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

[jbosmith]

Been there, done that... sometimes dodging raindrops in the process. "Dibramo"? I remember reading about the "Sicitalian Black Swamp" beans & being curious about them, but was scared away by descriptions of them being long season. Now I notice that Sandhill describes it as well adapted to Northern climates...? I may need to try it one of these years.

Dar & had a couple exchanges. He was also the source for the pole bean "Blue Marbutt" and runner bean "Gigandes", both of which I still grow. "Blue Marbutt" (another black-seeded bean) is over-due for replenishment, I will probably be growing it in 2022. Dar is a small-scale commercial bean seed grower & very knowledgeable about beans... I wish he would pop in here. He dropped out of GW (as did many after the site was sold) but still posts on HG.

Dibramo was the family name of the guy who gave the bean to Chris Malik in Connecticut. Chris gave the bean to Dar Jones and either Dar or Victory Seeds named it Sicitalian Black Swamp. The guy was either Italian or Sicilian but not both so Chris calls it Dibramo. I tend to follow his lead in casual conversation but list it in SSE by the more common name.

This is my latest bean by far and also the only bean I can never promise is pure because I have the best chance of ripening it in my community garden plot. It's really nice though and does well for Chris. The black beans are quite large!

I used to talk to Dar on IRC all the time and we used to swap maple syrup for his fancy southern honeys. Mmm! He's also the reason I went looking for muscadine grapes this last summer when I was down south. Also mmm.

 

[flowerbug]

I may have found some information about purple podded beans. A piece written in a Dutch book...."Before the arrival of the Netherlanders [1614] the Indians raised beans of various kinds and colours, but generally too coarse to be eaten green or to be pickled, except the blue sort, which are abundant," etc. He then describes the Indian mode of planting beans with maize.

This from one of my contacts in The Netherlands that like to research all sorts of things grown in gardens.

great to see! thank you for the reference and quote.

from that purple beans were here and even tender eating purple beans, so it is pretty likely that whatever crosses that came about to get the stringless beans may have had purple beans in their ancestry. at least that is how i'm reading this. not sure if that is accurate though.

 

[flowerbug]

i had an extra few yogurt quart containers full of Purple Dove beans from this year that i cooked up Sunday along with some Great Northern beans and then Mom turned them into three pans of baked beans (two pans to give to some friends and one pan for us to eat). i had thawed out some beans from the freezer a few days before so for dinner Sunday i had a large bean burrito to finish that jar off from the fridge and then not too long after that i was straining the juice from the cooked beans so that Mom could make the baked beans and as i was straining them i was eating yet more beans. they were so good it was hard to stop.

i weighed those PD beans before cooking them so i could be sure to add them to my tally for the season's harvest. 3lbs 4oz. as a rather small bean that's a lot of beans!

when Mom was going to cook them up she asked me for yet more beans to cook and i told her that while i was happy to make a contribution of any extras i might have i didn't want to cook up most of our bean supply this coming year to feed to other people. i put a heck of a lot of work into growing, weeding, harvest, shelling and sorting these beans and i want to enjoy them and not give them away so easily. i told her that if she wants to cook for the others all the time and use a lot of beans that she's going to have to buy them. i figure the labor involved for many of the beans i grow the fair price would be about $20-30/lb where she can buy them for 1/10-1/20th of that price.

i also mentioned that if she wants to grow more beans next season for cooking and giving away that she could help me clear out more space and help me weed, harvest and sort, but i don't think that's going to happen...

 

[HmooseK]

I have a question about crosses. Once crossed, is there any chance of getting the original back to growing true? For simplicity’s sake, you have a blue bean and it crosses with a yellow bean. If you grow out the crossed seed, what are the chances of ever getting that blue bean back and it being pure seed again.

 

[flowerbug]

I have a question about crosses. Once crossed, is there any chance of getting the original back to growing true? For simplicity’s sake, you have a blue bean and it crosses with a yellow bean. If you grow out the crossed seed, what are the chances of ever getting that blue bean back and it being pure seed again.

yes, it has happened to me, but i'd say the chances depend a great deal upon how many seeds you get to work with from the original cross. if those came from a number of different plants then the odds increase. if all from one plant i'd not say the chances were great but still remotely possible. ultimately it is going to depend upon which genes are involved and which are dominant or recessive and how those traits are influenced by your local conditions.

in my case i have the cross i call Monster which came from Dapple Gray. when Monster was planted (many many seeds) some of them returned Dapple Gray or variations close to it. next year i'll plant a few of those in a location away from other Dapple Grays and keep an eye on how they do and what comes from them. i didn't have a very good year for Dapple Gray here this season.

 

[HmooseK]

Thanks @flowerbug

There’s a story behind why I’m asking, but it’s a long one. I have some cowpea seed headed my way that were crossed. The peas are very rare and were grown by a man from the 1920’s until somewhere around 1965 in this area. I grew up in this area during 70’s/80’s. I can’t find anyone from there that grows them anymore. It’s a very small community with maybe 200 people. It’s just sentimental on my part.

 

[Triffid]

By practicing rigorous selection over some generations you could get back the original phenotype.

 

[Zeedman]

I have a question about crosses. Once crossed, is there any chance of getting the original back to growing true? For simplicity’s sake, you have a blue bean and it crosses with a yellow bean. If you grow out the crossed seed, what are the chances of ever getting that blue bean back and it being pure seed again.

A conditional "yes". The earlier you catch a cross, the easier it will be to eliminate it; if that cross went on for years, it could be tough. Considering that for beans, a cross will not be visible in the seeds until the second generation - by which point it has potentially crossed twice. If some of the seed appears normal, you can most likely select back to the original seed coat appearance; but there can still be recessive genes remaining, and other traits not visually apparent (such as yield, disease resistance, etc.) may be different than the parent. It is possible that what you end up with will be a slightly different strain than the original.

Because of ongoing crossing with the contaminant, purifying a strain by selection alone may be difficult to impossible if the plants in question are grown open-pollinated & bees are active. I've successfully cleaned up a couple crossed runner beans that way, but consider myself lucky. You will have better odds, and a shorter process, if you number each plant, and bag & tag a couple flowers from each plant. Fortunately, the long flower stalks of cowpeas are much easier to bag than beans. If possible, record your observations of each plant as well. If you repeat this process, planting only the seeds from plants which appear true-to-type each year, you should get close to the original in a few generations.

In my gardens, I've only had one cowpea cross (between two yardlong beans) since 2005. Don't know if that is because cowpeas don't cross easily, or if it is because my Northern bees don't know what cowpeas are. Only one plant appeared crossed on the end of the row, and when I saved & planted only the seed from the opposite end, there was no further evidence of crossing. Take that as reassurance that your project is doable.

 

[HmooseK]

@Zeedman
I just sent you a pm.

 

[flowerbug]

Thanks @flowerbug

There’s a story behind why I’m asking, but it’s a long one. I have some cowpea seed headed my way that were crossed. The peas are very rare and were grown by a man from the 1920’s until somewhere around 1965 in this area. I grew up in this area during 70’s/80’s. I can’t find anyone from there that grows them anymore. It’s a very small community with maybe 200 people. It’s just sentimental on my part.

that may be a tough one, but it really depends upon how carefully the people were who grew them and how many generations between there might have been. not impossible, but more difficult.

if anything it is really helpful if you have direct experience with them so that you remember what they were like, growth habit, etc. this way even if perhaps you cannot get them back directly you may be able to figure out other cowpeas that are close enough to use as parent stock and then try to get the cross to come about yourself and then recreate the variety. even better would be if you could find an old description or catalog or information about who came up with them and what the parents might have been back then. all good things to see what you can find anyways once you have a variety you really like.