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

[Artorius]

Pulling vines pre-frost to save beans? You will find as you read more posts here, doing that is not crazy - it's just good practice. Welcome to the asylum!

I carry the whole plants with the poles into the chamber. Last year my limas, runner beans, Tennessee Greasy Mix, Jembo Polish and Succotash were drying up like that. All for those few pods that didn't dry before the frost. Do you think I'm healthy?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I dragged and yanked for dear life all the vines off the trellis pre-frost (yes - total crazy) which took much effort on my part and then dried them inside my house on large wire tomato cages.

I can't say we've all done stuff like that but you can add me to the list that has.

 

[Ridgerunner]

View attachment 38796
Mystery Bean - I think this came to me crossed in my Mrs. Marrotti packet
(I've never seen a cross before, so I kept it

This has happened to me before. I got an outcross in a packet of seeds I bought. Have you planted this bean and gotten the same bean back? When I tried that I kept getting new segregations, not stabilized at all. So I'm now trying to get some new varieties out of them but it's looking like it will be a long process.

View attachment 38778
Fin de Bagnols
(at least that is what I bought it as....it was a pole though....?)


Same thing with this one. I looked this one up, it is supposed to be a bush. I could not find a photo of the dried bean though, the photo is what I was looking for. You can see at lest two different seed coat colors on that though the patterns look the same. With the different growth habit and seed coat colors you have another outcross here. It is another mystery bean. If you plant it, plant the black and red beans separately.

Should you choose you can try to grow these out and develop your own bean variety. From what I understand, if it remains stable for three generations it's considered stabilized.

That is what I try to do. A few years back I got some outcrosses from Russ and have been trying to get stable beans from them. So far I have three and hope to add two more this year but time will tell.

You probably know all this but it is a long term project. It can get frustrating when one as pretty as your mystery bean just goes away and refuses to come back. But it is truly exciting for me each time I grow them, I never know what the bean I get will look like.

Editted to add: pardon the formatting. The way I used to "reply" doesn't work any more. I guess I'll have to read Flowerbug's post carefully and see if I can figure out how to get it to work. I'm sure there is a simple way to do it but I haven't learned it yet. You are not the only one that gets frustrated with how to manipulate the forum.

 

[flowerbug]

@heirloomgal the Mystery Bean is a lovely pattern isn't it!? love your Blooming Prairie. and am very envious of how nice and plump all those beans look. you must have very nice garden soil there.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I hope I'm using the 'quote' function properly.....I might make a few mistakes before I get good at this

You certainly look like you are using the Quote feature correctly. All your posts look great.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@heirloomgal,

Seeds in green pods are mature enough to grow and at a more advanced stage than some gardeners realize. I discovered this when in 1978 I had a very rainy September and October. 26 inches combined total for both months. I saw green pods that were kept so constantly moist from daily downpours hanging from my plants with the roots of seedlings poking out of those green pods. I knew from that experience that I could probably harvest pods green when full of seed if need be and dry further undercover of my house or garage.

I harvest the pods off of plants and spread them out on cardboard in my house. Spreading them out so all the pods are not piled on top of one another so they dry well. My entire crop of Buxton Buckshot this past autumn was harvested when the pods were still green. A frost was imminent the day I clipped everyone of them from the plants. I dried them for one month on cardboard. The beans inside the pods looked like they could very well have been vine ripened and dried.

 

[flowerbug]

Succotash beans i first saw because @Zeedman sent me a huge package of old beans he wasn't planning on growing any more. i was hoping to grow them this past year but they didn't get planted. from the look of them i'd guess they are one of the oldest bean lines i've seen (aside from the Red Lima beans or Montezuma Red kidney beans), but that is a guess. it would be a fun study to do to learn more of where they came from. such an odd shape to them.

ok here is a blurb i could find:

"A rare, ancient bean from the Narragansett Indian tribe of Rhode Island. This uniquely shaped, dime-sized bean closely resembles a kernel of corn. This variety was used for succotash -- the iconic indigenous northeastern dish of corn and beans that historians believe was served at the first Thanksgiving. This bean is ideal for the north, particularly on the coast."

from: https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/new-items-2019/succotash-bean

 

[Blue-Jay]

@flowerbug

Succotash comes from North America originally native American nations of the north, Narragansett mostly. The bean was used in a dish of the same name frequently combined with other things mainly corn.

 

[flowerbug]

@flowerbug

Succotash comes from North America originally native American nations of the north, Narragansett mostly. The bean was used in a dish of the same name frequently combined with other things mainly corn.

i was hoping to have further back because the overall bean origin is further south and into central and south america, so was hoping to find some references to that. so far, no luck, so perhaps the USoA Northeast is the place of origin.

the name is NE as it comes from the words for broken corn kernels.

ok here is some history cited on the tribe:

"The oral history of the Mohegan tells that they came from “west by north” of another country, that they passed over great waters, that they had once lived beside a great body of water affected by tides, and from this they obtained their name – Muh-he-con-nuk – which means “great waters which are constantly moving”. They faced great famine and migrated toward the east where they found many great bodies of water, but none which flowed and ebbed.

As with other eastern tribes, corn was one of the principal foods of the Mohegan. Corn was prepared in a number of ways, including making hominy of the kernels and making a stew of beans and corn called succotash. Succotash is a basic American Indian dish. Among the Indian nations of the Northeast, succotash was kept simmering at all times so that any hungry visitor or family member could be fed."

Mohegan Succotash | Native American Netroots

( – promoted by navajo) The oral history of the Mohegan tells that they came from "west by north" of another country, that they passed over great waters, that

nativeamericannetroots.net

and to get to the word part:

"

Origin of succotash​

First recorded in 1745–55, Americanism; from Narragansett (English spelling) msíckquatash “boiled whole kernels of corn,” cognate with Eastern Abenaki (French spelling) mesikoutar; further origin uncertain, perhaps equivalent to Proto-Algonquian mesi⋅nkwete⋅wali (unattested), from mes- “whole”+ -i·nkw- “eye” (hence, “kernel”) + -ete·- “be cooked” + -w- + -ali plural suffix (all morphemes unattested)"

from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/succotash

 

[Zeedman]

See, that is what I like about this forum. We can learn something new, and still be full of beans.