2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[HmooseK]

The Costco in Salem Oregon has a 25 pound bag of Mayocoba Beans for $25. I've never seen them there before. Just Pinto beans. Rancho Gordo says they make good refried beans, or can be used in place of Cannellini or great Northern beans. Might have to give them a try.

They are awesome! I love them! I have to pay over 4 bucks a pound for them here or maybe that’s a 2 pound package. I forget.

They do make good refried beans and they are also good cooked just like you would a pinto. They are more creamy than pinto and much lighter in color sort of like great northern, but more of a pale yellow.

 

[Zeedman]

I really don't think there is a bug problem when I plant bean seed, but everytime after I plant and weather goes into one of these extended cool and damp periods. I have trouble with seed germination. It even has happened with bush beans. Had the problem with bush beans in 2015 and 2016. This year after I planted the pole beans we never saw a day in the 70's. No direct sunlight to warm the soil, but about a week of overcast. Daytime highs in the mid to upper 60's and nightime in the mid to low 50's. A couple of upper 40's thrown in and low 60's for a couple daytime highs. A little more light rain once during the week that kept the soil wet and cool. Beans don't like an extended period of very wet soil. The soil I planted pole beans again this year like last year is a clay type topsoil. It takes some good strong direct sunlight to dry up this soil for a few days and to warm it. I planted because it was already June 1 and we were already in a nice bought of weather. Then when I planted the weather and temperatures flipped on me.

"Beans don't like an extended period of very wet soil." Agreed... especially if the soil is heavy, or poorly drained. I too had poor germination in wet years. It seems that beans are especially susceptible to rot if anything delays germination (cool & wet is the worst). That is the reason that I try to start at least a few of every bean as transplants, regardless of how favorable the weather appears to be at the time. Some years (including this one) those transplants are all that makes success possible.

It seems that we both have a lot of beans planted late this year @Bluejay77 ,albeit for different reasons. I'm still cautiously optimistic about getting seed from most of them, provided flowering starts before mid-August. So far, only the bush bean Atlas, runner bean Gigandes, lima Madagascar, and two soybeans have started flowering. Yardlong beans have only begun climbing, but like their cousins the cowpeas, they go from flower to seed so quickly that I will probably get seed from most of them.

 

[flowerbug]

They are awesome! I love them! I have to pay over 4 bucks a pound for them here or maybe that’s a 2 pound package. I forget.

They do make good refried beans and they are also good cooked just like you would a pinto. They are more creamy than pinto and much lighter in color sort of like great northern, but more of a pale yellow.

Wallys World sometimes has them here for about $4.50 for 2lbs - i don't get them since Mom only likes the Great Northern beans for her ham/bean soup. it is so strange to me at all to buy any kind of dry bean because i do have plenty here from what i grow but i do not grow white beans.

looks like they can be grown as either bush or pole forms. 85 days for bush form, not sure about pole DTM.

 

[flowerbug]

i only had one failure for germination (the seed was probably too old) this year and the soils here are mostly clay in many of the bean gardens. we have had so little rains that i was watering regularly. we also had enough warmth this season. my planting started May 27 for a few potted Fort Portal Jade plants and those flowered June 21st and i picked dry beans from them last week and this week. my in the ground bean plantings went in starting June 5th and they're mostly flowering now from what i can tell. later ones will be coming along eventually.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Network bean Fasold has a pile under there touching the dirt. Do you ever see this@bluejay?

Bluejay I wonder what kind of steroids network beans Armenian Giant Black and Fissole Rassacher are on! I've never seen pole beans grow this huge, up & outward. Hard to estimate the height, but it must be over 10 to 11 feet. Monster vines, but no pods on Fissole R.! AGB has some though. I went poking around and some bean vines are still only blooming.

@heirloomgal ,
Pole beans develop their first pods near the ground. Then as the plants grow more they develop more pods up the vine higher off the ground. That is normal.

I have not grown Fissole Rassacher so I didn't know that it was a high climber that you descibe. I have grown AGB but my poles are only about a little over two meters or 6 foot 3 inches above the soil line and sometime I will just trim off the top of the vine or sometimes the tops of the vines will just grown back down toward the ground. So I'm not aware how tall some of these varieties can get.

I don't know if you have ever heard my story about when I first acquired AGB from a young fellow in Ohio. he sent me 5 seeds and he didn't trust himself to do a grow out on such pathetically looking seed. I don't remember anymore where he acquired the seeds of this bean. Some of the seed almost didn't look like seed. two of them looked like dried up scabs or something. Three of the seeds were very small and poorly shaped. Almost like when you shell out your beans and find some pods that have produced the tiniest not so well formed seeds near the end of the pod.

I call AGB the miracle bean of 2014. I planted all 5 seeds around a pole and 4 of them emerged from the soil. Three of them died within about another two weeks. So I had only one plant in the grow out and it developed very slowly. Actually by the end of the season after I had obtianed all the dry pods that I was going to get from it. The single plant had only grown about 3 quarters the way up the pole and I had harvested about 150 seeds. I think I sent about 130 of those seeds back to the donor. It was not until 2019 when I planted some of those seeds again that I was able to see the productivity and large pods of AGB. It was the first time I was able to see how it grows more normally. It's a great bean and I'm glad that one single plant in 2014 gave us a start on it.

 

[Triffid]

Anyone know what may have caused the decline of this plant? There are another two vines like this, both on the same cane at the other end of the plot. They actually were a lot more vigorous in growth than the one depicted below, before they started wilting from the top. None are severed at the base.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Anyone know what may have caused the decline of this plant? There are another two vines like this, both on the same cane at the other end of the plot. They actually were a lot more vigorous in growth than the one depicted below, before they started wilting from the top. None are severed at the base.

Wow and this plant in the photo had developed pods with pretty highly developed seed in them too ! Do you have voles ! A little animal like a mouse with a very short tail. Voles burrow in the ground and like feeding on plant roots. I had this happen to a half row of bush beans a few years ago. One plant at the end of the row started to wilt and the wilt progressed up the row to the rest of the plants eventually all of them drying up and dead.

This year I have had a few bush beans and one pole bean plant after growing for a number of weeks just dry up and die. I don't know what could have been the cause. I wonder if it was some sort of genetic deficiancy. The rest of the plants are healthy and continue to develop.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Bean Yellow Mosaic Virus​

This is what I found on the yellow mosaic virus today.

Bean yellow mosaic is not a common disease of beans in California. However, it has a wide host range in legumes and can readily overwinter in legume crops (e.g. alfalfa, clovers, and vetch), weeds, and gladiolus. The virus is transmitted by over 20 species of aphids (e.g., the pea, green peach, and bean aphids). Transmission of the virus to the bean plant occurs within seconds once virus-carrying aphids begin feeding on the crop. Aphids can effectively spread the virus within a field, resulting in high rates of infection. The virus is not known to be seed-transmitted in beans.

Bean yellow mosaic virus is in the same virus family as Bean common mosaic virus and both viruses commonly occur in bean fields. This overlap can confuse diagnosis, which can be particularly important in seed production fields. Antibody or DNA tests are often needed to differentiate between these two viruses.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Anyone know what may have caused the decline of this plant? There are another two vines like this, both on the same cane at the other end of the plot. They actually were a lot more vigorous in growth than the one depicted below, before they started wilting from the top. None are severed at the base.

I've had something like that in humid south Louisiana. It's why I quit using mulch around the plants. The vine right at the ground turned black or dark brown and hard. It basically died at the ground surface and was quite woody, not flexible at all. The vine was growing fine and then just started wilting and died. This could be at any stage of its development, including late like that.

I spoke to the extension service about it and showed some examples. They said it was a fungus, basically the same that causes damping off in young plants. They recommended a fungicide treatment before planting. The one I tried was Rootshield, made by Arbico.

This does not happen every year. When it happens it does not affect every plant. By the time you see it, it is too late to treat. I consider it a fairly expensive product. When Arbico stopped packaging it in a fairly small amount I stopped using it. I don't know if it made a difference or not when I did use it.

I don't know if this is your problem or not. It looks like your soil surface can dry out pretty easily so maybe not. If you have an inch or two at the soil surface where that vine is dead and brittle I'd think it is a possibility.

 

[flowerbug]

if you are frequently overhead watering the rotting off may happen further up the plants. once the plants are established i try to only water once or twice a week at the most and make it count enough that it can hold the plants over until the next rains or watering.

if you are using other irrigation methods then i'd agree that you probably want the mulch to not be right up against the plant stems. leave an air gap.

for us here with white mold being possible and also Mom's lack of wanting mulch on the surface i don't have much left on the surface of the soil at all for almost all of the beans and peas we grow. i have had some problems with plants rotting and breaking off but that has mostly been during the really wet years. so far this year i don't think i've seen much of this sort of problem.