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

[Blue-Jay]

Bluejay77's Big Bean Show
Day 4 - The Beans That I Grew This Summer
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Blue Jay - Bush Snap/Dry

An original named bean of mine. Discovered in my garden in 1977 growing among a bean I purchased in 1975 called Comtesse De Chambord. The version I purchased was from a company called Le Jarding Du Gourmet. Their version that I purchased was larger than the rice sized bean the is better known. The bean had become stable from it's discovery very quickly. Blue Jay has become a well liked commercial variety in Canada. Being sold by probably at least 12 heritage seed companies there. The first commercial sales of this bean was from Fox Hollow ::Seeds in Pennsylvania in the mid 1990's. Sold also today by the Secret Seed Cartel in France and in the U.S. by Great Lakes Staple Seeds. The bean has practically become a modern day heirloom. I personally have only missed growing the bean 2 seasons since 2012.

Blue Spitball- Pole Dry

Prolifc plants that bear short 3 to 3.5 inch easy to hand shell pods. It did fairly well for me this summer under some very tough drought conditions. Beans are small about navy bean size. At the 2018 Pikeville, Ky seed swap (First Saturday In April, great seed swap) A group of us that know each other get together at a restaurant in town and have another little private seed swap of our own. Joesph Simcox "The Botanical Explorer" had a bag of beans some people were picking these gray-blue seeds from. There were at least two people in the group that I know got the bean. It was Joesph's brother Patrick that actually put this name to the bean. Where Joseph got the bean from I have yet to find out. My seed source is from Catasauqua, Pennsylvania 2020.




Blue Jay.............................................................................Blue Spitball

 

[heirloomgal]

Blue Spitball, whatta great name!

I can love a bean for a whole lot of reasons - great taste, great story, long history, cool pattern or colour. But I can grow a bean just because I love it's name too! And there are so many great bean names out there, maybe better & more creative names than any other vegetable group. After reading through previous LEBN years, and your website @Bluejay77 a few bean names really stuck with me. Dead Man's Tooth, Hopper Holler, Possum Trot, Rising Fawn, Mona Lisa, Draper's Glen, Buckskin Girl, Summer Straw, Little Brown Cat, Owl's Head, Green Savage, Evening Moon, Brown Eyed Goose. Geez, those are some exceptional bean names.

 

[Artorius]

I don't know why, but after reading the autumn posts I get extremely greedy. It is like that every year

 

[flowerbug]

I don't know why, but after reading the autumn posts I get extremely greedy. It is like that every year

is it like itchy fingers in your brain?

hundreds of years later humans still make glass beads. to me beans are also fitting that kind of appeal for some people but i like them even better because nature makes them instead of having to do all that work ourselves. besides being edible too and having purple, pink, yellow, white, etc. flowers and... they feel so good when you're sorting them and you can put your hands in a big pile of them and they store well when dry and they provide food for bees and ...

 

[Ridgerunner]

Blue Spitball, whatta great name!

I can love a bean for a whole lot of reasons - great taste, great story, long history, cool pattern or colour. But I can grow a bean just because I love it's name too! And there are so many great bean names out there, maybe better & more creative names than any other vegetable group. After reading through previous LEBN years, and your website @Bluejay77 a few bean names really stuck with me. Dead Man's Tooth, Hopper Holler, Possum Trot, Rising Fawn, Mona Lisa, Draper's Glen, Buckskin Girl, Summer Straw, Little Brown Cat, Owl's Head, Green Savage, Evening Moon, Brown Eyed Goose. Geez, those are some exceptional bean names.

Thank you. I named Hopper Holler and Rising Fawn. Hopper Hollow was the valley Mom grew up in. In our part of Appalachia a steep valley between two ridges is called a hollow. Of course, in the local dialect that's pronounced "holler". Rising Fawn is on an exit sign off the interstate in north Georgia, just before you cross into Tennessee. For some reason I've always liked that name.

Hopper Holler was a segregation from the Will Bonsall crosses I got from Russ. I never grew it out so I have no idea if it is stable or not. Based on the other Will Bonsall beans, probably not. Rising Fawn was a segregation from a Will Bonsall segregation. When I grew it out it again segregated. I got no seeds back that looked like the original Rising Fawn. I haven't got segregations of those to stabilize either.

This is why I no longer name any bean until it stabilizes. Everything is a working name. I feel like I've wasted some good names on beans that will never become a variety because they aren't stable.

 

[jbosmith]

Blue Spitball, whatta great name!

I can love a bean for a whole lot of reasons - great taste, great story, long history, cool pattern or colour. But I can grow a bean just because I love it's name too! And there are so many great bean names out there, maybe better & more creative names than any other vegetable group. After reading through previous LEBN years, and your website @Bluejay77 a few bean names really stuck with me. Dead Man's Tooth, Hopper Holler, Possum Trot, Rising Fawn, Mona Lisa, Draper's Glen, Buckskin Girl, Summer Straw, Little Brown Cat, Owl's Head, Green Savage, Evening Moon, Brown Eyed Goose. Geez, those are some exceptional bean names.

I've always liked Smith River Super Speckle and have threatened to add it to my rotation just so I have more excuses to say it.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Blue Spitball, whatta great name!

I can love a bean for a whole lot of reasons - great taste, great story, long history, cool pattern or colour. But I can grow a bean just because I love it's name too! And there are so many great bean names out there, maybe better & more creative names than any other vegetable group. After reading through previous LEBN years, and your website @Bluejay77 a few bean names really stuck with me. Dead Man's Tooth, Hopper Holler, Possum Trot, Rising Fawn, Mona Lisa, Draper's Glen, Buckskin Girl, Summer Straw, Little Brown Cat, Owl's Head, Green Savage, Evening Moon, Brown Eyed Goose. Geez, those are some exceptional bean names

Yep Blue Spitball is a great name. Love it !. I too can like collecting a bean variety too for various reasons. That Dead Man's Tooth I'm sure is a Joeph Simcox name. Possum Trot is mine. Walked into an antique/collectible shop in Ocala, Florida and the first thing I saw hanging over one of the seller's booths was a huge sign that said Possum Trot. I said that.... is a name for a bean. Evening Moon, the light color of the patch around the eye when the seed is new reminded me of the color of the moon when it rises on a cool clear night. Brown Eyed Goose in another of my names the poped into my head back in the early 80's when I first discovered the bean.

I've always liked Smith River Super Speckle and have threatened to add it to my rotation just so I have more excuses to say it.

The Smith River Super Speckle is a neat name too. Jerry Gatchel of Drain, Oregon named his new found bean probably back in the late 1970's. He lived about 30 miles from the Smith River in Oregon, and the bean had lots of very fine speckling.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Bluejay77's Big Bean Show
Day 5 - The Beans That I Grew This Summer​

Bobolink - Pole Dry.

Lot of the people who have grown this bean back in the 1980s in Seed Savers Exchange. Either live in the state of Maine or have collected the bean from someone who lives there. Even John Withee's source for the bean was someone in Bowdoin, Maine. This bean had a touch time this summer and I got back just a small number of good beans to replant next year.

Bomba - Bush Dry

This bean is not highly productive but I sure do like the rounded pretty teal colored seed. I got the bean about 8 years ago from Joeseph Simcox "The Botanical Explorer. The bean comes from the Ukraine.

Bobolink.............................................................................Bomba

Bonanza Valley Navy - Bush Dry.

18 inch tall plants with pink blossoms. Plants grow with lots of branching that contain copious amounts of pods. The 3 to 3.75 inch pods contain small solid white beans. A Robert Lobitz original named bean introduced through the Seed Savers Exchange yearbook. My seed source. IA SSE HF 2020

Bountiful - Bush Snap

Commercial snap green bean that has been listed by many seed companies for over a century. The variety originated in Genesee county in New York state. Said to be and probably is a selection of Yellow Six Weeks. Introduced by the Peter Henderson Company in 1898. This variety got it's name through a naming contest the Henderson company had held.


Bonanza Valley Navy.....................................................Bountiful

 

[flowerbug]

Bomba has always struggled here too no matter what garden i plant it in. i think it likes cooler temperatures than what we get.

 

[heirloomgal]

Thank you. I named Hopper Holler and Rising Fawn. Hopper Hollow was the valley Mom grew up in. In our part of Appalachia a steep valley between two ridges is called a hollow. Of course, in the local dialect that's pronounced "holler". Rising Fawn is on an exit sign off the interstate in north Georgia, just before you cross into Tennessee. For some reason I've always liked that name.

Hopper Holler was a segregation from the Will Bonsall crosses I got from Russ. I never grew it out so I have no idea if it is stable or not. Based on the other Will Bonsall beans, probably not. Rising Fawn was a segregation from a Will Bonsall segregation. When I grew it out it again segregated. I got no seeds back that looked like the original Rising Fawn. I haven't got segregations of those to stabilize either.

This is why I no longer name any bean until it stabilizes. Everything is a working name. I feel like I've wasted some good names on beans that will never become a variety because they aren't stable.

Neat! I've always wanted to know what a holler was. I had somewhat of a fascination with Appalachia in my early 20's after watching a documentary. So Hopper's Hollow and Rising Fawn are not stable? I didn't know that, for some reason, I thought beans only got names once stable. A gardening friend posted to facebook recently a picture of Karachaganack, Tartan and Hopper Holler beans she grew this summer and though I think some segregated most everything I saw looked like it does on @Bluejay77 's site.