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

[reedy]

I also used to hand code but all the testing and tweaking just takes too long. I was working too much on time I couldn't really bill for. So I switched my customers to online editors like Wix and Weebly.

 

[Michael Lusk]

@Bluejay77 I'm using a mac with Safari and on occasion Chrome. Feel like the odd man out here!

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Bluejay77 I'm using a mac with Safari and on occasion Chrome. Feel like the odd man out here!

Mike Safari is built off the Chrome web-kit platform so they perform somewhat similar. I'm also using Google Chrome too as my browser when I'm on the internet. Firefox is not a bad one either.

 

[BeanQueen]

I haven't been getting email notifications from this thread in a long time so I thought no one was commenting! Guess I missed a lot.
I am harvesting more and more each day, some still only have young green pods, hope they mature soon!! I am worried for them. Some types are long done and dried. Of the network beans, Smith River Super Speckle is done and dried, and I got a decent amount. Jembo Polish, Mona Lisa, and Read Krobbe are almost done. The first two aren't giving me much but Read Krobbe gave me a ton! Ntingi is just starting to give me dry pods. If they all mature I will have a ton from them, too. Cannelini Rosso, however, has done the most poorly. Heavy rains washed away dirt from the seedling roots and that set them back. Then it was so hot and dry they didn't set many pods, and mice got that section of my garden, too. Nothing went right for them and they are also pretty behind in maturing! Still green. @Bluejay77 I think I will want to try again next year to grow them out for you with anything I do successfully harvest

 

[flowerbug]

after all the recent rain i'm not sure i even want to go out and look at the pods that might be ready...

i don't think i can believe the forecasts any more but they say no more rains this week after a slight chance tomorrow. which should let things dry out and let me get through them all checking for new pods ready to come in. no chance of frost.

nothing so far is giving me a lot of hope for really good quality seeds in some cases but they will likely still have some that are ok for trying again...

i'm not really upset or complaining as the weather is just what it is but i really do hope to get some nice beans yet this season and today was a beautiful day outside.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@BeanQueen, If a variety you think has done poorly. Just hang on to the seeds and grow them out again next year.

 

[Zeedman]

Fortunately, it appears that the recent heavy rains did little damage to any of the ripening beans. The Chinese Long Green yardlongs are now ripening en masse, and those that I've opened show mostly good seed. It undoubtedly helped that DW picked all of the wet mature pods just after the rain stopped, and brought them in to dry under a fan. It's truly delightful that she seems to enjoy seed saving as much as I do.

Picked the first dry pods of Hopi Pole lima, so will be harvesting from now until frost. A few pods of Serbian Pole (P. vulgaris) and Aeron Purple Star (runner bean) were also beginning to dry. Some of the Fortex that were let go for seed are starting to yellow, so they should begin drying soon.

The bad news... the rain tripped all of my mouse traps, and kept me out of the garden for three days. That was enough time for a vole to slip in unchallenged, and completely strip one of my ripening soybeans. Fledderjohn was the only large-seeded edamame variety that I grew this year, and they had been looking good; now there are only piles of empty pods on the ground beneath the plants. There are still two soybeans left that ripen late, both high-yielding grain types... so I''ll place a lot of traps under those proactively. The vole has also begun chewing through any low-hanging pods of Chinese Red Noodle, so I flipped all the lower pods over trellis strings to (hopefully) keep them out of reach.

Voles are persistently the most damaging pest in my gardens, the only thing I can't fence out. They have a special fondness for peas, soybeans, and cowpeas - which they attack just as the seeds begin to dry down. Traps keep them in check if they are kept freshly baited, but a few always seem to get wise. Persistence, and rotating the traps to different baits, usually catches them though.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Ironically, the cowpeas that showed up (I didn't plant them intentionally, they're leftover from some stuff I threw on the lawn for the birds) were about the only legume that NOTHING ate. Usually I have the same problem with something (maybe squirrels, maybe chipmunks, maybe deer) chowing down on the pods just when they are getting full. But this year nothing.

The best guess I have as to why is that this year I wound up with the cowpeas I call Indian Sky Pointers. I call them that because, for some odd reason they have what amount to negative geotropism, so that as the pods develop the actually curve against gravity and point STRAIGHT UP! The best guess I can give is that, in that position, the smaller animals can't reach the pods (though the plants are very short so that doesn't make much sense) and the deer can't see the pods are there (they think they are just more stem). At least, that is my best guess.

Now if I could only get the Thai Greenhearts to work out so well.

 

[flowerbug]

something ate some of my beans too. the ones growing on the fence back in the corner. stripped the whole plant down to stems and even chewed off a lot of those. probably a groundhog or deer.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

More troubling news on the Ice Cream Sandwich. Whatever else it is, it is NOT powdery mildew resistant. The top third of the plants (the part above the railing) is fine but the bottoms are beginning to get that yellowy leafless look a lot of my beans do around this time of year (it is hardly unusual for the plant at the end to be just a pod or two attached to a near to totally leafless stalk). At first I thought something had just been nibbling at the leaves on the wall but then I saw the drift of dead leaflets at the base.