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

[Artorius]

It's very pretty. I wouldn't be surprised if @Artorius or Bluejay know of it, perhaps by one of the aliases.

I don't have Rouge von Paris or Piros Feher beans, but I have a very similar Dusslinger Backerschurze from Germany.

I noticed your Beefy Resilient Grex. Is it true that it has an "intense beef flavor"? I still have Carol Deppe's seed catalog from 2019. She describes Beefy Resilient Grex and how it came to be. I found it very interesting.

I can't compare the taste of Beefy Resilient Grex to the taste of beef, because I don't remember what beef tastes like. In my region, it is rather not eaten. I could compare it to pork, but I still don't have enough seeds to do that

 

[flowerbug]

made some more progress yesterday on bean collection organizing and getting things back in order.

one thing about going through some older box flats is that i'm finding a few beans here or there that i am putting in my grow outs box flats for next season. i have some brownish red matte finish smaller beans of a really nice shape that i like so those went right in there and it will be fun to see if they repeat. i don't have any other beans like them (i normally do not like matte finish beans).

there should always be some adventures in each bean growing season so i'm being sure this year to make sure i have some of those. on top of hoped for requests coming through and my own other projects.

 

[meadow]

that i am putting in my grow outs box flats for next season.

What is a grow out box flat?

 

[flowerbug]

What is a grow out box flat?

a box top or flat is cardboard that is used to stack or hold groceries at the big box stores. so just a small cardboard box with sides up a few inches. i don't like the ones that are too deep because i use them for drying down beans after picking if the pods aren't fully dried and i also use them to dry beans after shelling out too. if the beans are still pretty damp i make sure to rotate the beans once or twice a day to make sure they don't get moldy. very useful things to have. big box stores normally have bins of boxes you can get flats from or we sometimes take them right off the pallets if cases are getting near empty and it's a box flat we want. i have some stacks now of flats where the boxes are nested and there's a dozen or more all in one nice stack. it saves on a lot of space.

the grow out part is what i want to grow out for the coming season. i start herding beans in the direction of some collection of things i might want to grow. some i've already grown and need to try again, some are my bulk beans that i usually always grow and some are new projects or previously grown beans that need to be refreshed before the seeds get too old, and then the really fun ones are things i've not grown before or projects i'm working on to see if they're stable or to determine the growth habits, flavor, texture, flower color, etc.

 

[Artorius]

My 2021 lima beans.

Florida Speckled



Potawatomi Lima - this bean, like the Florida Speckled, grew in a new place that I prepared on the edge of the swamp. They both gave me the best lima yield I've ever had in my life. Beautiful, thick seeds. I am going to enlarge the cultivation area on this place.



Ping Zebra - it grew in a different place than the previous ones. The yield is definitely lower. Some seeds have darker spots. I will reject them because they are probably crossed. To be repeated this year.



Red Dutch - bush. In 2020 I only got a few seeds. In 2021 the yield was much better.

 

[Artorius]

I also sowed the seeds of the lima which I received described as Garrofon de Valencia. The seeds were cracked under the coat and had trouble sprouting. I had one weak plant of them that grew not very well and only had three pods. That's my entire yield.



However, it doesn't bother me, because I will not grow this lima anymore. I read a bit and it turns out that the original limas from the Valencia area are not pure white. It is foreign import. The original limas from this region look like this. These are three varieties. I will try to get them. I already have the most colorful one - Garrofon Valenciano Pintado.



Pics from the internet.

 

[meadow]

a box top or flat is cardboard that is used to stack or hold groceries at the big box stores. so just a small cardboard box with sides up few inches. i don't like the ones that are too deep because i use them for drying down beans after picking if the pods aren't fully dried and i also use them to dry beans after shelling out too. if the beans are still pretty damp i make sure to rotate the beans once or twice a day to make sure they don't get moldy. very useful things to have. big box stores normally have bins of boxes you can get flats from or we sometimes take them right off the pallets if cases are getting near empty and it's a box flat we want. i have some stacks now of flats where the boxes are nested and there's a dozen or more all in one nice stack. it saves on a lot of space.

the grow out part is what i want to grow out for the coming season. i start herding beans in the direction of some collection of things i might want to grow. some i've already grown and need to try again, some are my bulk beans that i usually always grow and some are new projects or previously grown beans that need to be refreshed before the seeds get too old, and then the really fun ones are things i've not grown before or projects i'm working on to see if they're stable or to determine the growth habits, flavor, texture, flower color, etc.

Thank you for the explanation! I have a collection of that type of box too, as well as somewhat deeper ones with handles that are handy for harvesting/processing shelling peas.

 

[Artorius]

Hi Jen @thejenx ! You were not here for a long time

 

[flowerbug]

having fun going through some old garden forum writings and they are helping me pin down some dates and what i had grown and when i got certain soybeans (and from where). it really helped that i kept all of those posts in clear text files so i could easily search them. usenet was around before the internet and it is still around and i'm still there too.

i remember it all, just not exactly when certain things happened, just about when and to pin down a growing season it takes a bit more sleuthing. alas, i'm not sure these text files are going to help me in some cases and i'll have to mark things and approximate or hope i can eventually get into those old e-mail files and go through those and see if i wrote about them there. i know those files probably have some e-mails from trades i made so that is the source and date i'd really be after. the funny thing is, most of them i don't grow any more so perhaps i shouldn't waste my time like this? or what else would i be doing on a cold mid-winter day?

the other fun thing i'm trying to pin down is if the first year i grew the Blue Lake beans i got the easier shelling version or was that or the 2nd season? it may have been the first but i want to see my own words before i give it that date over the other. i do know and recall specifically that the Blue Lake did give me two out-crosses, reversions to parental type or mutations but i grew them one season and then gave up on them because i wasn't much into white beans.

 

[capsicumguy]

Hello folks! Just thought I'd post an introductory message here while I wait in eager anticipation of the 2022 thread. I've been growing and saving beans for about seven years, and last year I developed an unhealthy obsession with beautiful and unique beans. To my existing collection of Tiger Eye, Orca, True Cranberry, and Kenn Early, I've added Ojo de Cabra, Beefy Resilient Grex, Bantu, Nez Perce, Rockwell, and Chester Skunk.

left: all beans save Bantu, also showing an unnamed scarlet runner and Hannan Popbean
right: Bantu, with some weird wrinkly gray off-types that I'm choosing not to replant

I live in south central BC, Canada, where the summer is short, hot, and dry. We have sandy soil that demands a lot of water. Some of the late beans (like Ojo de Cabra) only barely dry down by the time the October frosts come. But, on the plus side, there are little to no fungal pests!

I'm loving reading through the conversation (though I haven't gone through all 203 pages ). @heirloomgal I especially loved your story about the flock of kids giving up their hide-and-go-seek game to shell and play with beans with you -- that resonates so much with my experience too. My kids always end up getting caught up in the gravitational pull whenever I start shelling beans. So fascinating. Apparently kids have long attention spans and don't need iPads; who knew?!

Anyhow, looking forward to joining this little group! I've created a (very long) short list of beans I want to grow out, and I have to confess my ambition exceeds my growing space -- at least if I want to observe a decent isolation distance. For home growing and eating, I just jam them all into one row, but Canada's seed saving network recommends 20 ft for P vulgaris and 0.3 mi for P coccineus and P acutifolius for ensuring clean genetic lines; what do you all do?