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

[flowerbug]

i found yet another outcross brown bean. if the plant is not exhibiting hybrid vigor the amount of seeds i'm getting would indicate this plant can take over the world in less than 5 years. *exaggerated sigh* lol

it has indications of being a cross between my commonly grown red bean variety Red Ryder and the Tan Goats Eye beans that i also commonly grow. too bad it isn't red enough to call Redzilla as Brownzilla just doesn't work...

i still haven't come up with a good name for the other bean i'm working on finishing up. indications are it is a first class dry bean. this is the 2nd Red Ryder and Tan Goats Eye cross i found some years ago in my seed sorting. it is not a solid brown color but retains the stripes of the Tan Goats Eye but the bean has a pink hue to it and the little dot (micropyle) is a more red color than brown. when shelled out early you can clearly see the red/pink color in the background and around the hilum. hmm, Huey might work (if you watch the old t.v. show Sienfeld you'll know what pinkish hue refers to )... Huey is better than Reddish Pere which is the name i've been using up until now, but the bean really isn't red enough and Pere is just an abbreviation for Peregion which is where the selection for the Tan Goats Eye bean came from.

what makes Huey a good bean for here is that it retains the short season of Red Ryder, is mostly bush in habit and is productive in any garden where i've planted it. Red Ryder is also a pretty reliable bean but it has a few traits which are not inherited by Huey as much so that makes it an improvement. Red Ryder has the tendency to not finish beans completely if there is some kind of stress. Huey does a better job because the seeds are a different shape (but interestingly enough they are a bit larger when forming and during the shelly stage and then they dry down to just a bit smaller than the Red Ryder beans which are your typical red small kidney bean - but i love 'em because when they grow right they are a beautiful well shaped small red kidney).

this year i've planted a lot of Red Ryder beans interplanted with the Purple Dove to see what can happen there with crosses. i'm finding out though that Red Ryder will finish before Purple Dove so interplanting wasn't the best approach for that. next time i plant i'll be doing two row blocks side by side. yesterday i was out in the North Garden trying to get all the Red Ryder and Hueys out of the Purple Dove and once in a while they were so entangled that a Purple Dove plant would get pulled out too. the North Garden was planted June 12th and the Purple Dove beans are just now putting on a huge number of pods and the pretty purple blooms. if i wanted fresh eating beans these survived the heat of the summer and the dry spell we just had (i did irrigate them). the Red Ryder finished earlier and i'm not sure how many had a chance to cross pollinate. i have to save about 1/3 of the seeds from this crop to replant to have a reasonable chance to find any crosses. i'll keep doing it anyways. i need to replenish my Red Ryder bean supply and also we really like Purple Dove as a dry bean so will keep going with these to see what paths nature/bees/beans decides to take.

which is how i found out that Purple Dove does nodulate on the roots and that explains why it has usually done pretty well in any garden where i've planted it.

this makes two common beans that i know of that do still nodulate (Molasses Face aka Yellow Eye and now Purple Dove). i didn't have enough of the other purple bean plants to where i could go out and pull one up to see, but perhaps in the future i'll be able to do that. indications are that they too likely nodulate.

as i am shelling out beans this season i've noticed my Yellow Eye beans have a nice early crop and then the pods in the middle during the really hot spell are fairly empty and then as it has cooled off more pods are again plump, but they're not ready completely yet to pick now unless i pull a plant by accident. my attempt to improve these hasn't done what i'd hoped (selecting for smaller beans so they would have a better chance of finishing once they've been started) in terms of filling those pods in the middle of the season, but it has been a fairly beautiful crop of them as there was such a long dry period with so little rain that the fungi didn't have much of a chance to damage the seeds. i've always been hoping to find good crosses from these too as i keep planting and harvesting. i'm pretty sure i do have some crosses in the mix from them now but i can't always be sure where a cross has come from.

i picked three five gallon buckets full of beans yesterday with two buckets coming from the North Garden which has no fence around it. that soil is the best topsoil i have here on this property and it is more protected from the wind so the plants do so much better there than any of the rest of the gardens which are more of a challenge due to the soil conditions (some planned as test plots to see how the various beans do in them).

 

[Ridgerunner]

i found yet another outcross brown bean. if the plant is not exhibiting hybrid vigor the amount of seeds i'm getting would indicate this plant can take over the world in less than 5 years. *exaggerated sigh* lol

Been there, done that. I found a segregation in Blue Jay in 2016 and planted it in 2017. When I harvested in 2017 I had three different segregations on three separate plants. I called one of them Voodoo, a black bean with a slight purple pattern. That's the production from one plant below, over 2500 individual beans after I sorted them and got rid of the rejects. I was so impressed I took the time to count the beans. I should have weighed them but failed.

I missed the 2018 growing season moving down here. When I planted Voodoo in 2019 I got two segregations, a "black" much like the original and a white. I planted the "black" this spring and got three new segregations. I have a lot of work to do on this bean. So far they have been pole but Blue Jay is a bush, I expect that to start showing up soon.

The point of this post is that I got decent production from most of the segregations but nothing like that first year. I know, change of garden and growing conditions. But that production was too good to not keep following up. Good luck on yours.

This quart jar shows the beans I got off of one plant.

 

[Artorius]

@Artorius,

Have you ever heard of a bean called "Domaci Cucak"?

@Bluejay77

I was browsing the website of a German Deaflora store today and they have Domaci Cucak bean. I can order if you need seeds. I am going to buy 3-4 varieties from them this month.

 

[flowerbug]

part of today i was shelling out a box top of rejects. these were beans harvested from plants that were overgrown and rained on enough times that the pods were mostly heavily full of fungal splotches and in a lot of cases i was throwing away the ends of the pods because they were mush in my hand when picking, but the top parts i put aside in this box top so i could get them checked through. maybe two cups of beans for the effort which is ok, we'll eat some of those and the rest will get replanted in the coming years looking for cross breeds.

as a test case i set aside some of the beans that had a little bit of fungus fuzz on the outside of the bean and then washed them off quickly with some soap to remove as much of the fuzz as possible and then i also washed them with some mild bleach solution to see if that would stop the fungi from doing any more attempts at growing. now i'll dry them down good for a few months before putting them into any kind of storage. i'll select some from these for next year's planting to see if they're viable after being treated this way or not. my major selection criteria for keeping any bean is if the hilum has any discoloration from the fungi as to me that means it has more deep seated infection and it isn't going to go away easily.

the beans that were in good condition i wiped down with a slightly damp and soapy cloth and then also wiped them down with a very mild bleach solution just to see if it makes any difference in how much mold tries to pop up. i rarely find any mold in my other beans because of how many times i sort them and also for how long i dry them before i put them into containers (i usually don't get the beans into sealed containers until the humidity is really low here). during sorting if there's anything blemished or malformed i'll either put it in the reject/eating beans we'll cook up when i have enough ready to go for something or if they're bad enough they end up in the worm farm.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I was browsing the website of a German Deaflora store today and they have Domaci Cucak bean. I can order if you need seeds. I am going to buy 3-4 varieties from them this month.

No I don't want any of the Domaci Cucak beans. I just wanted to find out where they came from. Someone on facebook asked me what the origin of the bean was. I think I found out that they are from Croatia.

 

[flowerbug]

very nice day shelling a lot of beans today and since i'd already done a lot of the rejects and tougher ones it was a lot easier and more fun. always a delight to open up a pod of 5-9 beans and have most or even all of them not rotting or blemished. a fair number of pods were unmarked as they must have dried down during the three weeks of no rain we had in August. some very well formed and nearly perfect small red kidney beans and some others too, but mostly what i planted in there to replenish the stock of eating beans were the Red Ryders.

i wonder if i can get three more weeks of unfrosted weather this season. likely not, but i'll try to be an optimist here... c'mon Indian Summer! maybe even two weeks will be enough...

 

[Blue-Jay]

The the last two weeks I have harvested some absolutely gorgeous pods (will have photos in some future post) with next to nothing of seed spoilage or staining. It's been a very dry summer here and I've run my soaker hoses a lot. This week with the weather being rather dripy I've nearly caught up shelling almost all the pods that have been harvest so far. Now I need some more sunny dry weather. There is literally probably 90 percent of the pods in my offsite bush dry bean patch to harvest and even more in the offsite pole bean patch yet to dry and be harvested. Since Saturday we have gotten over 3.5 inches of rain. Probably more precipitation that we have gotten all together in the months of July and August combined.

 

[saritabee]

Spent yesterday afternoon tilling up the big bean plot. 48 degrees all afternoon, brrrrrr ! This plot is where my pole, and semi runners grew last summer. This year it will be home to 80 varieties of dry bush beans.

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I'm so far behind in this thread, but today is my catch-up day (since we're stuck inside because of all the wildfire smoke).

I am curious, Russ, how you manage disease when planting in the same locations every year? (I'm planning for next year's garden and was trying to plan in some crop rotation... but would much rather have all beans all the time, lolllll)

 

[Blue-Jay]

I'm so far behind in this thread, but today is my catch-up day (since we're stuck inside because of all the wildfire smoke).

I am curious, Russ, how you manage disease when planting in the same locations every year? (I'm planning for next year's garden and was trying to plan in some crop rotation... but would much rather have all beans all the time, lolllll)

I guess when it comes to disease. I have been lucky. I haven't noticed any trouble with my grow outs. The places that have had beans in the very same place more than once haven't actually been used for beans that many times except for my backyard bean plots (this is the 8th season) and my south flowerbed. I have considered giving my backyard ground a rest from beans for one season from time to time. In 2016,2017, and 2018 I grew beans on the same ground at a former nursery, but I have not been there for two years and don't plan on going back. The former nursery has too many deer visiting nightly. The last year I was there at the nursery some of my beans came down with mosaic and I didn't harvest seed from those varieties that were affected. The place where my large 80 variety bush dry bean plot grows this year. This is my second year there and I don't consider that a long time in the same place. When the fellow who owns the property retires in a couple more years. I may have grown beans on that ground perhaps 4 or 5 times. He told me then he wants that piece back again for his gardens. So by that time I might find anther new place to go. Where my pole bean plot is this year. I built a raised bed box on the place where I had very spotting success with beans because of drainage. That bean ground was buried with a new layer of soil 11 inches deep. So I consider that piece of ground as being used to grow beans for the very first time. Where my pole bean plot is this year there is another plot the same size inside my deer fence and I could alternate beans between the two plots from year to year with other vegetables.

I heard someone say at one of the seed swaps I attended in the last few years. That Bill Best of Sustainable Mountain Agriculture fame. Has grown beans on the same ground for a countless number of years.

 

[baymule]

My beans have set pods, empty, and they fell off all summer. I watered, weeded, all to no avail. The grasshoppers descended and i even used sevin dust to keep the nasties off. I even let the guineas in the garden to go after the hoppers. Weather has cooled off, the beans are blooming again, maybe they will make pods before frost.