2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[Blue-Jay]

So Jay, do I send back the seeds that I didn't grow out, or what? Th

So Jay, do I send back the seeds that I didn't grow out, or what? They were:Tartan, Karachaganak, Up the Valley, Glade Springs, Trevio Nun, Cedar Creek, and Dalmatin.

No you keep the original seeds you got sent that you didn't grow. How did these beans grow for you.

 

[Artorius]

I'm curious when you grew the Bubblegum bean. Did you get any of the bright pink pods the color of Bubblegum? The grower that named them the first time the beans were grown in 2016 got these bright solidly colored pink pods. I grew them one year an nothing that looked like the color of Bubblegum.

@Bluejay77, my Bubblegum pods didn't have a uniform bright pink color, although the more ripe they were, the more pink there was.



I still have a few seeds from the ones you sent me so I will plant them again sometime, but certainly not next year. This is probably not a stable bean yet and therefore there is a chance for pods similar to those shown by Tricia.

 

[heirloomgal]

This year a friend asked me to help grow out some of a dearly departed friend's heirloom fava seed, as they were having difficulty producing seed and were concerned about losing it completely. The seed was originally from the south of Italy. I had never grown fava before, so I did what I saw suggested online and planted half of the seeds in October. It turned out that this was not a good idea in our climate; all but one plant died (thank goodness I had only planted half of the seeds). The remaining 15 seeds hit the dirt in very early spring and thrived, producing a bumper crop of fava beans. What I found interesting when I went to harvest them was the extreme variation in the pods. Some plants had produced thin pods, others thick, and each had its own individual colour palette. I decided to separate the pods, and then the seeds from each plant--and it was a real eye opener to note the variations. Perhaps this is typical of fava? (I am even wondering if this might be considered a 'land race' fava, in that they are the same, yet so different). And just think-- if 15 people had each been given just one of these fava bean seeds to plant and they each got different results it could have been very perplexing.

This is actually really neat @Branching Out ! Saving your friend's heirloom fava seeds! I think you have something quite special in your hands there. Did they have a name for it? I think there is one landrace fava, the only one I know of really, called Ianto's or something close to that. They don't seem to me super common unless people are purposely trying to create landraces by planting a whole bunch together. I haven't grown favas a whole lot, I have two types I grow, Black Russian and Crimson Flowered, and there are slight differences in the seeds which seems to me mostly tied to when they matured. The earlier ones were bigger, the later maturing ones smaller. I actually had a dry pea do that this year too, the later pods all made smaller peas than the earlier pods. You'll probably be able to tell if the differences are environmental vs genetic doing another grow out.

 

[Jack Holloway]

Thank you, that is very generous! I may take you up on that if my original plan falls through. I won't know until after the holidays.

Found them. Looks like a got two packs of one ounce each,from Resilient Seeds. I'll mail you one of them, if you'll DM me your address. I also got a bunch of others from them, I'll send you the list, in case there are any you just can't live without!

 

[Artorius]

The Flowerbugs continue

Yed - semi runner. Very original seeds. I have never seen the colors red and yellow so interpenetrating each other. I managed to collect a decent amount of seeds. I have many more than in the photo. Some of them are less photogenic, but suitable for sowing. They were harvested from not fully ripe pods because it is quite a late bean.




Spotted Pheasant
In the sample I received from Flowerbug, there were seeds with two coat color patterns.



The ones on the left grew as a bush. I had 4 plants that grew in a not so good place and therefore I don't have a good yield. The seeds are elongated with a small spot near the eye.




The ones on the right I had 3 plants. Two of them grew as a bush with short runners. The seeds are more rounded, the spots around the eye are larger and the mottling is more pronounced.




One plant grew to about 2 meters and was extremely prolific. I got 528 grams of beautiful seeds the color of old gold. I will definitely be sowing it in the future. I would love to keep this color and fertility.

 

[flowerbug]

Back to beans. This isn't easy for me, but my season was a bust. I have nothing to send back. Growing in pots did not work out for me, in anyway. I'm coming to terms with myself and realizing that it will be a few years before the blackberries will be dealt with enough to garden.

that is sad to hear for sure, but it does happen and that is why having multiple people growing in different areas can be a help. thank you for trying.

 

[flowerbug]

@Artorius those Yed beans are wonderful and strange looking and i'm so glad you had a good harvest from them! you have some prime examples of the seed coat colors and pattern and it is one that doesn't always show up well in pictures but you got a nice shot of them. at times i've wondered if that pattern was actually a disease, but the beans are viable and the plants do well. in the future someone may be able to find the genes involved.

and yes Yed does go late which is why i've been glad to send them to others with longer seasons. i try to select from the earliest pods for replanting.

your Spotted Pheasant beans look very nice too - i'm always quite envious in how well yours turn out.

of the two white ones the one with more mottled pattern is what i would consider the ideal of Spotted Pheasant as you can still see the Pheasant shape around the eye. these may change expression when planted in different gardens. if you want to keep them apart as separate lines that is ok with me - but i would not be surprised if you get different results some years that look like the others.

i had a poor year with my grow out of SP so all looked like smaller and more mottled versions (many weren't fully developed).

the brown one, you may be seeing hybrid vigor (which may not persist) and it may also not be stable... i've seen that happen quite often, grow a bean which gives off wonderful and plentiful seeds but grow those out and only a few will be stable and even if they are stable they may not be as productive. will be interesting to see what happens next with them.

 

[heirloomgal]

That Spotted Pheasant bean is sublime. Completely original.

 

[heirloomgal]

I'm almost SURE the tomato you are thinking of is Marianna's Peace. It hit the market Via Tomatobob about twenty or so years ago, with some BS story about being smuggled out by some immigrant family in WWII as the only possession they could save from their family (and a consequently enormous per seed price). It turned out to just be another pink tomato, and not a very good one.

I'm VERY suspicious of ANY heirloom seed that claims to have been discovered sealed in some cave or tomb. While it is true that some seeds can last a very long time under proper conditions, these stories make it sound like being viable after hundreds or thousands of years is a day to day occurrence, and never needs help (i.e. there is no mention of the first grow out being done in a lab which has access to germination enhancers.) It OCCASIONALY happens (for example, the thing with the Judean date palms seems legit) but it is a rare occurrence. And the fact that a bunch of old caves and tombs are STILL used for storage (which means that, even if you find seeds there, they don't necessarily have to have been there since the tomb was made/occupied.) and you have another layer of confusion.

Then there is the matter of translation errors. The bean you are calling Knuttle I learned as "Gnuddle", since that was how it was spelled on the Amishland site where I saw it.

For a long time, I thought there was a tomato called "Crimean Nights" until I realized someone had translated Black Krim into French (where it would be Noir d' Crimee" and then mis-translated it back. And then there was Black Moor, which was the same thing as Black Mavr.

On the flipside, I have had problems with the fact there is both an English pea AND a Grass Pea called "King Tut". Or that there is both a flour corn and a tomato called Bloody Butcher. Makes it hard to tell what you are getting.

Is 'King Tut' a type of cicerchia lentil? I've wondered that recently.

 

[heirloomgal]

Back to beans. This isn't easy for me, but my season was a bust. I have nothing to send back. Growing in pots did not work out for me, in anyway. I'm coming to terms with myself and realizing that it will be a few years before the blackberries will be dealt with enough to garden.

So Jay, do I send back the seeds that I didn't grow out, or what? They were:Tartan, Karachaganak, Up the Valley, Glade Springs, Trevio Nun, Cedar Creek, and Dalmatin.

@Jack Holloway My Karachaganak was a bit of a bust because I had some agressive crosses in the row, but I did pretty good with a bean called Schwarze Dalmatin which I think is the same as Dalmatin? If so, I could fulfil your seed pledge for you for that bean if you'd like and it's okay with @Bluejay77 .