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

[Blue-Jay]

I have been reading thru both the 2019 and the 2020 easy bean network pages. I have learned a lot. Right now I can only think of one question. Let's say I request and receive 6 different beans from the network. I grow out those beans and they all seem true to type. I send back my seeds and all seems well. The next year I grow those same 6 beans and 2 of them give me off type beans. How do I know if those off type beans are due to the original bean not being stable or if they crossed with one of the other beans that I was growing?

Ok I can tackle this question. If you grow out some beans and every single seed they produce look like the original you planted. Then you received seeds that were not outcrossed. If upon planting the next season the beans you grew the season before and you find some off types. Then they crossed in your grow out the season before.

When a cross occurs and it contains new genetic information. It's still going to look like the mother seed. It doesn't change that season. The change in the seedcoat comes in the next season.

Another thing you might watch for is planting climbing beans near true bush types that don't climb at all. The next season you might find some of your bush beans now want to grow runners and climb on something. The climbing habit is dominant over a true bush bean of which the true bush habit is recessive. I don't plant semi runners or pole beans around my true bush types. I want my true bush types to stay that way. If I get beans from someone who says a bean is a true bush type and only some of them start growing runners. I pull the ones growing runners among my bush beans out of the ground and discard them so as to not let them have any possiblity of pollinating more bush beans. They might not pollinate other bush beans but that is the chance you take if you leave them grow together.

I also have made a habit of growing by stringless beans around only other stringless beans so they don't start becoming stringy. If my true stringless happen to cross with other stringless types. It's likely they will continue being stringless beans. I just might have something new to try to stablize and name as a new variety.

Now how long does it take to stablize a crossed bean. That can differ with the cross. Sometimes a hybrid bean will never stablize but keep producing off types every season. Some will stablize in a few years. Sometime three or two or six years. You just never know until you can grow out your hybrid bean at least three times and keep getting back true to type results. I have on rare occassion had a new bean be stable right from the start. That doesn't happen often.

Hope all this helps. It's not really that complicated.

 

[Michael Lusk]

@Bluejay77, I finally got the seed post sent to you today. Hopefully you'll have it by Monday or Tuesday. If you don't have it by midweek just let me know and I'll track it and see where it's at. Thanks again for all you do in coordinating this project...I'm looking forward to picking my 2021 beans very soon.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Russ's 2020 Bean Show - Day 11​

Jacob's Prairie - Bush Dry. One of the many Robert Lobitz Legacy beans that I've been working with since 2015. This one is not stable yet still kicking out an ocassional off type every season. I love the very fine spotting all over the surface of the bean. So neat looking and crisp. Second photo an off type it produced this season.


Jacob's Prairie..............................................................Jacob's Prairie Off Type 2020

Johnsbug - Pole Snap. This is one of the 52 outcrossed beans sent to me from Will Bonsall in 2015. This bean stablized very fast. Long somewhat flattened moderately wide green pods. Makes a nice snap bean if the pods are not allowed to get to far into seed development. Otherwise it does develop strings. Very productive. I named the bean after the small town of Johnsburg, Illlinois here in the county where I live.

Keeny's Stringless Green Refugee - Bush Snap. Acquired from a grower in Hobartville, New South Wales, Australia in 2014. This is one of the early orginal snap beans developed by Calvin Keeny, of Leroy, New York. The father of the stringless bean. The bean was offered bt the W. Altee Burpee Company in the 1890's.



Johnsburg...................................................................Keeny's Stringless Green Refugee


Khabarovsk - Pole Dry. I've seen many different spellings for this bean that orginates in Khabarovsk,Russia.

Kiagara Mame - Pole Dry. Strikingly beautful productive variety with black and white swirly looking seeds. I believe this bean originates from Japan. Obtained from someone on Facebook. I remember remarking about the bean how I would love to grow this one, when this person from either Spain or Portugal posted it on facebook in 2019. They so kindly granted my wish and sent me a sample but I couldn't read the name on their return address label. So thank you whom ever you are. I will always take good care of this beauty.


Khabarovsk..................................................................Kiagara Mame

 

[Blue-Jay]

Russ's 2020 Bean Show - Day 12​

Kishwaukee Yellow - Bush Snap yellow podded. This bean is one of my very early original named beans and the second outcross bean I had discovered in the late summer of 1977. I believe it to be a cross between Contender green podded snap bean and Cherokee wax. Since in those days I grew a lot of those two beans each summer and often grew them next to each other. Named after the Kishwaukee River. Headwaters of which begin in Woodstock, Illinois and flows westward and empties into the Rock river just south of Rockford, Illinois. Kishwaukee River known to the Potawatomi people as the River of the Sycamore. The Sycamore's trees range is about as far north as the river. This bean has always produced a mottled seed which comprises it's largest volume. A solid black and a solid buff colored seed. This bean was sold commercially in the 1990's by Horus Botanicals of Salem, Arkansas.

Kishwaukee Green - Bush Snap green podded. In 1978 upon growing seed of the Kishwaukee Yellow some of the plants segregated into a green podded bean which I had discovered the following summer of 1980 that it too produces not only a mottled seed but a solid black, and a buff colored seed as well.


Kishwaukee Yellow.....................................................................Kishwaukee Green

Kleine Soldatenboon - Bush Dry. Obtained from Jaanes Aalders in December of 2013. This bean has always produced a nice quality of seed each time I have grown it.

Koronis Tan Trout - Bush Dry. Another of the original named bean of Robert Lobitz. Released through the Seed Savers yearbook about 20 years ago. I had stumbled across this bean in a SSE yearbook from a 5 year previous season at the time I found this former SSE members old listing of the bean. I decided to write to this Michigan lister anyway. He wrote back and yes indeed still had seed of this bean. I was thrilled as it filled in another of the Lobitz beans that I was colleting and growing. When the seed arrived in the mail in November of 2018 the packet said 2001. Not to worry as the seed had been kept in a freezer all those 17 years. So just for my satisfaction I took 10 of the smallest beans in the packet. Seeds I probably would not have planted anyway. I did a germination test on them. They all sprouted in a record three days and germinated to 100%. So this summer of 2020 I got to grow and produce my own new seed of them. Upon harvesting new seed of this bean. The new seed was so white that I thought I had forgotten to plant this one. After about three weeks of it's color developing slowly I was relieved to find that I didn't forget to plant Koronis Tan Trout this summer.


kleine Soldatenboon...................................................Koronis Tan Trout


La Pap Segregation - Pole Dry. Discovered in La Pap in 2016. This bean produced it's own segregation this past summer show in the second photo.


La Pap Segregation.....................................................La Pap Segregation 2

 

[Artorius]

Koronis Tan Trout - Bush Dry. Another of the original named bean of Robert Lobitz. Released through the Seed Savers yearbook about 20 years ago. I had stumbled across this bean in a SSE yearbook from a 5 year previous season at the time I found this former SSE members old listing of the bean. I decided to write to this Michigan lister anyway. He wrote back and yes indeed still had seed of this bean. I was thrilled as it filled in another of the Lobitz beans that I was colleting and growing. When the seed arrived in the mail in November of 2018 the packet said 2001. Not to worry as the seed had been kept in a freezer all those 17 years. So just for my satisfaction I took 10 of the smallest beans in the packet. Seeds I probably would not have planted anyway. I did a germination test on them. They all sprouted in a record three days and germinated to 100%.

Three years ago, I accidentally dumped a handful of Monstrance seeds on my composter. They were ugly, with morbid stains, or otherwise damaged. Usually, I threw them into the oven. After a few days, a dozen or so bean seedlings appeared in the composter.
Last year I didn't harvest many good quality Deseronto Potato seeds. Additionally, I swaped some of them. This year I sowed some very small seeds that I left behind. They all grew and I got beautiful, thick seeds from them.
Bean seeds are very viable. As long as the embryo is not damaged in them.

 

[flowerbug]

Three years ago, I accidentally dumped a handful of Monstrance seeds on my composter. They were ugly, with morbid stains, or otherwise damaged. Usually, I threw them into the oven. After a few days, a dozen or so bean seedlings appeared in the composter.
Last year I didn't harvest many good quality Deseronto Potato seeds. Additionally, I swaped some of them. This year I sowed some very small seeds that I left behind. They all grew and I got beautiful, thick seeds from them.
Bean seeds are very viable. As long as the embryo is not damaged in them.

yes, while i prefer to keep and plant good condition seeds this isn't what always happens. i keep them in separate containers so they won't cross contaminate other seeds, but if they are all i have i'll give them a try.

 

[flowerbug]

historical thread:

A Wanigan Associate HAS JOINED us here!

Hi everyone. On this site here: http://www.abeancollectorswindow.com/index.html I have been avidly perusing Bean varieties to add to my comparitively small collection of Bean selections. I had been so happy to have found this site, and to read that one of the Wanigan Associates still lives...

www.theeasygarden.com

plus an index of the previous LEBN bean threads:

2013 https://www.theeasygarden.com/threa...rk-get-new-beans-varieties-nearly-free.13066/

2014 https://www.theeasygarden.com/threa...ean-network-get-new-beans-on-the-cheap.15216/

2015 https://www.theeasygarden.com/threa...ean-network-old-beans-should-never-die.16903/

2016 https://www.theeasygarden.com/threa...keeping-heirloom-beans-from-extinction.18995/

2017 https://www.theeasygarden.com/threads/2017-little-easy-bean-network-–-everything-beans-post-it-here-join-the-fun.20356/

2018 https://www.theeasygarden.com/threa...in-us-in-saving-amazing-heirloom-beans.21746/

2019 https://www.theeasygarden.com/threa...e-and-reawaken-the-thrill-of-discovery.22726/

 

[Blue-Jay]

Russ's 2020 Bean Show - Day 13​

Lake Avenue Beauty - Bush Dry. Another of the late Robert Lobitz beans that he named and introduced through the Seed Savers Exchange (Decorah, Iowa) yearbook many years ago. Robert named this bean after Lake Avenue where he lived in Paynesville, Minnesota. Last year I started out with my first acquired seed sample. This year I had a much healthier grow out all with my own seed that I grew in 2019.

Leslie Tenderpod - Pole snap. I found out this summer first hand that this bean is a very nice stringless snap bean. It has been grown in the Appalachin Mountains of eastern Kentucky for a long time. I believe it's a distinct possiblity that the bean got it's name from Leslie county in south eastern Kentucky.


Lake Avenue Beauty....................................................Leslie Tenderpod

Liscek - Pole Dry. A very pretty bean that I acquired last winter from Susanne Alex of Willich, Germany. I didn't get a lot of beans from it this summer but what it did produce was very nice quality. Looking forward to growing it out again in 2021.

Little Falls - Bush Dry - One of the many Robert Lobitz legacy beans I have been working with since 2015. I named the bean last year after Little Falls, Minnesota. The bean is very productive. Has long 6 to 7 inch pods. Plants are fairly massive for a bush bean. I Believe the bean is now likely stable.


Liscek..........................................................................Little Falls

Littlefield's Special - Bush Dry - First acquired this bean from Heritage Harvest Seeds in Canda when they were still shipping seeds to the U.S. Seems to be no known history of this beautiful bean. Heritage Harvest doesn't post any information that was allude to this beans origin.


Littlefield's Special

 

[Blue-Jay]

Russ's 2020 Bean Show - Day 14​

Logan Giant - Pole Snap. I had grown this bean as far back as the early 1980's as an early member of the Seed Savers Exchange. Said to be an old West Virginia heirloom.


Long Prairie 2 - Bush Dry - Long Pods large productive plants. This is just a working name for now and it looks nearly identical to Little Falls. However this bean comes about from a packet of seed that had a very different number code that Robert Lobitz had given the seed.


Logan Giant..................................................................Long Prairie 2


Long Prairie 2.1 - Bush Dry. Long Pods large productive plants. A segregation of Long Prairie 2.

Long Prairie 2.1.1 - Bush Dry Long Pods Large productive plants. A segregation of Long Prairie 2 just discovered among the seed harvest of 2.1 this September. This beans seed has the similar seed coat pattern but no dark speckles in the red portion of the seed.


Long Prairie 2.1..........................................................Long Prairie 2.1.1


Long Prairie 2.2 - Bush Dry. Large productiv plants, long pods. A segregation of Long Prairie 2 from several seasons ago that has not segregated everytime it's grown. So it's likely going to be stable and I gave it the name Parker's Prairie after Parker's Prairie, Minnesota.


Long Prairie 2.2 (Parker's Prairie)

 

[Tricia77]

This pole bean is called Rosa’s Bean that I grew for Russ this year. It was very prolific for me.