2020 Little Easy Bean Network - An Exciting Adventure In Heirloom Beans !

[897tgigvib]

< Is still alive. One eye still works...who needs teeth anyway? Got new bluetooth hearing aids. has long grey beard. typing with roger waters and pink floyd bluetoothed into my brain.

Yes, been gardening in beds, south part of Santa Rosa, the ghetto. I have 51 varieties harvesting so far this year. 2 of them are giving me f2 outcross looking seeds so far. The local Italian family borlotti pole. one plant of these is making red pinto-looking seeds shaped normally. And the African speckled bush, one plant of these is doing so also. I like getting outcrosses. Oh, my Mbomba I got from baker creek seeds last year were all mixed as if there were f3 seed mixed in. planted only the truest of them this year and still go a few types. One I like is making shorter wider pods that are dark and purple striped. real pretty pods don't seem like edible podded type, pretty seeds. another makes a long pencily pod looks edible, big huge bush no rnners at all. oh, Ringwood...2 selections stand out as hugely productive pole dry beans. 1 is plain brown medium sized well packed lightly striped cylindrical pods. the other is brown beans with deeper brown pinto type markings faintly visible with wider pods that have more purple stripes. oh, and i've been sorting cherokee trail of tears a few years now. the dry pod version was true to type this year. super productive 7 foot tall, and 2 pickings gets them all. ...here in the lowland valleys of hotville, about half of the bean varieties produce all or mostly at once, then the plants are done. ...this is a good thing, especially with bush varieties...harvest is by pulling the golden dry plant loaded with golden dry pods, and finding some shade to pick the pods off. I then put the pods into a plastic bag, stick my hands in there, and without looking, gently and firmly wring and play the pods so the seeds come out. oh, first i check for any pods not completely dry. there's usually a few. ...a new variety im still selecting for true to type out of that dalmatian outcross of 2012 I call Watermelon Seed Bean is especially good at ripening all at once, and early too.

 

[baymule]

@marshallsmyth

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Not exactly GROWING info, but when I was last on Richter's I noted that the Voatavu bean (the white bean from Madagascar) is now gone. If I find the packet I bought before, I'll try it, but if I can't it may be lost for good.

 

[baymule]

The Sierra Madre yardlong beans are starting, picked the first few today.
View attachment 36422

This variety has wide, dark green pods that have nearly the same texture as common snap beans... and they can get really long. This pod is in the snap stage:
View attachment 36423

I love the T on top of the T-post, what a great idea. I'm gonna try that for next year.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hi @marshallsmyth,

So nice to see you again. Hope you will be joining us again more often. I miss reading your expert beany observations and all your grow out fun.

 

[flowerbug]

picked some of the first dry beans yesterday. some of the Top Notch, Purple Diamond and Purple Dove were ready. also the one i can never spell without looking it up in my notes, Pisarecka Zlutoluske...

 

[897tgigvib]

Hi @marshallsmyth,

So nice to see you again. Hope you will be joining us again more often. I miss reading your expert beany observations and all your grow out fun.

Oh, thanks Russ.

I have some mystery results of some mystery outcrosses. Remember Ringwood? I think in 2014 some of them were promiscuous, and those fuzzy bumblebees were doing a lot of nectar diving in them after doing so in the Shumway Experimental I've had for years. I now have to sort some pinkish/brownish small cylindrical seeded types for dry version, and for sweet tasting waxy podded, 3", almost greasy, firm but not cutshort, bush, and there is a white seeded version too. I'm calling them southern bush beans. the dry versions ive nicknamed "Tic-Tac" after those breath mints they look a lot like. A lot of sorting to do still. I had some black ones a couple years ago, but those all had pink offspring. that's one to figure.

I've a feeling that different subspecies of P. vulgaris, when crossed in different combinations, have different ways their genes recombine, especially involving how codominant factors work together. It's not just seed color and shape. Pod types and tallness, usually linked, might not be linked if different subspecies cross. hard things to know simply because some subspecies are not at all promiscuous, and almost never cross. So when a turtle bean does cross, it's a big thing.

Oh, there are some other littler projects too. those yoeme pastel ojos grow great here, and are actually late early to early midseason here. Easy harvest pole, with papery husks that breaknopen easily in a bag. I'm getting a new selection out of them. doing it single plant selecting this year. For extra contrasty, more colorful and generally darker seeds, also a fraction larger.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hi @marshallsmyth,

I do remember Ringwood. I used to call it Super Bean when I first found it climbing across to and up tomato plants. Then I started calling the Super Bean Ringwood after a place here in the county where I live. I planted the bean again in 2019 and to the best of my harvesting ability I didn't get a single seed that looked like the old Ringwood/Super Bean. I've posted the photos below of the new thing. I'm growing the new one again this year and it seems to be a stringless snap bean. I will grow it again next year and eat some more of them. I'm also regrowing the old 2013 Ringwood seed again this year and plan to grow out the whole sequence again to see if indeed it turns into the new version of Ringwood. Funny thing about my Ringwood grow out this year. Some are growing with pink blossoms and some with white. How I got lucky to place 4 seeds around one pole and they are all blooming with pink blossoms while the 4 seeds I placed around the next pole are all blooming in white is one of the oddest coincidences that have happened in all my bean grow outs. If this 2019 Ringwood didn't come from Ringwood 2013 I'll have to rename the new one perhaps. If it isn't from the old Ringwood I don't know how it came about. Last years grow out was a little messy. Lots of rain late in the season and beans crossing into other poles. I tried to concentrate mostly on the seed being produced by plants close to the main support they seemed to have grown on.


Ringwood- pole - 2013.....................................................Ringwood - pole - 2019

 

[897tgigvib]

Do the hilums on those 2 beans look similar? It's comparable to a belly button. At first i thought those tic tac dry pod type, and the tic tac southern podded edible had to be a mix up somehow, but the hilums are identical, all clean. the way they spread out the indentation, how close i have to look with strong reading glasses...they just about must
have the same mother's mother. (Wouldn't it be cool to have a mr coffee PCR gene code reader to read mitochondrial dna and know for sure? especially if it only cost 59.74 at Wal Mart)

I've lost so many varieties after losing my job because of embezzelers at the lake. Had 3 days to move, get my cats adopted, mail off my beans, and just had one coffee can of mixed bean seeds. Imagine sorting out your collection from a can of them all mixed. then i guerilla gardened with them, and 2 legged vermin caused some extinctions. oh! those beige striped with brown look like molly's zebra. i don't remember if those were pole or bush.

 

[flowerbug]

those pictures remind me of a blend of beans i purchased from the vermont bean company back in 2011 callled Peregion. some of the beans from that blend i've selected out and used. they are a very firm bean that is excellent for making chili because they won't fall apart even after cooking for hours, being frozen and thawed out again and such. my tan goats eye bean is just one selection, but i'm sure there are other beans in my collection from that blend too and some crosses.