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

[flowerbug]

today i picked all of the Cha Kura Kake Soy beans today. amazingly i got more back than i planted even though they were repeatedly topped off by some creature (likely a groundhog). when i was picking i thought the pods were rather flat and that the seeds were not going to be all that well developed, but after shelling a few to see what was up they were ok. kind of a sticky texture to them if they aren't completely dry. most of the pods i picked were just starting to turn yellow a few were slightly brown, and enough were green that i boiled those for a snack of edamame for me and Mom to taste them to see if were were going to grow them again. both of us gave them the thumbs up so we'll see how i can fit them in to the garden plans for future years.

i also picked a box top of Purple Dove beans that were mostly dried and ready to come in from some of the plants that finished up. the first picking of dry beans from Purple Dove i set aside for future planting as they will be continually selected for early. i can also start doing selections for color of beans. some are much whiter than others and so those can be selected to give a mostly white bean crop for those who like whiter beans. i myself have been selecting mostly the purple beans because i like the color. other gardens are just starting to flower in the Purple Dove so they survived the hottest part of the summer ok and have been doing well in the north garden. i had Mom water them for me this morning before it got too hot out.

i also picked some of the other dry beans that were ready, Top Notch, my Reddish Pere (which i really need to come up with a better name for) and a few of the Red Ryder. also a few Hopi Lima pole beans were ready.

by the time i got the gardens picked through that i was trying to finish it was too hot for me and so the rest of the day i'll be putting up tomatoes.

 

[Zeedman]

The earliest of our soybeans (Kosodiguri Extra Early, Crest, and Ta Li Tsao Shen Wu Tu) were about 90% dry, so we cut off the plants & brought them inside to dry further. A portion of each of them was eaten by rodents, but intensive trapping put an end to that. There is enough seed left of each to refresh my stock.

One of the edamame soybeans (Fledderjohn) was ready; we harvested half for eating, and left the rest to dry down for seed. The other edamame (Gardensoy 12) had an outbreak of wilt that killed 6 plants... those plants were pulled & burned, and the disease does not appear to have spread further. The silver lining: pulling the diseased plants revealed that the roots were heavily nodulated, in spite of the fact that the seed was not inoculated. The bacteria are apparently able to over-winter in my home gardens... I will be sacrificing a few plants in the rural garden for comparison.

The dry seed harvest for MN 150 cowpea & Shiraz snow pea is nearly complete. Thanks to the extended dry spell, almost no seed was lost to spoilage. The first dry pods of German Butterbean lima & Sierra Madre yardlong bean appeared today, so that seed harvest has begun.

The Emerite pole beans are finally starting to wind down; other than what we cook fresh, they will be given away for the rest of the season. The Sierra Madre yardlong beans, though, are at peak production. We will freeze one more batch, then give some to friends & let about 1/2 of the pods go for seed.

Sierra Madre

 

[Richard Loyd]

Royal Corona runner beans at shelly stage.

 

[flowerbug]

Royal Corona runner beans at shelly stage.

welcome to TEG and the 2020 bean thread!

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hi Richard !

Nice to see you here !

Richard has a nice photo of Royal Corona pods on his facebook page when the pods were green and swollen with the beans. Posted about 11 days ago.

 

[PhilaGardener]

Where are you growing those great looking runner beans, @Richard Loyd ?

Welcome!

 

[saritabee]

I’m growing the Network bean, Mugungi. So far the plants are very small, not very healthy looking and seem to be struggling.

Has anyone else grown Mugungi?

I need to sit down and catch up with this thread from beginning to end -- just finished moving for the second time this year! (Got my network beans in big pots and they will probably be the most well-traveled beans of 2020, lol). But I was searching for info on how Russ sets up his bean poles and this post caught my eye--

I grew Mugungi in 2018 and it produced really well for how little it actually bloomed. I had it on strings but it only ever grew to a half-runner for me (probably 2.5-3 feet high or so). I think it is partially day-length sensitive; I got two big flushes of bloom, one in the spring and one in the fall, and basically nothing in between. I sadly didn't write down the final harvest weight -- I think I weighed my harvest later in the winter after I sent Russ my LEBN beans. But from 6 plants it was substantial enough that I put them in a sandwich ziploc bag instead of a 3"x4" zip bag.

If I remember right the plants also shot up really long, early runners and then just sat there and didn't put on more leaves for a long time.

 

[Richard Loyd]

Where are you growing those great looking runner beans, @Richard Loyd ?

Welcome!

Thank you for the welcome! It is great to see some familiar names here. I was active at GardenWeb/Houzz for years and often looked to Zeedman for mentoring. I also enjoyed trading ideas and beans with Annette Barley there and I am very sorry to hear about her situation. These days I am more active at Facebook where I enjoy reading posts from BlueJay77. His website is a treasure. I live and garden south of Seattle, south east of Tacoma. Summers are milder than some parts of the USA so it is good runner bean country. I also try out Appalachian beans and have found many that do fine here.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Here is something that is fun to look at. First a view of my 2020 pole bean grow out as you would see it standing on the ground. Then a number of views maybe as a bird it would see on the wing.

Looking at my pole beans with my feet on the ground

Pumpkins and two kinds of winter squash on the left.

Looking at the garden from a south view.

A northwest view of my caged in garden. No rabbits and no deer.

A little on the west side looking way down there.

I don't think the Robins can see the worms from up there.

A man out standing in his field.

 

[Zeedman]

It almost looks like the squash are trying to spell something out... could be a message of some kind... maybe wondering why beans get all the attention?

Quite a homestead, @Bluejay77 ! And a water supply close by! AND A DRONE!!!