2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[flowerbug]

my for sure grow list has to be figured out yet but the network and requested beans will get grown this season for sure, i can't list everything yet because i haven't decided yet in some cases and there are a lot i've got in my grow-out box so i won't be able to grow them all.

this is the network, bonus and bean requests from @Bluejay77 's collection i will be growing:

• Atwater
• Andikove
• Baby Green Lima
• Blooming Prairie
• Chaska Purple
• Delano
• Fukuryu Chunaga
• Koronis Three Islands
• Purple Rose Creek
• Striped Bunch
• Viola

of all of them Andikove will be the one i worry the most about as it is a larger bean and my history of growing larger beans is not that great, it may take a few years for me to get 60 seeds returned. i have a few others in my regrow list this year too so it's just all together a fun continuing project overall as it helps me figure out how to do them more reliably (the better garden soil of the North Garden is where i'll grow 1/3 to half of the seeds i have and the rest go inside the fenced gardens to the SE but the soil in those gardens is not as good).

i'm interested to see how all the Robert Lobitz beans will do, many of them are seed siblings (look alikes) to the Purple Dove beans and those do well in almost any garden i have grown them. i'll need to make sure to plant these in well marked spots because they do look alike and i'll never be able to keep them seperate if they get mixed up after harvest.

luckily i have learned that lesson well by now, tag everything, every minor container when picking gets tagged. etc. i had very few vagrant beans last season even when growing 35 different beans last year and having early pickings kept apart from later pickings and then also some other selections. i think i ended up with over 50 variations because some of those were not stable beans.

 

[heirloomgal]

Decisions, decisions. I was originally going to plant my Ping Lima beans at the 8 week before frost mark in pots. Not many, just a few. But it is now just past the 6 weeks before frost mark, and I still haven't planted them. It is just still too miserable outside. It snowed two days ago and left a layer on the ground and I just do not feel the vibe to plant when it's this cold!

 

[HmooseK]

I planted some Tennessee Cutshort in a bucket Saturday night. In fact, the same bucket I grew them in last year. Soil amended of course. All my beans are still in the freezer, but I found the vine in the shed that still had a couple beans left on it from last year. 13 beans into the bucket they went.

 

[flowerbug]

i spent part of this morning trying to figure out if what i've been growing for my regular bush lima beans is either Fordhook or Henderson's Bush. my earliest written record i can find says Henderson's so i'm now going with that as the most likely name. twenty smacks with a wet noodle should be penance enough?

i recently got a sample of the Baby Green Lima from @Bluejay77 and i can say those are certainly not the same lima bean i regularly grow so that settled that question for me too as i was wondering if they were the same bean. not too likely.

in the future i'll have to get a sample of Fordhook and grow those side by side with the Hendersons to see if i can detect any differences, but that won't be happening this year.

 

[HmooseK]

@flowerbug

I thought surely I was the only living earthling left that still used the noodle saying. I believe it used to be said 50 lashes across the eyeball with a wet noodle, but I know good and well I wouldn’t want to be popped in the eyeball with nothing, not even a noodle. Hahahaaaa

 

[Pulsegleaner]

@flowerbug

I thought surely I was the only living earthling left that still used the noodle saying. I believe it used to be said 50 lashes across the eyeball with a wet noodle, but I know good and well I wouldn’t want to be popped in the eyeball with nothing, not even a noodle. Hahahaaaa

Of course not, the excess starch would get in your eye, and you'd get an infection. The same way I have to remember to wash my hands BEFORE rubbing my eyes if I have been eating stinky cheese (actually, before touching or scratching ANY part of my body, B.linens can grow pretty much ANYWHERE.).

I tend to go the other way with my apologies, offering MAJOR acts of self flagellation for extremely minor offences. When I made a comment on a post a picture this Sunday contest on another site that I might be cheating because it was still Saturday where I was, someone in Australia pointed out that it had been Sunday for HOURS for them. As part of my apology, I offered to beat myself with a gympie-gympie branch! (luckily they took it as a joke, and didn't make me go through with it.)

 

[heirloomgal]

@Bluejay77 I got a chance to spend some time swooning over the bean packets you sent this evening, and WOW, these beans are just GORGEOUS! I had gotten some wonderful beans from you last year too, but these ones, these are just so crazy beautiful. It truly amazes me how many astoundingly exquisite beans you have in your collection. The pictures on your website are very, very nice but even they don't convey how magical these niblets are compared to when you hold them in your hand, up close and in the flesh. It's like the greatest secret - ever - in the vegetable kingdom - how many jaw dropping beans are out there and most totally unknown!

I am so grateful for the opportunity to know beans so wonderful as these!

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Bluejay77 I got a chance to spend some time swooning over the bean packets you sent this evening, and WOW, these beans are just GORGEOUS! I had gotten some wonderful beans from you last year too, but these ones, these are just so crazy beautiful. It truly amazes me how many astoundingly exquisite beans you have in your collection. The pictures on your website are very, very nice but even they don't convey how magical these niblets are compared to when you hold them in your hand, up close and in the flesh. It's like the greatest secret - ever - in the vegetable kingdom - how many jaw dropping beans are out there and most totally unknown!

I am so grateful for the opportunity to know beans so wonderful as these!

Yeah the beans area beautiful. Glad you appreciate them. There must be thousands of unknown varieties and sadly I wonder how many of them will pass away in extinction never to be known. I've been lucky to have some great growers turn in great quality beans. You are also one of those growers. I have some growers where I weed out sometime almost half of what they send and I have even ditched an entire grow out sometimes. Speaking of the beans that I have photoed on the website. If the beans you grow will make a real good photo. Then you have grown quality beans. If I can get growers to turn in great quality seed then I can give out that quality to the next grower. I do believe the best seed grows the best plants. I do weed out the beans that are small, misshappen, terribly stained or have split open seed coats. I throw those in my bean soup making canister and they go for a swim in some hot water.

Speaking again of unknown bean varieties. There is a fellow on our seed swap circut that is a registered person of the Cherokee nation. He makes a living doing many various things on his small farm in the Appalachian region of south eastern Kentucky. He has and collects obscure native American beans. He must have a couple thousand of them. It's just unreal how many native beans never became known. On our most recent seed swap in Pikeville, Ky he gave me a native bean that has that same seed coat color and markings like, Ram's Horn, Flood, Wesley Railroad Spike and Hanna Hank. He was also the one who gave me Wesley Railroad Spike about two or three years ago.

BTW did you get all the paperwork that's supposed to be in a return package that would go to the USDA inspection station? I think I forgot the sheet in someone's package that has the list of countries on it that I had elected to import beans from and it also has my name and address and the account number on it. It identfies my USDA small seed lots account. If that person will let me know I will print out a copy and mail it in a letter envelope.

 

[Triffid]

Speaking again of unknown bean varieties. There is a fellow on our seed swap circut that is a registered person of the Cherokee nation. He makes a living doing many various things on his small farm in the Appalachian region of south eastern Kentucky. He has and collects obscure native American beans. He must have a couple thousand of them.

One must be careful with this kind of information. It has the power to send @Artorius into a horticultural crisis

 

[Artorius]

@Triffid
Too late for warnings. I already read it

Tomorrow I'm starting to make bean seedlings. Finally!