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

[Blue-Jay]

@Bluejay77 that pattern for Nippersink is also very similar to the same pattern for Money which i grew a few seasons and then stopped growing because it just wasn't reliably productive enough. i still grow it once in a while to keep the seeds refreshed but otherwise it isn't a major bulk bean candidate here.

Similar but not exact. Also the seed of Nippersink is much flatter not nearly as filled out as Money.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@flowerbug,

Your return seed box came in the mail today. Thank you so much for you work. Thank you too for the Huey bean and the melon. What is that melon like? You got great color out of those Robert Lobitz purple beans this year. You must have found the right place to grow them. Thank you for the abundance of Brown Lima. Is that bean a pole or bush?

 

[Blue-Jay]

Russ's 2020 Bean Show - Day 18​

Nippersink Off Type #1 - Bush Dry. This bean is an off type of Nippersink produced everytime I grow that bean.
Nippersink Off Type #2 - Bush Dry. This bean is an off type of Nippersink produced everytime I grow that bean.


Nippersink Off Type #1.............................................Nipersink Off Type #2

Nippersink 4.1 - Bush Dry. I saw this much redder seed coat in a Nippersink grow out about two years ago and decided to give it a try this year. It also produced several off types that I didn't bother to photo.

Nun's Bellybutton - Bush Dry. Acquired this bean from the same person that I got Maria Zeller from in Derby, England in 2012. Essentially it looks like many other red soldier beans but I like that name so I had to grow it. This year was my third grow out since 2012.


Nippersink 4.1............................................................Nun's Bellybutton

Ohio Pole - Pole Snap. Obtained from an Ohio Seed Savers Exchang member in 2011. Native American origin. My first encounter with this bean was back in the early 1980's. Beautiful seed and it always has grown well for me.


Ohio Pole

 

[flowerbug]

@flowerbug,

Your return seed box came in the mail today. Thank you so much for you work. Thank you too for the Huey bean and the melon. What is that melon like? You got great color out of those Robert Lobitz purple beans this year. You must have found the right place to grow them. Thank you for the abundance of Brown Lima. Is that bean a pole or bush?

glad you got all those babies safe and sound!

[melon digression, skip if you don't want to read about melons ]
i sent so many melon seeds because i have about a quart container full of them and wanted to get some out and around to others who might like them. passing along @ninnymary 's gift. they are like a muskmelon, but not one that has had the flavor bred out of them. last year was the first season i grew them here in our hard packed clay and while they had a slow start once they got going they were great, happy and productive. the melons show up dark green and eventually will get some color to them. let them go a bit longer and then start picking. when you cut one open if you smell cotton candy or brown sugar you'll know it's good. you can really smell them in the garden when they are ripening too. they may split a little at the ends, still good. don't let them sit outside too long though after they split because then i was finding ants and wasps liked them as much as i did. we were eating melon every day for weeks and i was having fun learning about when to pick them. the first melon i picked was too early and didn't have much flavor at all. i grew them on the edges of some bean gardens so the vines could sprawl in the pathways and in and over the rocks we have around. they did really well. i think out of six plants we had about 40 melons that we ate and another 10-15 we gave away when i couldn't possibly eat or deal with them all at once. next year i'm not going to be planting that many plants. three should be ok. the other big thing i liked about them is that they were bee magnets, even if they didn't set fruits right away the bees did get in them. um, sorry, i like to gush about these, they were good melons. and of course since i had such bad luck before with melons i was just tickled to pieces that they actually did anything at all. early enough, productive... at the end of the season the melons are not that great, but if you get some extra sunshine days and the vines aren't dead and the melons don't get frozen i did find out that you could still get edible fruits, not as good as prime but still acceptable food from Momma Nature. i just put a bit of honey and lemon on them to doctor them a bit and we ate them anyways.

[back to bean land ]
Purple Dove was grown in decent soil with some organic matter and those will give the better color. the pale white color shows up in the beans in the mineral clay and not much else subsoil we have in some other gardens. i also really selected for color and then i picked some white ones too to make sure i was sending a full representation of those seeds. the other three RL beans i sent back were grown in better soil so had the better color too.

the Brown Lima beans were bush beans. none of them climbed. i planted them along the fence expecting them to grow up but they never did. productive bean, keep them picked to avoid shatter and rot issues. like the red lima bean the pod splits open when it gets too dry and then that means around here that fog/dew can get in and start rot troubles on the seeds.

thank you again for running the LEBN it's always been fun and i appreciate what you do here.

 

[baymule]

I'll veer off on melons for a moment too....... I planted Amish melons, they were big and tasty. They produced more than we could eat or give away, the pigs, chickens and sheep all got some. Plus I sliced and dehydrated them for a super sugar and flavor concentrated snack. @flowerbug you should get a dehydrator if you don't have one, dehydrated melon in the cold of winter makes a delicious snack.

 

[flowerbug]

I'll veer off on melons for a moment too....... I planted Amish melons, they were big and tasty. They produced more than we could eat or give away, the pigs, chickens and sheep all got some. Plus I sliced and dehydrated them for a super sugar and flavor concentrated snack. @flowerbug you should get a dehydrator if you don't have one, dehydrated melon in the cold of winter makes a delicious snack.

i am stuck for extra space. Mom won't get many new gadgets either. if we get something we have to get rid of something else.

 

[Zeedman]

the Brown Lima beans were bush beans. none of them climbed. i planted them along the fence expecting them to grow up but they never did. productive bean, keep them picked to avoid shatter and rot issues. like the red lima bean the pod splits open when it gets too dry and then that means around here that fog/dew can get in and start rot troubles on the seeds.

So is that a bush brown lima, or a bush bean that just looks like a lima?

 

[flowerbug]

So is that a bush brown lima, or a bush bean that just looks like a lima?

lima bean. have not eaten enough of them yet to know how good they are but the few i had didn't strike me as inedible.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Russ's 2020 Bean Show - Day 19​

Ojibwe - Bush Dry - This bean is another of the Robert Lobitz Legacy beans that I have been working with since 2015. When I first saw the bean I was amazed that it looked like one of my original beans Choctaw from 30 years or more before this bean came about. Choctaw is a semi runner and this is a true bush without runners. This bean has grown the same every season I have grown it.

Orca - Bush Dry. I have seen other beans with this same name and with a large black spot around the eye and they turned out to be semi runners. My Austrian bean friend Harriet Mella from Liebenfels told me she had a true bush Orca so I took a sample from her and have grown this one ever since.


Ojibwe.............................................................................Orca


Osakis - Bush Dry. This is another Robert Lobitz Legacy bean. Seed coat is seems close in appearance to Ojibwe. Possibly has more extensive red blushing over the seed surface. The orginal seed also came with a different Lobitz code on the packet. This bean seems to mature about a week or so later than Ojibwe. This bean has grown exactly the same ever since 2015.

Painted Pony - Bush Dry and maybe snap. An heirloom bean native to Mexico and southwestern United States. Also known as Mare Brown. A prolifc producer of dry beans when allowed to fully mature.


Osakis...........................................................................Painted Pony

Pale Face - Bush Dry. An original bean that I have named and discovered in the early 1980 growing among Owl's Head. Pale face is one of the few beans I have seen that was stable from the first grow out. The seed when harvested new has a very light skin toned figure around the eye. With time it will darken over several years to the color of a yellow eye bean.


Pale Face

 

[flowerbug]

@Bluejay77 the Orca beans have always been bush beans when i have grown them. none of them have had runners.

i have also seen them called Yin Yang beans. both of mine were sourced from the same place which was funny because they both grew about the same, looked about the same, weighed about the same, etc.

these were another bean that did not do well in the middle of the summer here. it does ok at either side if you can get them planted early enough and they survive through the summer, but the pods they put on in the summer were empty or the beans in them were not viable/finished.

through the years i've found various colors of "eyes" from blacks, purples, browns and that shape (which i call potato, but it's really not potato shaped so i don't know why it has stuck in my head - perhaps there's a potato bean with that name...). sadly, so far none of them do well here and i don't grow a lot of them any more. i still have the seeds...