can guess, it's the one marked 3R. Opening that one pod and it being the very last was pretty dramatic.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Ridge that 3R looks like a reverse of the color too. I get the sense that those seeds of Jas are pretty large.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Good eye, they are good sized. And they produce pretty well, quite a large number of beans per plant. I'm quite pleased with them.

Of course I have to plant those reverse beans next year, curiosity will force me. That's too intriguing to pass up. And I'll plant a few regular seeds. Since every one of the Jas I planted repeated I figure this will become a legitimate variety in another two or three years. I think it will be a good one.

 

[saritabee]

Ridgerunner, how cool that at least one variety seems to be stabilizing already!

Russ, I'm packing up this year's seeds tonight to send to you... I'll toss in some Arikara Yellow and Roma II that I grew out this year. I planted maybe 20 bush plants of each, and still had enough beans to make a packet for LEBN, plus plenty to save, PLUS enough to make a pot o' beans (which were both delicious, although the Arikaras were tastier)!

The late beans that looked like they were going to be "real" Cleopatras faked me out and got spots on the pods right near the end... they all turned out quite uniformly this year, so I'm sure there will be some variations next year. I'm sending in the nicest ones, but I'm saving a bunch to grow out next year... do we want to keep using the Cleopatra name until any varieties actually start segregating out?

I'm pretty excited, though... from the 9 seeds you sent me, I harvested 2 big ramekins full of seeds besides what I'm sending back in. I may also have to cook up a small pot of these beans, just to see what they taste like.

 

[Blue-Jay]

saritabee,

I think if the seeds still look like Cleopatra I would use that name.

 

[Blue-Jay]

My 2017 Bean Grow Outs​

I thought I would show all the varieties grown by bean plot. The first area where I grew beans was in my south flower bed. 4 feet wide and 40 feet long. I planted 13 varieties there.

June 15th the beans are up and probably about a week old.

#1- Ping Zebra.
This is the second time I've grown these little limas from China. I grew them the first time in 2013 and just got some seed before the frost killed the plants. We had an extended summer but I didn't really end up with hardly any more Ping Zebra beans as I think there was only one plant that was not outcrossed. Obtained these from Joseph Simcox "The Botanical Explorer"

#2 - Off Type from Ping Zebra

I got more off types from Ping Zebra than I got of Ping Zebra. It's odd I didn't find more of these in the mix. This is the entire crop of these in this photo.

#3 - Off Type from Ping Zebra

Most of the seed from my Ping Zebra grow out was these seeds. They are about 3 to 4 times the size of Ping Zebra.