2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[Pulsegleaner]

I totally agree @Pulsegleaner. It's very hard to keep straight the names of varieties of beans, or any kind of vegetable, when the name is in another language or is comprised of uncommon terms. Having a lot of tomatoes as I do, I can't keep straight the Russian names without having a reference right there. Just too many names and I don't speak that language. Then there is also the perspective of buying/selling. People, as a general rule prefer to buy varieties that have a name they can understand. Some aficionados won't mind or might even look specifically for say, Estonian tomatoes, but that is by no means the majority of people. There is a bit of controversy about name translations, but I understand why sellers do it. You move more seed that way. I have no problem with it personally. I have a tomato called Marmeladnye Krasne (or close to that, I am not looking at a reference as I write that) which translates to 'Red Marmalade' in English. Not hard to see which one has more appeal.

Interestingly, there is a bean in the bean collector's window that I can NEVER spell without referencing the site or my own reference page, but it is an Italian bean called something like 'Cossaruciaru di Sicili'. I recently did some online research about that bean for a blurb I was writing about it. The name made sense, Sicily being a historical and famous city. I discovered in that research that it isn't actually 'Sicili' as in Sicily, it's actually 'Scicli'. I can see how easy it would be to get that confused. It's so similar and Sicily(i) is much more familiar to most people. It truly is a miracle that so many names stay as straight as they do.

And let's not get into the nightmare of when the other language doesn't even use Roman characters! Get a variety from China, Japan, Korea, India etc. and you can be TOTALLY in the dark as to the name (I was trying to research a kind of miniature gourd like vegetable to see if I already had it or needed to order it, and I had a lot of trouble because all of the information on it was in Thai.)

One amusing change I remember was when someone was selling Grune Helarios (a large green when ripe tomato from Germany via Greece.) and they misread the last word and so translated it as "Funny Green"

 

[Zeedman]

I sometimes consider it a miracle that so many types manage to keep their original name. In tomatoes, I've already seen Malakhitovaya Shkatulka being sold as simply "Malachite Box" (which is what the name means in Russian) And Layagushka Tsarevna has become Frog Princess. But as far as I know "Phantome du Laos" is still as is, no one has tried to sell it under "Laoitian Ghost". And I fully expect that, if "Indishe Fleisch" ever becomes more popular, someone is going to rename it, as they will probably consider the original name politically incorrect.

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It is probably inevitable that variety names become muddied over time, especially as they cross borders. But as has already been demonstrated in this thread, there is enough cumulative investigative expertise (and linguistic legerdemain) gathered here to clean up a few.

 

[capsicumguy]

Since we are talking local fruits (and moving even further off topic), Since you ARE Canadian and in range, do you have any crowberry around you?

I'm afraid I don't know anything about crowberry (in fact I had to look it up -- and I thought I knew about every weird obscure berry out there!). It looks like a very alpine sort of plant, and I suspect it'd need a lot more acid than we normally have here out west. You might be fine in NY without amendments, but with every ericaceous plant I plant, I add a big pile of peat moss to the planting hole and mix it with the native soil. I think they often enjoy sandy soil too, if that helps.

 

[capsicumguy]

Since you are going with a number of blue or bluish beans Make sure you create a diagram on your computer or enough copies on paper if you should lose your original diagram of exactly where every variety is planted.

Oh, no worries; I only wanted one variety (settled on Nonna Agnes, see email I sent to you a couple days ago), and yes, like you I don't trust labels in the garden (especially when my kids help me). We've taken to recording three or four times -- in the garden, in my journal, on a map, and on the seed packet Learned that the hard way, as it sounds like many people here have!

Reading all the horror stories of getting varieties confused, even post-harvest, is sobering. Great advice from everyone. For starters I plan on isolating the beans by planting them at the beginning of separate rows (which are about 30' long). We've got enough trellising that we can do pole beans that way too! I generally plant varieties that look different enough that I can sort them even if they all go into the same bucket -- except last year, a few varieties were similar enough in habit (in spite of the packages' insistences to the contrary) that I have some uncertain mixes. Won't be making that mistake again!

 

[capsicumguy]

Re: naming, to make matters even more confusing I received Kenearly / Ken Early from my sister as 'Kennearly' and it's been like that in my labels and log book ever since! Never knew there was only one 'n' until today.

 

[Artorius]

Anyone know anything about Rena's Yugoslavian pole bean? Got the seed from the Scatterseed Project back in 2010, I have no idea why. I think it is a dry pole bean. Small brown seeds. Got Jeminez pole bean at the same time. The hand writing is a bit difficult to read, so hope I got the spelling correct.

In Europe, this bean is called Jimenez

 

[Blue-Jay]

Re: naming, to make matters even more confusing I received Kenearly / Ken Early from my sister as 'Kennearly' and it's been like that in my labels and log book ever since! Never knew there was only one 'n' until today.

Maybe the double N was a typo. I find typos in my bean records. I make them also when I am making labels for bean packets sometimes and I don't catch myself doing them.

One of my projects this winter while I'm here in Florida is too make up label files on my computer for all the beans on the website so all I have to do when I print out labels for seed requests is to copy and paste the labels I need. All the spelling and info I want on the label hopefully should be correct. I normally take a text frame which is already sized for the size of ziploc I'm using and type up the label fresh everytime over and over again. This should save me some time too.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I wonder if maybe Will Bonsall listed Rena's Yugoslavian pole bean in the SSE yearbooks back then around some of the years of 2008 to 2012. Will is the Scattered Seed Project from Industry, Maine. Maybe you could also write to Will directly at wabonsall@gmail.com. That is the email address I have for him.

 

[meadow]

What do you folks do when receiving moldy bean seed?

I've picked out the clean-looking ones. After the 'garlic fiasco' I'm wondering if I should be cautious about introducing them into the garden. Maybe grow some out in containers first?

 

[flowerbug]

What do you folks do when receiving moldy bean seed?

I've picked out the clean-looking ones. After the 'garlic fiasco' I'm wondering if I should be cautious about introducing them into the garden. Maybe grow some out in containers first?

if it is really bad i won't grow it, but a little bit of mold is unlikely to make any difference compared to how much molds i have around here. my growing conditions are not very optimal for dry bean production. so anything i do manage to grow has usually been selected because it will survive our issues.

if you just want to remove surface mold you can do a quick rinse with a water and bleach solution and then dry them off, but i kinda trust my worms and other soil community members to generally digest about anything i can throw at them by now.

i also think that the mold that appears on dry beans is not the same kind of mold that would prevent germination (just using my noodle to think a bit here) as it would make no evolutionary sense for a mold to kill a seed before it can grow and make more hosts for mold. not that it doesn't happen, but you're likely looking at the far end of the mold spectrum on a moldy dry bean. i'm guessing...