2023 Little Easy Bean Network - Beans Beyond The Colors Of A Rainbow

[Decoy1]

@Decoy1
Did the pods of your Ooty India # 1 have a purple tint to them?
The seeds I collected have a more brown background, the color of the swirls is the same. Maybe it's because of my soil.

I wrote Ooty because that is the name under which I received this bean and that is the name of the city in India from where Joseph Simcox brought it. Doty is probably a typo.

The seeds I received from Russ are somewhat more brown tinged than the lighter greyer tones of mine this year. had assumed that might well be because of age. But also my soil does tend to produce quite light coloured bean seeds in several cases. So it might be a soil difference

I'm afraid I don't remember a purplish tint to the pods but that doesn't mean it wasn't there.

You raise an interesting point about Doty/Ooty. Ooty seems very likely. It will be interesting to see what Russ thinks and whether he has any idea where the typo, if there is one, might have occurred. His website says "My seed donor is Karen Golden, Highland, Michigan, 2018. This bean is likely a variety that Joseph Simcox brought back on a seed collecting excursion." It would be helpful to know whether his donor re civet them directly from Joe Simcox.

 

[flowerbug]

Thanks to you and heirloomgal for the encouragement!

And thanks for the information that you too found Kermit's Smoky Mountain to be a long season variety. I'll try sowing them specially early next year but I do struggle with longer season beans.
The seeds I received from Russ were dated 2018. The quality was quite good but not quite as plump as some so I'm not sure whether they were your seeds or not. Was Russ already offering KSM before you sent him seeds or were you his first source?

i got the seeds locally from the greenhouse guy who got them from someone else i knew so it was funny as i grew them out and gave some back to the greenhouse guy and then gave a bunch back to the original source but i did tell them that they were a later bean.

2018 was the only year i grew them so it may be that was what @Bluejay77 sent you. they were productive.

if you sprout some in larger pots you could start them a few weeks earlier and then transplant and see if that gives them enough time.

myself got away from planting pole beans after the past number of too many attempts partly because i don't want pole bean genetics wandering around my bean patches but also because almost all of them were too late to be reliable enough and i felt it was wasting the time and causing me more work in the end (cleaning up the fences), but also a strain on the fences which are showing their age. if i had more space and less complications i'd have liked to grow pole beans again but it just doesn't work out well here at the moment. not sure if i'll get back to them sometime.

 

[flowerbug]

For the last week I've been trying to access the Bohnen Atlas site and have been getting the 'this site cannot be reached' message. I wonder what happened?

technical difficulties... it will not come up for me either. could be their hosting service went down and has not been restored yet or some other issue. hopefully they will be back eventually.

try this for now:

Bohnen-Atlas - Startseite

Der Bohnen-Atlas ist Nachschlagewerk fr Bohnensorten. Er beinhaltet Beschreibungen, die durch Bilder und Kommentare der Nutzer erweitert werden knnen.

web.archive.org

 

[Decoy1]

i got the seeds locally from the greenhouse guy who got them from someone else i knew so it was funny as i grew them out and gave some back to the greenhouse guy and then gave a bunch back to the original source but i did tell them that they were a later bean.

2018 was the only year i grew them so it may be that was what @Bluejay77 sent you. they were productive.

if you sprout some in larger pots you could start them a few weeks earlier and then transplant and see if that gives them enough time.

myself got away from planting pole beans after the past number of too many attempts partly because i don't want pole bean genetics wandering around my bean patches but also because almost all of them were too late to be reliable enough and i felt it was wasting the time and causing me more work in the end (cleaning up the fences), but also a strain on the fences which are showing their age. if i had more space and less complications i'd have liked to grow pole beans again but it just doesn't work out well here at the moment. not sure if i'll get back to them sometime.

I start all my bean seeds in modules and get them going about two weeks before the first expected frost date. I started Kermit's Smoky Mountain on 15th May. I could go a couple of weeks earlier but more than two weeks indoors mean that they outgrow my indoor lights and get very leggy. Most years the slightly later ones catch up the earlier ones Bec cause conditions are getting that bit warmer. I'll just have to hope for a better season next year.

I grow mainly pole beans and most varieties mature in time to collect seed. Perhaps your season is shorter tan mine. My impression is that you get rather more beans for the space you have rather than less but of course it does mean constructing some kind of support. I don't use fences but have constructed a couple of amateurish wooden frames which I lash canes to - four canes for each variety.But I believe that you have a particular dwarf variety which does very well for you so quite understand you wouldn't want to risk unhelpful crossing with that one.

 

[heirloomgal]

@heirloomgal
I received information from @Bluejay77 that the green-yellow sticker for the returns package is valid only until December 11. That's why I postponed the photo session and now I'm shelling pole bean pods to send the seeds as soon as possible. You have a little more time than me because I think shipments from Canada arrive in the US faster than from Europe.

Thanks for the info @Artorius!

 

[heirloomgal]

technical difficulties... it will not come up for me either. could be their hosting service went down and has not been restored yet or some other issue. hopefully they will be back eventually.

try this for now:

Bohnen-Atlas - Startseite

Der Bohnen-Atlas ist Nachschlagewerk fr Bohnensorten. Er beinhaltet Beschreibungen, die durch Bilder und Kommentare der Nutzer erweitert werden knnen.

web.archive.org

Oh my goodness! Thank you @flowerbug! This is such a great help! I'm in the middle of logging in my 2023 beans to my website, and I rely quite a bit on that website for historical info in the descriptions. I'm always so impressed with people that have your technological skills, that you could find this resource sort of blows me away!

 

[heirloomgal]

I grow mainly pole beans and most varieties mature in time to collect seed. Perhaps your season is shorter tan mine. My impression is that you get rather more beans for the space you have rather than less but of course it does mean constructing some kind of support.

Yes! This is why I grow pole beans too - I don't have much space. I can get so much more bean seeds/pods per square foot with poles vs. bushes. Some years when I see what certain bush beans yield, I ask my self, 'why am I growing this?' That said, the trees I sink in the ground for the poles have given me a number of back aches and limping around mornings.

 

[capsicumguy]

@Bluejay77 I'm ready to send back these beans that I've grown over the past two years. (Last year was a bust so I held back the network beans and tried again, thinking I didn't know how to grow beans anymore. This year was amazing; I don't know how many pounds of dry beans I got.)

I have one question though: the recipient label is the inspection facility in New Jersey. How do you receive the package; do they forward it on to you? It's got your name and address all over the forms inside the box; do they need further instructions?

 

[capsicumguy]

And when I say this year was amazing, I mean this kind of amazing. And we've still got five flats of beans to shell! We had a WWOOFer for the first time this year, and she really enjoyed it -- she would say "it's so peaceful". Yup, it sure is. And exciting, esp when you mix varieties in one flat. Like opening up presents! (and no, I don't plant similar-looking varieties in one row, so I don't put them into the same flat. Learned that lesson the hard way.)

 

[heirloomgal]

And when I say this year was amazing, I mean this kind of amazing. And we've still got five flats of beans to shell! We had a WWOOFer for the first time this year, and she really enjoyed it -- she would say "it's so peaceful". Yup, it sure is. And exciting, esp when you mix varieties in one flat. Like opening up presents! (and no, I don't plant similar-looking varieties in one row, so I don't put them into the same flat. Learned that lesson the hard way.)

View attachment 61897

May I ask what beans are in your photo? They're so lovely!!