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

[heirloomgal]

Yesterday took photos of the Pole bean plot. Last year this was full of bush beans and very lush. You can see the empty wide open spaces. I removed all the poles where nothing came up. No need to even bother installing weed barrier fabric this year. Most of the pole beans are blooming even the stunted ones except for the pole limas. I think stunted plants covers most of them. The zinnias are doing well but not as well as they did two years ago here. Semi Runners are all in bloom except for Karachaganack which looks like it's struggling. It will be interesting to see what I get out of this plot this year. @heirloomgal should get a smile out of the fact that my bright blue Dodge Grand Carvan in this photo was assembled at the Windsor, Ontario assemlby plant. I was a 30 year employee of the Chrysler Assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois. Started there in April 1978. The owner of this property charges me $300.00 a season to rent this 41 x 52 foot plot. He felt bad for my results this year so he refunded my money for this season.

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I've considered taking down the rabbit fence early too. The owner of the property hasn't hardly seen a rabbit all during this drought. Only for a couple of days when we got a decent rain 5 weeks ago and then they disappeared again. He thinks they are laying low in their burroughs. Probably are.

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I watered everything here yesterday you can see the wet spots on the soil. Will water around the plants every 4 or 5 days.

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West side of plot Zinnia Row. One thing I've noticed is if you do a healthy planting of Zinnias near your beans the Japanese beetles are a lot more attracted to the Zinnias that your bean plants. You will get some beetles on your beans but it is I think very minimal.

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West Side of Plot Zinnia Row close up.

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Looking back towards the east side of the plot across the empty gardenscape

I used to live right there @Bluejay77. Swam in the Detroit river in summer, many moons ago.

 

[Zeedman]

Yesterday took photos of the Pole bean plot. Last year this was full of bush beans and very lush. You can see the empty wide open spaces. I removed all the poles where nothing came up. No need to even bother installing weed barrier fabric this year. Most of the pole beans are blooming even the stunted ones except for the pole limas. I think stunted plants covers most of them. The zinnias are doing well but not as well as they did two years ago here. Semi Runners are all in bloom except for Karachaganack which looks like it's struggling. It will be interesting to see what I get out of this plot this year. @heirloomgal should get a smile out of the fact that my bright blue Dodge Grand Carvan in this photo was assembled at the Windsor, Ontario assemlby plant. I was a 30 year employee of the Chrysler Assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois. Started there in April 1978. The owner of this property charges me $300.00 a season to rent this 41 x 52 foot plot. He felt bad for my results this year so he refunded my money for this season.

View attachment 42548
I've considered taking down the rabbit fence early too. The owner of the property hasn't hardly seen a rabbit all during this drought. Only for a couple of days when we got a decent rain 5 weeks ago and then they disappeared again. He thinks they are laying low in their burroughs. Probably are.

View attachment 42550
I watered everything here yesterday you can see the wet spots on the soil. Will water around the plants every 4 or 5 days.

View attachment 42551

View attachment 42552
West side of plot Zinnia Row. One thing I've noticed is if you do a healthy planting of Zinnias near your beans the Japanese beetles are a lot more attracted to the Zinnias that your bean plants. You will get some beetles on your beans but it is I think very minimal.

View attachment 42553
West Side of Plot Zinnia Row close up.

View attachment 42554
Looking back towards the east side of the plot across the empty gardenscape

You are not alone. A lot of empty space in my rural garden too... but your empty space looks a lot cleaner than mine. This is going to be one of those "grin and bear it" and "count your blessings" kind of years.

 

[Zeedman]

Except for garlic, the gardens at home are the bright spot this year. Everything there is growing normally, and vigorously. Which is odd, because the rural plot used to have the best results; now that plot has become problematic, while the home gardens continue to improve.

One more bean at home has started blossoming:

Budapest II, a new trial. These are in a row of large pots, and doing surprisingly well (as in, 8' tall). SSE claims that it is a snap; but what caught my attention was its dry seed yield. When I saw it at SSE's farm on Labor Day, nearly all of the pods were dry, and there were a lot of them.

I wanted to see if the phone could take macro shots, so tried it out on a soybean blossom (which is about 1/4" wide). This is from the variety Musan-1:


More soybean photos to follow.

 

[flowerbug]

Yesterday took photos of the Pole bean plot. Last year this was full of bush beans and very lush. You can see the empty wide open spaces.

...

sadly, that is just how some season's go.

i have some rather stunted plants that may not give much in return, but i can't really know until they're done. hard to count beans in pods before they're shelled and inspected, and fondled and inspected again, and fondled a few more times and bounced a bit to see if they have any heft to them and rolled around on the flat and ...

The owner of this property charges me $300.00 a season to rent this 41 x 52 foot plot. He felt bad for my results this year so he refunded my money for this season.

wow, that sure is nice of them to do that! isn't it great when someone does something like that unasked for. Sunday i had a friend mention two things he could do for me which are not minor tasks at all and cost me some $ and he said he'd do both of them this fall. i have some dead trees that might eventually fall on my fence. i'd prefer to leave them standing as food for the woodpeckers and other bug feeding birdies, but i need my fence to not get crunched either so i'll let him take them down. and also brushhogging the field out back. he said he'd do it. basically, he's a very nice person we've known some years and Mom makes a lot of goodies for him so he's found a way to do some things he considers fun and gets him out of his routine. a win-win for sure. if they happen... he says someone may want the dead wood, but i'm also ok if he just drops the trees and leaves them about where they are at. the creatures and fungi will take care of them eventually...

 

[flowerbug]

Except for garlic, the gardens at home are the bright spot this year. Everything there is growing normally, and vigorously. Which is odd, because the rural plot used to have the best results; now that plot has become problematic, while the home gardens continue to improve.

One more bean at home has started blossoming:
View attachment 42564 View attachment 42565
Budapest II, a new trial. These are in a row of large pots, and doing surprisingly well (as in, 8' tall). SSE claims that it is a snap; but what caught my attention was its dry seed yield. When I saw it at SSE's farm on Labor Day, nearly all of the pods were dry, and there were a lot of them.

I wanted to see if the phone could take macro shots, so tried it out on a soybean blossom (which is about 1/4" wide). This is from the variety Musan-1:
View attachment 42566

More soybean photos to follow.

for me anything that comes in early enough is always welcome. and i sure like bean flower pictures. i have a horrible time getting any pictures that i like of tiny flowers - the macro zoom lens doesn't have that great of a depth of field to it so a good tripod would be helpful and i don't have one of those. so it's like taking a bunch of pictures and hoping at least one of them is good enough. point, shoot, hope, edit on a bigger screen so you can see better.

 

[Marie2020]

There is also the fact that, if the beads you are growing are rare, you can take pride in saving them from extinction (or if you are like me, let the onus of preserving them drive you insane)

I suppose laws morph like that or not depending on what the ultimate goal of those laws is. If the goal shifts from protecting the public to obtaining revenue then you get things like that (my mom told me yesterday that local cops have started ticketing cars even if they have broken no laws to keep up their quotas, and they now keep a spotter in the municipal lot to ticket the MOMENT a car goes over it's permitted time.

And of course they is law designed to make the public perfect obedient and subservient to authority, to try and get to the old concept of "Everything that is not mandatory is prohibited."

In my case there is also the complications of dealing with my mead production. It's perfectly legal for me to make all the mead I want at home. But since I don't actually DRINK it there is the problem of getting rid of it. I can't sell it publicly , because I don't have a liquor selling license ( and my process in incompatible with getting one) I can't take anything from those who I give it to because that would count as selling (so no to the idea of say accepting raw material [honey] for finished product. I only meet my consuming relatives twice a year so that doesn't let me get rid of much. And you can't mail glass bottles.

 

[Marie2020]

There is also the fact that, if the beads you are growing are rare, you can take pride in saving them from extinction (or if you are like me, let the onus of preserving them drive you insane)

I suppose laws morph like that or not depending on what the ultimate goal of those laws is. If the goal shifts from protecting the public to obtaining revenue then you get things like that (my mom told me yesterday that local cops have started ticketing cars even if they have broken no laws to keep up their quotas, and they now keep a spotter in the municipal lot to ticket the MOMENT a car goes over it's permitted time.

And of course they is law designed to make the public perfect obedient and subservient to authority, to try and get to the old concept of "Everything that is not mandatory is prohibited."

In my case there is also the complications of dealing with my mead production. It's perfectly legal for me to make all the mead I want at home. But since I don't actually DRINK it there is the problem of getting rid of it. I can't sell it publicly , because I don't have a liquor selling license ( and my process in incompatible with getting one) I can't take anything from those who I give it to because that would count as selling (so no to the idea of say accepting raw material [honey] for finished product. I only meet my consuming relatives twice a year so that doesn't let me get rid of much. And you can't mail glass bottles.

I really like mead and would love to make my own.

 

[Marie2020]

If you like playing with microbes then you may find that propagating your own inoculum will make the commercial spores go much further.

Producing the Biocontrol Fungi Trichoderma and Beauveria

This article is from ECHO Asia Note #20 In nature, dozens of species of harmful fungi can quickly kill a plant, including Fusarium spp., the causal agents of Fusarium wilt, and Phakospora pachyrhizi, the causal agent of soybean rust. Fungi are unable to produce nutrients on their own, so they...

www.echocommunity.org

I've had no issue growing T-22 on cooked rice and wheat bran from the equestrian supplies store

If you culture the 1st gen. spores on around 1kg of a sterilised/cooked medium, this is enough to inoculate a much larger batch of unsterilised material - bran, compost, woodchip, etc., or apply straight to the soil. For a 1st gen. 1kg batch I'd say around half a teaspoon of commercial spores diluted in toasted flour is plenty.

It's also great for quickly breaking down ligneous material in the compost pile and worm bins. All the tough stuff that the red wigglers can't manage. It may be a reason why my beans planted in worm casting mix are not experiencing any problems with stem rot.

Really informative thank you

 

[Marie2020]

That's is such a nice offer @flowerbug. You are so kind, but I wouldn't ask you for your seed.

I think flowerbug is a gem

 

[Marie2020]

I can't find the reply and information in here on the beans supplier. I tried too call the place from the link earlier but they are not receiving messages.

I wondered if they grew various herbs as well and was hoping to purchase some.