2018 Little Easy Bean Network - Join Us In Saving Amazing Heirloom Beans

[flowerbug]

@Pulsegleaner

having just grown Fort Portal Jade for the first time this past season i don't have any other experience with these African varieties.

have you found any correlation between the African varieties and heat tolerance?

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Not really. A lot of them sort of shut down in the head, and only really come into their own as the weather gets cooler.

You have to remember that, while Fort Portal is in Uganda, it is also WAY UP, elevation-wise. it's actually quite cool there. You have a sort of Andean setup a perpetual year round spring-y climate.

I might expect LOWLAND African beans to be heat tolerant, but not these.

Incidentally I do know of one that might fit your desires if heat tolerance if what you are after. Richter's sells a white skinned bean from Voatavu Madagascar https://www.richters.com/Web_store/web_store.cgi?product=X9367.

I don't know exactly where Voatavu is in Madagascar* but since very little of Madagascar is all that high (and that all in the interior) it's a pretty safe bet it's lowland and hence heat tolerant (in the tropics, it would more or less HAVE to be)

*Joe Simcox says southwest, which is really low.

 

[flowerbug]

Not really. A lot of them sort of shut down in the head, and only really come into their own as the weather gets cooler.

You have to remember that, while Fort Portal is in Uganda, it is also WAY UP, elevation-wise. it's actually quite cool there. You have a sort of Andean setup a perpetual year round spring-y climate.

I might expect LOWLAND African beans to be heat tolerant, but not these.

Incidentally I do know of one that might fit your desires if heat tolerance if what you are after. Richter's sells a white skinned bean from Voatavu Madagascar https://www.richters.com/Web_store/web_store.cgi?product=X9367.

I don't know exactly where Voatavu is in Madagascar* but since very little of Madagascar is all that high (and that all in the interior) it's a pretty safe bet it's lowland and hence heat tolerant (in the tropics, it would more or less HAVE to be)

*Joe Simcox says southwest, which is really low.

thanks!

hahaha, good to know, but that's why i asked.

i'll pass on picking it up. i do have others in my collection which seem to be fairly heat tolerant already. if Voatavu were anything other than all white i'd be more tempted by them.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I have not grown Rwanda Rainbow so I don't know what color of blossoms they might have. I sent them out to two network growers this year. Perhaps I will try them here sometime.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I don't ever recall a greenish appearance to KY Wonder seeds, all I ever remember is the dark brown. That's going back to the early 1960s. I'v grown them ever since then and the dark brown is what I started with when I started saving my own seed a coupe decades ago. They transformed either because of adaptation to the soil or my saving practices into a larger light brown seed. They are about my favorite for green beans and if you cook them dry with a little onion and bacon they taste almost the same as they do as green beans.

The color of Kentuckk Wonder that I've seen in the late 1970's looked like a bean I have called "Weaver". Go to my website sometime and take a look at Weaver. My dad used to grow K. Wonder that looked almost as dark as Hershey's Chocolate.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Russ's Bean Show Day #28​

''TENDERGREEN'' - Bush Snap. I've grown these back as far as the mid 1970's. In 2022 this bean will have been around for 100 years. I wouldn't think we could call it a commercial heirloom. The funny thing about this bean nobody really knows who developed it.

"Tendergreen" - Bush Snap

"TENE'S BEAN" - Bush Dry. A rounded white bean about the size of White Marrowfat. Has been grown by a Nebraska family since around 1920.

"Tene's Bean" - Bush Dry.

"TIGER'S EYE" - Semi Runner Dry.

Another Bean I've grown since the early 1980's. I've always liked it's golden yellow color with red stripes. Striking appearance. It has it's origins in Chile and Argentina.

"Tiger's Eye" - Semi Runner Dry.

"TOBACCO PATCH" - Bush Dry. I got this bean around 2012 from a fellow by the name of Neil Lash who runs a Junior High School gardening program in Maine. He was all out of something else I had requested so he sent this instead. I've liked the bean ever since. Looks identical to the Soldier bean I grow.

"Tobacco Patch" - Bush Dry.

"TOPCROP" - Bush Snap. This bean I had grown as far back as my high school days in the early 1960's. It was the first bean I had ever saved seed of. Developed by the USDA in Beltsville, Maryland and released to the public in 1950. Round green pods similar to Tendergreen. It's the product of a cross between a bean called United States #5 Refugee and Full Measure.

"Topcrop" - Bush Snap

"Topnotch Golden Wax" - Bush Yellow Podded Snap.
I've grown this one too as far back as the mid 1970's. I started my bean collecting from some of these older commercial beans. This one goes back being listed in seed catalog in the late 1940's.

"Topnotch Golden Wax" - Bush Yellow Poddes Snap.

"TURKEY #1" - Pole. Recieved this bean from Stephen Smith in 2017 and grew it out this year. I got an awful lot of shriveled not well filled out seed from this. I don't know what caused that. I had a couple of varieties do that this year. I've never seen this phenomenon before. Perhaps it had something to do with the amount of rainfall or maybe the excessive heavy amounts of rain when it did rain.

"Turkey #1" Pole

 

[flowerbug]

...
"Topnotch Golden Wax" - Bush Yellow Podded Snap.
I've grown this one too as far back as the mid 1970's. I started my bean collecting from some of these older commercial beans. This one goes back being listed in seed catalog in the late 1940's.
View attachment 29646
"Topnotch Golden Wax" - Bush Yellow Poddes Snap.

"TURKEY #1" - Pole. Recieved this bean from Stephen Smith in 2017 and grew it out this year. I got an awful lot of shriveled not well filled out seed from this. I don't know what caused that. I had a couple of varieties do that this year. I've never seen this phenomenon before. Perhaps it had something to do with the amount of rainfall or maybe the excessive heavy amounts of rain when it did rain.
View attachment 29647
"Turkey #1" Pole

Topnotch is that wax bean for us that is reliable. love eating it fresh off the plant and lightly steamed.

the phenomena you've just experienced is normal for me with certain types of beans
in certain gardens (larger beans in general, but not all of them). you could see how those Munachedda Pale and Old Black Coco looked not really the best they could have but they are still probably viable.

guess which of the bean gardens that did the best this year?

it had the best garden soil of all of the bean patches and even if it flooded a few times like this it still drained fast enough that the beans didn't mind it at all.

i've since raised that garden up so it should not flood again like that as much. i've also replanted it with strawberries so i won't be filling it with beans next year but i will poke some in there in places just to see how they do.

my guess what you and i are seeing is a calcium deficiency caused by the garden soil being too wet for too long. even if you don't see yellowing of the leaves i think it can still cause problems with the beans filling out.

years ago i had a similar response from another garden that has really good topsoil (one of the few we have that i could put beans in at the time) - it has better drainage and the top part has about two feet of decent garden soil. the beans that were planted in there did great, except for the few that were in the lower part which was down to the subsoil grade and those happened to also be the larger beans where i see the same issue (the Molasses Face and Orca, Money, Coco, Etna and the large kidney beans).

if you can put a trench down the middle between the rows and use that extra garden soil to get more elevation that may help (and they make good paths for picking bush beans and semi-runners). also work more organic matter into the soil the previous fall.

 

[saritabee]

I was wondering about those Rwanda Rainbows. Does one plant really produce different colors/patterns or are those more likely segregations that haven't been grown out and stabilized? It is an intriguing bean and many of those colors/patterns look pretty.

Each plant only produces one color of seed, so I think they're probably just a family of segregations that have been grown together. (Honestly, not knowing the history of the bean, it could just be an African bean soup mix that was never actually grown together.) But they are all certainly pretty; I'm going to grow a couple pots of them next year and see if each color of bean stays stable or not.

 

[saritabee]

*Incidentally what color flowers did the Rawandan Rainbow had. One of the ways I figured out that the red ones were something different is that their flowers were white, as opposed to the purple of the others.

This unfortunately is one thing I didn't keep track of this year; next year I will, though. The little pink beans had some GORGEOUS dark-rose-colored pods, though.

 

[saritabee]

Not really. A lot of them sort of shut down in the head, and only really come into their own as the weather gets cooler.

That was my experience with the Rwanda Rainbow and the Mugungi both.

Mugungi was interesting because it put on a huge flush of blossoms in the spring, then totally shut down for the summer (the plant itself was beautiful, but almost no blossoms), then toward the fall it put on another huge flush of blossoms. When I tore the plants up in mid-October, they were totally covered in new blossoms (boo hoo!).

Rwanda Rainbow just sorta straggled along at 1.5' to 3' until the end of the summer, and then... kinda started climbing a little, like they were comparing themselves to all their friends and were a bit ashamed. I probably only got 15-20 pods off each of the plants, though (and less from some).