2019 Little Easy Bean Network - Come And Reawaken The Thrill Of Discovery

[flowerbug]

Actually I don't know if I would use a hair dryer on seed. Might generate more heat then they can stand. Best thing I've found for drying seed and pods is a floor fan. Set it up somewhere where the constant noise won't bother you and let it run all night and maybe the next day. Works really well and doesn't generate heat that would be cooking that litte embroyo inside the seed. You be amazed how much moisture is pulled out of pods with constant air flow moving over them.

it wouldn't be to dry them completely, but just enough so that when i shell them (asap) that i'm not having to wipe sand/mud/water off my fingers every few moments. very gentle low heat or no heat, but air moving to get them dry faster. right now i've caught up on everything i picked today and tomorrow is looking good for me being able to get out and pick for a few rounds. with less to pick through each time i go out it goes faster to get through a garden so i'm hoping i can get them all done tomorrow before more rains come back.

i was surprised by how well the seeds were doing in their pods. almost all of the pods looked pretty bad but not a huge amount of rot happening yet. i think that is because i did get a lot of the ones that were getting close to being done picked recently enough that not too many were at the too dry stage.

i have to say that the Victoria Brown Eyes has turned out very nice. i'll have to cook up some of those soon as i'm sending a package to a new bean friend and i'd like to know if they're a good dry bean or not (i'm guessing they are since it's been very rare for me to find any i haven't liked) same with the Dappled Grey. nice beans coming from those this season too.

 

[flowerbug]

Blaugraue lives up to the name. when it first comes out of the shell it is an actual blue color, very pretty, wish i had a camera to get a pic before they age.

picked and shelled Tues, Wed was all rain and not much out there worth picking now. we get a break from the rains next week (if the forecast is right) for a change so i'll scout after a few days of sunshine to see what i can bring in. yesterday's rainy day gave me some time to consolidate and sort some beans that had dried down enough.

 

[flowerbug]

in looking through my planting list i only have a few outright failures so far. old seeds the likely culprit with those. i'm still waiting on some of the longer beans to finish to determine if those were failures or not yet.

in other news i have several beans showing up that i've been trying to get for years now. like the Lemon Slice (the pale background with the yellow stripe) beans i now have a pale background with a red stripe. i've been trying to get that cross to show up for about 8yrs now. i also have another striped bean with a greyish background on it which looks promising but won't know how it goes for a few years of growing it out further. the striped beans that have a pale pink background and brown stripes did pretty well this year so it looks to be a winner for the dry bean category. i'll have some samples of those to give away.

i also have some pretty nice mostly white beans with just a bit of spots on them (like the soldier bean with only the head and the belly ), but what is nice about them is the nice round shape of them and they're pretty productive from what i can tell so i'll keep those going to see how they do.

this season resistance to any rot is important to note and i'm glad to say that most beans i've been growing have enough resistance to rot that i will get some kind of return from planting them. not all are perfect, but they're doing ok. i'm surprised actually as i expected a lot of the lima beans to be going bad in the pods, but when i shelled them not many were too bad. however, it did also help that i kept them picked as much as i could so they weren't in the rains for longer than a few days at a time before they got dried out again. still any beans that were close to the ground or dragging in the dirt had some that were sprouting and growing.

ok, i think that's enough bean meandering this morning.

 

[reedy]

My late planted Refugee beans have been producing well for last couple weeks and having plenty of seed from the earlier patch we've been eating them all. The flavor is absolutely outstanding in my opinion. The woman likes them too and she is generally more partial to, for lack of a better word, milder flavored beans.
I don't keep good records but they were planted late July I think. It's cooled off and even rained a little so hopeful they'll keep up production for a while longer.
Anxious to see next year if any of the segregations from the off types also have that great flavor.

 

[flowerbug]

in the seed saving thread there was mention of Fortex and i asked how they were doing. plenty of seeds they reported. i went out today to check those i've grown here and also hoping to see if there were enough young beans to pick for some fresh eating. i didn't really find too many pods that looked like they might have seeds in them. but i did eat a few young ones. not many of those. instead there were a lot of empty pods and a few partially formed seeds. i'm not sure i'll even get back the seeds i planted. hmm... no frost for a week yet if the forecast is right. will keep checking these.

anasazi beans, i was worried the animals had picked the plant clean as it was in the corner on the fence and they found it and did eat much of the top or anything they could reach, but hidden here or there lower down and around i did have a decent harvest. what i really noticed though was that the seeds are all looking pretty good, there weren't too many spoiled seeds and another trait i liked is that the pods, if they had beans in them, they were not partially done. it was rare to find any that were aborted or not formed as they should be. i'm definitely going to keep growing some of these. so i get to now check this one off the list of maybe i'll get something to definitely did get something. very pretty looking seeds. i selected some really nice patterned ones to plant and only could plant a few on the fence so to see a nice pattern continue is good. i'll keep planting other seeds i was given to keep the mix going in the coming years. i also have seeds from more than one source so i will plant some from each and see what happens.

the Flossies, i found a few seeds that might be viable. the plant is loaded with pods but they don't look like they are filling and may not in time. it is still flowering. the other lima beans look to be doing ok. may pick them Friday and call it done. not that i couldn't leave them but i really need to get at that garden space and those plants are right in the way of what i need to do. the plants closer to the fence i can leave as long as they take unless the frosts get them first.

need to go through the other gardens tomorrow and Friday just to see what is ready after this week of great/dry weather. chance of rain forecast for Friday night and Saturday morning.

 

[Zeedman]

As @flowerbug mentioned... Fortex, about 24 oz. so far, with more pods drying. The seeds will continue to darken as they dry, the ones on the edges are oldest. Most of the remaining pods on the seed row are ripe enough to pick; with rain & cold temps coming, I'll harvest those tomorrow. I'll pick all remaining Soissons Vert & Hopi Pole Lima as well, those will be shelled & frozen.

After tomorrow, only two beans will remain. The Aeron Purple Star runner still has a lot of pods that need further ripening, including the longest pods (which I hope to select for the next grow out). So I'm hoping that the cold snap arriving over the weekend doesn't include a killing freeze, and that the following (slight) warmup gives more of those pods a chance to mature. The Nunas beans also need more time, about 1/2 of their pods need further ripening... but I planted them in pots for a reason, and will bring them indoors.

 

[flowerbug]

View attachment 33246
As @flowerbug mentioned... Fortex, about 24 oz. so far, with more pods drying. The seeds will continue to darken as they dry, the ones on the edges are oldest. Most of the remaining pods on the seed row are ripe enough to pick; with rain & cold temps coming, I'll harvest those tomorrow. I'll pick all remaining Soissons Vert & Hopi Pole Lima as well, those will be shelled & frozen.
...

lovely! *envy*

 

[Blue-Jay]

View attachment 33246
As @flowerbug mentioned... Fortex, about 24 oz. so far, with more pods drying. The seeds will continue to darken as they dry, the ones on the edges are oldest. Most of the remaining pods on the seed row are ripe enough to pick; with rain & cold temps coming, I'll harvest those tomorrow. I'll pick all remaining Soissons Vert & Hopi Pole Lima as well, those will be shelled & frozen.

After tomorrow, the only two beans will remain. The Aeron Purple Star runner still has a lot of pods that need further ripening, including the longest pods (which I hope to select for the next grow out). So I'm hoping that the cold snap arriving over the weekend doesn't include a killing freeze, and that the following (slight) warmup gives more of those pods a chance to mature. The Nunas beans also need more time, about 1/2 of their pods need further ripening... but I planted them in pots for a reason, and will bring them indoors.

Wow ! What a nice harvest of seed. You've got enough to keep you in snap beans for a decade or more. That must be about a 13 x 9 baking pan. I grew a baking pan full of Ganymede lima a couple of years ago when I had the bean isolated for several seasons so I could help out Seed Savers Exchange with a strain that wouldn't produce any off types.

Here in northern Illinois (Woodstock is just about 10 miles below the Illinois Wisconsin border) we are supposed to get rain later on today. Steady rain tomorrow on Friday. A big drop in temps tomorrow night with forcasted low of 30. Looks like that might really put and end to the harvesting period of this season.

Today I'm going out to my big pole bean plot and harvest as many pods of some very wanted varieties. These varieties got so close to the start of a dry down, but were planted just a tad later this year. So they won't be able to dry before a frost would ruin them. I'll dry them out for about a month on cardboard sheets in my house. Looks like my walkin closet in my master bedroom will be the bean drying room this year.

 

[Zeedman]

Wow ! What a nice harvest of seed. You've got enough to keep you in snap beans for a decade or more. That must be about a 13 x 9 baking pan. I grew a baking pan full of Ganymede lima a couple of years ago when I had the bean isolated for several seasons so I could help out Seed Savers Exchange with a strain that wouldn't produce any off types.

Cafeteria trays. DW was working at a nursing home when they replaced all of their trays with new ones... and were throwing the old ones in the dumpster. I salvaged about 100 of them, to use for seed drying. They can be cross-stacked, allowing ventilation while saving space. Nearly all of my seeds will remain in those until the indoor humidity becomes low (usually early December) at which time the seeds are dry enough for storage.

For bean seed crops, my goal is 1-2 pounds of dry seed, which just fits in the trays. Anything over that is eaten... and we generally eat a little of everything planted. We just finished eating the last Serbian Pole shellies, and will be cooking the Soissons Vert shellies tomorrow... they are one of the best shell beans I've ever tasted. Soissons Vert also produced about 1 & 1/2 pounds of dry seed.

Soissons Vert. Sadly, the beautiful pale green color was not captured in the photo.

 

[flowerbug]

today's find when shelling a grey patterned bean just like a Dappled Grey without any of the rest of the decorations. yet another component bean i've got from those i've been planting. there's only about six beans so far and i don't know how many are viable but it will be interesting if there are more out there yet to finish (and there are pods still out there so perhaps there may be).

post-edit, i see that the difference two days of drying them has made. they turned brown instead of keeping the grey color they started with - interesting...