2021 Little Easy Bean Network - Bean Lovers Come Discover Something New !

[Blue-Jay]

those Shelleasy x Soldier beans were so lovely when you sent them to me @Bluejay77 and the plants were twice the size of any of the beans planted around them but i have perhaps a dozen viable seeds from the entire crop of pods that was hanging on them and they sure don't look that nice.

Those Shelleasy X Soldier I sent were grown by a woman who has a 5 acre vegetable farm in New York state. She grew 60 varieties for me in 2016 and everything she sent back was just beautiful.

I remember a former SSE member from the early 1980's. Ralp Stevenson of Tekonsha, Michigan. The founding person Kenty Whealy and I visited him and his gardens in July 1981. He had beautiful gardens with excellent plant quality. I saw his beans that he kept in jars on shelves in his basement and I traded beans with Ralph and his seed quality was always great on all his beans that we traded.

You must be living in an area that has really large variations in soil quality. I have seen variations in soil types around the county here where I live but everything seems to grow very well in all of those soil types.

 

[flowerbug]

Those Shelleasy X Soldier I sent were grown by a woman who has a 5 acre vegetable farm in New York state. She grew 60 varieties for me in 2016 and everything she sent back was just beautiful.

I remember a former SSE member from the early 1980's. Ralp Stevenson of Tekonsha, Michigan. The founding person Kenty Whealy and I visited him and his gardens in July 1981. He had beautiful gardens with excellent plant quality. I saw his beans that he kept in jars on shelves in his basement and I traded beans with Ralph and his seed quality was always great on all his beans that we traded.

You must be living in an area that has really large variations in soil quality. I have seen variations in soil types around the county here where I live but everything seems to grow very well in all of those soil types.

it has been a very strange year...

 

[Zeedman]

You must be living in an area that has really large variations in soil quality. I have seen variations in soil types around the county here where I live but everything seems to grow very well in all of those soil types.

It has been my observation that Phaseolus beans are "Goldilocks beans"... limas like it hot, runner beans like it cool, and common beans like it "just right". Given their preferred temperatures, they are tolerant of a wide variation in soil types. What they do not like is wet feet - so IMO drainage (or the lack thereof) is a greater influence on their vitality than the soil itself.

Vignas & soybeans are far more tolerant of wet conditions.

 

[flowerbug]

It has been my observation that Phaseolus beans are "Goldilocks beans"... limas like it hot, runner beans like it cool, and common beans like it "just right". Given their preferred temperatures, they are tolerant of a wide variation in soil types. What they do not like is wet feet - so IMO drainage (or the lack thereof) is a greater influence on their vitality than the soil itself.

Vignas & soybeans are far more tolerant of wet conditions.

this year i put in extra Dapple Gray to grow because the past few years they've done moderately well so i was looking forwards to a reasonable harvest of them. i'm not sure how well some have done in the North Garden (which has the best soil), but so far i've been mostly skunked. i'll get to picking through a few more rows this week so i hope that they'll have done better in the different gardens that i've not checked yet. the next row over other beans will have done differently. that is one reason why i don't plant just one variety of bean.

i'm pretty sure that the extremes in heat and drought have made a lot of difference here for me even if i did keep the plants watered.

just a few minutes ago i was showing someone where beans came from. obviously someone who is not a gardener nor will ever be, but it is always fun to share.

 

[Zeedman]

just a few minutes ago i was showing someone where beans came from. obviously someone who is not a gardener nor will ever be, but it is always fun to share.

It is always interesting to read about the origins of our food crops, and the cultures which developed them. Knowing their original climates & soil conditions helps us as gardeners to more closely create their preferred conditions... or to understand why something fails in ours. What I think is too often lost in the geographic translocation of a vegetable is the way it was originally used. To our detriment, we tend to adopt the vegetable, but not the associated culture.

 

[flowerbug]

It is always interesting to read about the origins of our food crops, and the cultures which developed them. Knowing their original climates & soil conditions helps us as gardeners to more closely create their preferred conditions... or to understand why something fails in ours. What I think is too often lost in the geographic translocation of a vegetable is the way it was originally used. To our detriment, we tend to adopt the vegetable, but not the associated culture.

within reason IMO since some aspects of flatlander culture may not go down very well with mountain culture and vice-versa... or should that be topsy-turfy?

 

[flowerbug]

this morning i went out to pick beans with the intent to get all the Yellow Eye beans picked through and then whatever else i could finish up. i managed to get those done with some help from Mom and then i also picked through most of Sunset and some of the Purple Dove.

and finally just as i was coming in i found a pod that was done enough from Spotted Pheasant to check and it was a repeat. since i only have two plants of that which survived from the five seeds i planted to get even one of those to repeat was great. i have my five seeds back, plus more green pods on the plants. a bit later than i'd like but they'll do...

i think i have about 10lbs of beans in the bags to shell out - mostly Yellow Eye.

storms on the way. i'm too tired to pick any more anyways so that is what it will be for today. i was hoping the storms were going to come through later that i could get another round of picking in today, but that isn't how the weather has turned out.

 

[flowerbug]

one more note about @Zeedman 's comment about common beans being Goldylocks beans, this year sure brought that home to me as we started out so warm, and cloudy for so long that many of the beans just didn't get a very good start. one thing i noticed when pulling beans yesterday is that a lot of the plants had rot around the base or part way up the stem so they were breaking off as i would pull them or be pulling the bean pods off the plants. normally they'd not be breaking like that or look like that. on some of the plants that were still green in part in the stems the outer part would be all brown and the inner part still green.

a normal finished bean plant for me is a spike which goes down into the ground. a lot of what i was pulling and seeing were more stubby and broken off. that makes a lot of difference to how many pods and beans the plant will be able to fill through the season, but without very close inspection of each plant it would be hard to tell if you might want to try replanting if the season is still early enough. some of the beans i grow are early enough that a few extra weeks might be ok - other's i'd just replant other beans instead. i'm not sure i'll be able to do this in the future but it sure is something to ponder...

 

[HmooseK]

I have two Tennessee Cutshort plants growing in flower pots. I’m hoping the grasshoppers don’t eat them all up. They have sure been munching on them. I’ve seen a few blooms, but no pods yet. Still lots of time, don’t usually get a frost till Turkey Day and sometimes much later.

 

[Zeedman]

All common beans are winding down... which means it's shelly time. There is enough dry seed for Jembo Polish, so we harvested almost all of the remaining pods for use as shellies. This is one of DW's & my favorite varieties to use that way; meaty, flavorful, and larger than the limas in the adjacent row.

Jembo Polish shellies

Most of the soybeans are beginning to ripen, or at least fatten up. Krasnoarmejscaja was a total failure last year (along with 3 others) so I started it this Spring in pots, in hope of rescuing it. Other than an experiment about 10 years ago, this was the first time I've started soybeans as transplants, and didn't expect much. The results have been pleasantly surprising. There will be enough seed for Krasnoarmejscaja that I felt comfortable cutting one plant to use as edamame.

Krasnoarmejscaja

I'll post my dry bean report soon.