2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[Boilergardener]

Here in NE indiana i was lucky enough to miss a derecho (98mph winds clocked at a local airport) south of me on monday. The storm split and i only got 2 tenths. Other surrounding counties got multiple inches of rain. No garden damage. Very blessed. The past 3 days of 97-100+ heat has doubled the size of the network beans. Yes literally doubled in 3 days! They are in moisture and have had adequate rains since i planted around May 20-22nd i cant remember. I usually plant the may 15th but was late this year. I have planted the holes in the rows and around the poles with beans saved back for that purpose, and some of them emerged in less than a week!

. The dow purple pod network variety is extremely prolific, they are already half way up the furring strip poles, only one other bean variety has even latched onto a pole and that is Rote kipflerbohne. All others will attach to poles in 2 days i imagine. ( hallados grandos, nwambili, o driscoll, and purchased from russ andromeda lima, georges bean, and major cook) The bush networks are good-excellent rating also. This year is setting up to be a good one for us in NE indiana i am sorry to hear about the cold and heat struggles elsewhere people are experiencing.

 

[Decoy1]

The weather here in eastern UK has also been quite kind. No late frosts, some good soaking rains about 10 days ago, and now warm.
I agree that Dow Purple Pod is fast growing and racing ahead. For me too it is leading the race up the poles (followed by Mantra).

 

[meadow]

Geez! We're only just now barely getting into the 60's (15.56 C), and less than half an hour of sun yesterday... which was an improvement!

No wonder the green beans look so poorly. @Zeedman's Mesa peas, which are supposed to be 12-18" tall, are at least 3 feet tall; the Fortex and Emerite pole beans are easily half that size. This time last year Fortex was cresting the top of the trellis!

 

[Jack Holloway]

Well, a racoon got into two of my bean starters and dumped them. I cleaned them up, but I don't know which beans were from which starter strip. So Glade Springs and Karachaganck are now mixed up. I know one is a greasy pole and the other is a dry bush, so if the seeds didn't have any crossing, I should be able to tell which is which, I hope. Drat it. Got to figure out how to off that racoon.

Side note, years ago the wild life people told me that I'd have to move a racoon over 50 miles to stop it from coming back, and then all I'd be doing is introducing whatever dieases the racoon had to a new area.

 

[flowerbug]

Well, a racoon got into two of my bean starters and dumped them. I cleaned them up, but I don't know which beans were from which starter strip. So Glade Springs and Karachaganck are now mixed up. I know one is a greasy pole and the other is a dry bush, so if the seeds didn't have any crossing, I should be able to tell which is which, I hope. Drat it. Got to figure out how to off that racoon.

Side note, years ago the wild life people told me that I'd have to move a racoon over 50 miles to stop it from coming back, and then all I'd be doing is introducing whatever dieases the racoon had to a new area.

it makes no difference on the resident population if you trap and move them because they can rapidly increase their reproduction rate to fill in what the area can sustain. i've trapped and relocated raccoons here and i could catch a new one every night for weeks at a time. it gets to be way too much bother to have to catch them and transport them. we just don't grow things that they normally bother.

a good fence with a hot wire would keep them out.

 

[meadow]

What, if anything*, does a darkening eye signify when pre-germinating bean seeds?

I've seen it before as an oddity (maybe 1 or 2 in an entire batch). In this batch of seed though, 2/3rds germinated over 2 days and of the remaining seed, all but one have some degree of darkening... 1 is quite dark at the eye and several are medium dark.

*nod to the Law Nerds out there

 

[Blue-Jay]

What, if anything*, does a darkening eye signify when pre-germinating bean seeds?

I don't know for sure what a darkening eye on a bean seed actually is, but since germinating seed involves water to moisten the seed could it be possible that the moistening involved some small amount of bacterial action that darkened the eye.

 

[Blue-Jay]

also i brought in my potted beans because it is supposed to get so hot and those Fort Portal Jade plants just may not like being cooked in those black pots. the other beans in the pots are all now sprouted and growing. a few windy hot days the leaves of some of the plants looked pretty ragged but after watering them and the next few leaves grew in ok.

what i'm wondering about though is if i keep them inside for the really hot days if they'll get enough light to flower and have any pods? i don't know the minimum requirement for light for beans indooors. anyone have any ideas? my window in this room faces ENE and i get some light in the morning and up until about 10:30-11:00am.

I don't know what the bare minium your Fort Portal Jade will need require for light each day but a half hour of direct sun seems very little. I would almost think that would eventually kill them. They are daylength neutral so cutting down on the amount of light they are getting will just make them take longer to produce pods and seed. They will produce a lot less pods and seed if grown in the house.

In 2014 I started one seed in each of two pots of my Dalmatian bean in the middle of April in my west facing slider glass door. I took the plants until about early August to produce 4 to 5 dry pods. They got probably about 4 hours of direct sunlight each afternoon. The pods were slightly smaller but the seed seemed normal size. They probably produces only about 15 to 20 percent of what they would normally outside in the sun all day long. The plants were a little leggy and smaller not as robust looking as the bush plants that grow outside. The pods were absolutely blemish free never having been exposed to the weather or insects and the plants totally disease free never having soil splashed on them from the rain. I watered them like house plants down at the root zone.

 

[jbosmith]

a good fence with a hot wire would keep them out.

I can tell you from experience that a solar fence charger that's rated for over a mile of fence will .. deter .. a potential garden bandit several feet into the air when it's only on 100 feet of poly wire around my garden ;-)

 

[flowerbug]

I can tell you from experience that a solar fence charger that's rated for over a mile of fence will .. deter .. a potential garden bandit several feet into the air when it's only on 100 feet of poly wire around my garden ;-)

what i should have also mentioned in my previous post about raccoons was that if you want fewer around you'd need to start thinking like them, what they eat and what they need as habitat and food and then start eliminating from around your gardens so that you are not attracting them at all. as omnivores but also with very pointed preferences you can deter them by not having any puddles of any kind. no water baths for them to wash things in. no rocks for hornets to hide behind. no wet patches for slugs and worms to gather, no low spots for crayfisth to burrow into, no ornaments that hide things they might find tasty and edible like a frog or a snail. etc. and of course the other obvious things are having a roaming dog run around the gardens and a dog that is trained to patrol on a regular basis, all night... all very extreme IMO, i certainly don't live that ways here, we have prime raccoon habitat all over our property here, piles of rocks, two running ditches through the property, puddles i collect here or there on purpose, birdbaths, the only thing we don't have are animals outside that we feed. we don't feed the birds, we give them birdbaths and then they have to forage for themselves. it seems to mostly be working.

we never try to grow sweet corn. we like to eat it a few times a year but not often enough to sacrifice the space to try to grow it and many years ago Mom did try to grow it but it was always shredded any time it got far enough along to be edible to a raccoon.

beans they simply seem to ignore other than walking over them on the way to something else. thank goodness.