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

[Blue-Jay]

Russ's 2020 Bean Show
Day 4​

Bomba - Bush Dry. Pretty teal colored bean from Ukraine. Got this bean from Joseph Simcox in 2013 and grew it for the first time in 2014. Grew the bean again in 2018, 2019 and again this year.

Brejo - Pole Snap. Native American version of a pole snap bean. I have never tried preparing these for eating. Many native beans were stringy and would be boiled. Placed in the mouth and pulled through the teeth leaving the soft parts of the cooked bean remaining in the mouth. Said to be somewhat cold hardy.


Bomba......................................................................Brejo

Brooten - Bush Dry. Another of the many legacy beans that Robert Lobitz might have worked with one day. This was a segregation of a smaller roundish cream colored bean with an orange eye ring. Upon growing it two times the bean grew true to type both times. Very productive. Has a similar pod shape as several other Lobitz Legacy beans. 14 plants produced over a pound of beans. Started drying it's first pods in 70 days. Named after the village of Brooten, Minnesota.

Bucksin Girl - Bush Snap. For some reason I didn't believe that this bean could be a snap bean. Not the way I'm used to eating them anyway. However I cooked up some this past summer and it's a very nice stringless snap bean.


Brooten.....................................................................Buckskin Girl

Burton's Bridege - Bush Dry. Working title and will probably use this name for another bean. For the last two times I have grown Mrociumere I discovered this interesting gold colored bean that I had high hopes for. After growng them this summer. I didn't get back what I had expected. First photo on the upper left is the outcross I found in Mrociumre and the following three photos are what I found after this summer's grow out.


Burton's Bridge

 

[flowerbug]

@Bluejay77 i think you've found the other parent (besides Dapple Grey) of Monster Bean! that pattern of BB is very similar to what Monster looks like and every time i plant Monster i get out crosses spinning off like crazy. the difference is that Monster is a darker shade of brown here, but otherwise that sparkly pattern is familiar.

this year i have a lighter pink bean which looks like your brighter pink version.

i also have about 20-30 other out crosses and children of out crosses, i've not kept track of all of them or counted. what you have there that i don't have are all solid colors while i have about half of what i plant coming back as half white beans with various colors and patterns (coming from DG), but i've also gotten DG back too (which is where Monster came from).

if you don't want to keep planting any of those i'll be happy to adopt them. i have also had some plants give Monster back but i'm not sure yet if those will keep giving other beans or what since i haven't planted them yet (i'm still planting all the Monster beans i grew several years ago).

i would not be surprised to find out that Dapple Grey is a RL bean.

 

[Artorius]

These are my network beans for 2020. With a small urban yard, I'm really limited but as I mentioned I should have a near full return on the four I was growing.

View attachment 37491
Verde Temuco - Not very productive, but this could be a site problem not related to the plant. The area ended up having a bit more shade than I calculated.

View attachment 37493
Warpath - This was the most successful of my network beans for 2020. Decent sized pole plants with good productivity.

View attachment 37494
Milky Way - Moderately productive, but this could be a site problem not related to the plant as it was the same area mentioned previously that ended up being a bit too much shade. These beans had a really wide range of seed coats; some were super swirly looking while others almost looked like Calypso.
View attachment 37496
Blue Star Gold - These were massive pole plants but didn't set their pods until practically fall. I didn't get any dry seed pods until the end of October and a lot of them just didn't make it. I finally pulled the plants and hung them in my garage to dry. The mature dry beans are really cool though with tiny white specks.

I'm hopefully going to get these packaged up within a week and shipped to @Bluejay77 along with the Pink Tip seeds. Really looking forward to participating again next year!

@Michael Lusk
Great beans. And now I have to add more varieties to my "must have" list. Will it ever end?

 

[Artorius]

Russ's 2020 Bean Show
Day 2​

Alice Sunshine - Bush Snap. One of the many Robert Lobitz original named beans that he released through the Seed Savers Exchange in the early 2000's. The bean produced some fairly nice quality seed this year, but not a whole lot of them. I've got a smaller backyard plot that I finally realized does not grow great beans. It won't be growing beans again. I don't know what is with the soil there, but I have a soil sample to send into a lab and see what they come up with.

View attachment 37475
Alice Sunshine

I think Alice Sunhine is also, to a certain extent, a bean that is sensitive to the soil type and the amount of macro and micronutrients it contains. This year I got seeds in three color patterns.

In February, I wanted to check the viability of the seeds I had. I put the sprouted seed in a pot with soil in which tomatoes grew last year. The seeds had this pattern. The drawing around the eye resembled a soldier and the mottling was very delicate.

I sowed one of these seeds in July in a pot with fresh soil I bought at a garden store. The manufacturer adds so much fertilizer to it that it can be a fertilizer itself I received such seeds.

Alice Sunshine was also in the garden. It grew in the most humid place. Last year, very dry, I had the best beans there. This year was very wet and the beans grew badly there. I have harvested few good quality seeds. In terms of color, they are most similar to those presented by Russ.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Artorius,

The bean collecting never really ends it gets worse and worse. At least beans are healthier than getting hooked on drugs.
All three of your Alice Sunshine beans are really nice looking. The photo in the middle I've never seen AS do that. A lot of beans with this pattern of color around the eye and spotting over the rest of a white background seem to be soil senstive. It doesn't seem to make any difference where they come from either. I got Lekatt from someone in either the Netherlands or Belgium and in most soils around where I live the bean turns almost all solid gold with hardly any white on it. However I think I found a soil in this county where beans with this pattern will look really nice. I'm going to grow a bunch of them next year.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@flowerbug,

In this Burton's Bridge group I like the pinkish colored bean and the one below it. If you want to adopt that solid gold one I would send all of them to you. Maybe that one will do something interesting when regrown again.

 

[flowerbug]

@flowerbug,

In this Burton's Bridge group I like the pinkish colored bean and the one below it. If you want to adopt that solid gold one I would send all of them to you. Maybe that one will do something interesting when regrown again.

hold on to them and send them next spring. no need to send them now or before then. save on postage.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Russ's 2020 Bean Show
Day 5
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Buxton Buckshot - Pole Dry. This bean grown around Buxton, Maine for a long time I suspect might be a native American bean. It is so very similar and actually nearly identical to another native bean I have called Seneca Bird Egg. The only difference is a little bit in productivity and Buxton is earlier. Seed is identical and pods are the same. I think Buxton is just a different strain.

Cold Creek Segregation 1 - Bush Dry. This is a whole family of segregations from Robet Lobitz Legacy beans. There are so many segregations that have come of this group that I'm almost confused by them. Some of them have displayed yellow pods and some with green. I think I really need to eliminate the most uninteresting ones and go from there.


Buxton Buckshot..................................................Cold Creek Segregation 1

Cold Creek Segregation 1.2 - Bush Dry

Cold Creek Segregation 1.3 - Bush Dry


Cold Creek Segregation 1.2......................................Cold Creek Segregation 1.3


Cold Creek Segregation 1.2.1 - Bush Dry. I guess the grand children are coming along too.


Cold Creek Segregation 1.2.1

 

[flowerbug]

i certainly understand that problem. i'm pretty sure i have about 100 brown beans that i'll likely never do anything with. they're likely just going to end up being eaten.

my focus this past season which worked well was to try to increase my planting of the bulk beans so that i was getting more return of beans that we ate as they grew and also will be able to eat this coming year. the few years before i did some of that but i was trading off too much space for experiments where i didn't want to eat the results or i just wasn't getting enough beans back that i could eat some of them. i really needed to replenish the stock this season and accomplished some of that, but i will do it again next year too because we're easily going to eat most of these beans up. we both eat them and enjoy them.

having more extra space to work with is nice, but i do need to improve the general soil quality in these new spaces and that does take time. some of these spaces were under pathways for 20yrs or more so they're compacted and devoid of organic matter. no worm life signs, no drainage so they're not the best for growing certain beans but luckily i'm finding beans that can survive such soils and still produce something even during our hotter parts of the summer. that's what i'm so glad and excited about, making progress on finding beans that work.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Russ's 2020 Bean Show
Day 6​

Cold Spring Pinto - Bush Dry. This is also part of all the Robert Lobitz Legacy beans that I've been working with for 5 year. Today it's the Cold Spring Pinto Family and there are a couple of nice surprises. A couple of rather mundane looking beans and two that I especially like.

Cold Spring Pinto 1 - Bush Dry. The Cold Spring Pinto had a segregation that looked more like a pinto than the the Cold Spring Pinto did.


Cold Spring Pinto.................................................Cold Spring Pinto 1


Cold Spring Pinto 1.1 - Bush Dry. Then Cold Spring Pinto 1 had a segregation

Cold Spring Pinto 1.1.1 - Bush Dry. This gets more fun yet. Then Cold Spring Pinto had it's own segregation. This is the one I like the best. I like the bow tie design trailing off from the eye of the bean.

Cold Spring Pinto 1.1...........................................Cold Spring Pinto 1.1.1

Cold Spring Pinto 1.1.1.1 - Bush Dry. Cold Spring Pinto 1.1.1 had it's own segregation that looks a bit like itself.

Cold Spring Pinto 1.1.1.2 - Bush Dry. Cold Spring Pinto 1.1.1 had another segregation that looked a little different.


Cold Spring Pinto 1.1.1.1........................Cold Spring Pinto 1.1.1.2

Tomorrow I'll get back to something a little less complicated.