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

[flowerbug]

I don't think, for now, that there are any 'wrong' shapes or colors per say, I think they are all just expressions buried within the genetic variation of the original seeds that were collected in Africa. @Pulsegleaner and I, I think, have talked about this in previous posts. It's likely a bunch of various beans brought back from somewhere in Uganda, possibly all landraces, and then given a fixed name.

more of a philosopical post than anything...

this is where personal tastes and preferences come along and influence what is kept for the next generations.

to me the big appeal of those beans are the solid color and the fairly uniform shapes and sizes.

odd things stand out to me enough that while i would cull them out i may also plant them in another location to see what they would do next.

my experience though is that anything from a solid color seed coat bean that ends up coming back with markings like pinto beans, stripes, etc. and also other sizes are indications of crosses that have happened and when planting the results of crosses you may or may not get back original colors and shapes but to get them stable can be a whole different story.

would i want to spend several years for each of those results when my original attraction was to the solid colors and shapes to begin with? not too likely.

only new colors would be an attraction there and i'd likely want to see if those were stable and then start developing a whole different color blend of Bantu with the idea of giving it a different name (with credit back to Bantu of course )...

granted i've done none of this to date so no worries there. but just saying how my own influences and preferences would drive what i'd do faced with that pile of beans after a harvest.

 

[heirloomgal]

I admit there is an itty bitty part of me that would love to sit down and organize that whole jar and group all those colors separately. But I'm usually able to regain my sanity before beginning. Sometimes my mind is quite drawn to 'matchy matchy'.

 

[heirloomgal]

@Bluejay77

Candy had a 'baby' in 2010 - she has since been close to stabilized and looks like this! Wow! Birth certificate reads 'Fundy Amethyst'. Apparently a bush.

 

[flowerbug]

I admit there is an itty bitty part of me that would love to sit down and organize that whole jar and group all those colors separately. But I'm usually able to regain my sanity before beginning. Sometimes my mind is quite drawn to 'matchy matchy'.

mine is completely slotted into that sort of thing. OCD traits for sure. it is how i can go through thousands of seeds of one variety and pull out a few here or there that are different enough to be grounds for further exploration.

i think i would spazz out completely at a bean sorting station at a bean processing elevator with any odd beans the sorters would kick out. they do a lot more with optical sorting now than in the past. had i gotten into that a long time ago i could easily have seen myself doing something like that with my college degree and interests.

they'd have to turn me upside down at the end of each day at the plant to make sure my pocketses were empty...

 

[Blue-Jay]

Candy had a 'baby' in 2010 - she has since been close to stabilized and looks like this! Wow! Birth certificate reads 'Fundy Amethyst'. Apparently a bush.

Interesting ! So where did this Candy outcross happen. Is this from your garden or is it some seed company in Canada or maybe even from a SODC member you have traded with before.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I admit there is an itty bitty part of me that would love to sit down and organize that whole jar and group all those colors separately. But I'm usually able to regain my sanity before beginning. Sometimes my mind is quite drawn to 'matchy matchy'.

A piece I do not posses. Remember all of those lima beans I sent to @Bluejay77 arrived to me mixed up, so I had to sort through all nine pounds of them one by one. And every time I do rice beans, I'm basically going through the equivalent of 12-15 pounds of of rice sized seeds grain by grain.......twice! (at least THAT I don't try to do all in one sitting)

The only advantage I have is that, generally, I'm pulling a minority item out of a majority item, and the minority item is very visually different than the majority, so it's "take a handful, toss it in the searching bowl, shake it around until it's all in one layer, look at it, pick out the stuff that sticks out, pour out the rest into discard bag, and repeat." Again, rice beans are a semi exception (since seeing the mottled red ones among the not mottled red ones is hard so I have to look VERY closely and go VERY slowly (plus, have direct full sunlight to my back, in any dimmer like the markings aren't really easily visible.)

 

[meadow]

Interesting ! So where did this Candy outcross happen. Is this from your garden or is it some seed company in Canada or maybe even from a SODC member you have traded with before.

It's from Annapolis Seed! I'm so excited, it is gorgeous!!
Here is their description:

New for 2023 - I'm very excited to finally share these seeds! Developed here on the farm, from a purple off-type of Candy Bean that I spotted in 2010. Heavy yields from bush plants. Dependable and early, usually drying down in early September from a June 1 sowing. The beans are large, with a nice silky texture when cooked. Named in honour of our local Bay, who's stormy tides frequently unearth amethyst from the basalt cliffs.

Note: This variety is still a work in progress; less than 100% stable. About 5% of plants each year seem to revert back to the pink colour of their parent variety Candy. So if you're saving seed, save from the purple beans. Otherwise for food, they're all equally delicious! I'm going to continue working with this one, selecting against the pinks. Figured you folks would still appreciate this great bean despite some wayward colours.

 

[meadow]

A piece I do not posses. Remember all of those lima beans I sent to @Bluejay77 arrived to me mixed up, so I had to sort through all nine pounds of them one by one. And every time I do rice beans, I'm basically going through the equivalent of 12-15 pounds of of rice sized seeds grain by grain.......twice! (at least THAT I don't try to do all in one sitting)

The only advantage I have is that, generally, I'm pulling a minority item out of a majority item, and the minority item is very visually different than the majority, so it's "take a handful, toss it in the searching bowl, shake it around until it's all in one layer, look at it, pick out the stuff that sticks out, pour out the rest into discard bag, and repeat." Again, rice beans are a semi exception (since seeing the mottled red ones among the not mottled red ones is hard so I have to look VERY closely and go VERY slowly (plus, have direct full sunlight to my back, in any dimmer like the markings aren't really easily visible.)

I can so relate.

For better viewing of the colors, have you considered an Ott lightbulb (or light fixture)? It really helps to distinguish colors and details; I have a bulb in the lamp that I use for knitting and seed sorting. The lamp has 4 bulbs, one up top on it's own switch, and a ring of three below that can be set to various levels of brightness depending on your needs. The Ott bulb is in the socket used when all 3 of the lower ring are in use. I got mine at a good discount from a large crafting store (maybe JoAnn's?? although that doesn't seem quite right, but I can't remember) when they had a storewide coupon sale.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I can so relate.

For better viewing of the colors, have you considered an Ott lightbulb (or light fixture)? It really helps to distinguish colors and details; I have a bulb in the lamp that I use for knitting and seed sorting. The lamp has 4 bulbs, one up top on it's own switch, and a ring of three below that can be set to various levels of brightness depending on your needs. The Ott bulb is in the socket used when all 3 of the lower ring are in use. I got mine at a good discount from a large crafting store (maybe JoAnn's?? although that doesn't seem quite right, but I can't remember) when they had a storewide coupon sale.

Well, the desk in my room has a natural light bulb in the lamp, which does work.

The problem is that, by now, my room desk (like every other surface in my room) is so covered with stuff there's nowhere to PUT a sorting tray, or anything else! I can't even sit on the CHAIR anymore because it's piled with stuff (and even if I could, there so much stuff that needs to be taken off the floor that I couldn't roll it forward to the desk anyway.)

When I do sort, I'm normally on the couch, and that isn't close to ANY light fixture.

There is also the fact I don't do rice beans all that often anymore. Between not having gone to NYC in three or four years (which dramatically cuts down the supply I can get to) and the fact that most brands by now don't HAVE anything in them except the correct "normal" beans (remember, all of this stuff is a defect by industry standards; they WANT the bag to have nothing but beans and each bean to be solid red.) actually needing to go through some is currently a rare occurrence. Finding bags that were viable for my work was a total surprise, and not one I imagine is guaranteed to be repeated (the actual brand of these kind of things in Chinese grocery stores is basically fungible, with the store just stocking whatever is available at that time. And the packers fill the bags from whatever supply is available at the time, so things change for season to season.

 

[ducks4you]

I KNOW that most of the bean conversations are about how they look, but I was wondering--What do all of your experts think are the best TASTING beans?