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

[Pulsegleaner]

I hadn't even heard of club wheat before but it seems to be a thing here (Washington state). Is this of any help? They do mention names, including the most recent cultivars:

The origins of club wheat - WA Grains

Not quite a Marvel prequel, but the evolution of club wheat is still important to modern-day breeding programs.

wagrains.org

It would really depend on what the wheats looked like. Since I have absolutely no hope of ever growing enough grain on my property to actually be able to use for flour, what grain I do grow winds up in vases as part of dried flower arrangements. So I need pretty grain. Mt. Pima fails because it's beard is short and ragged. I know there is a beardless club (I saw it back in college, but squandered the seed I got then) and, based on Joseph's picture, there are some with long, full beards (since his mix is for the Rocky mountains, and Club is mostly grown in the PNW, it having a good deal of club in it makes sense).

From college, I also saw there is an equivalent to club wheat in barley as well (there was one in one of our experiments that looked like a paintbrush, and another with deep black glumes.) So I can keep an eye out for those as well.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Three clubs that should do well for you in the lower Hudson Valley are Jezka Hladka, Ostka Skomoroska, and Sandomierka - all fall-planted.

Thanks, but #1 and #3 are again a bit too messy looking (I can't find a picture of a head of #2). The one I saw in college was so smooth and so short it looked like a miniature bee skep perched on a stem.

 

[Jack Holloway]

Not sure how they stop people from crossing the border with small amounts of seeds. Especially commuters. There used to be a ban on bees coming from Canada into the US. Like they couldn't just fly across the border.

I know, how tacky, replying to my own post! I was talking with a friend yesterday and asked about this as she seems to travel more than I do (doesn't take much for that to be true) and she said coming back from Canada one time the car ahead of them a dog was called in and it went around the car, in the car, and did a very thorough sniff through. She didn't know why the dog was called for that car, or what they suspected was there, but her car was just waved through with no inspection.

 

[Boilergardener]

Yesterday January 21, 2023 I drove (3.5 hours) from 5 am central time to 9:30 eastern time to Goshen Indiana for the Michiana Seed Swap. I got there just in time to check in. A small seed swap but wow was it busy. I sold a pretty good bunch of beans. After the swap I made it all the way back home by 6 in the evening. There was this lady by the name of Cala Yoder came up to me with this bean that has bean grown by the Yoder and a Miller families for most of the 20th century. I think original growers were Pennsylvania Dutch. Carla gave me a bean called "Yooni's Ennie Bona". Beans are on the smallish side. A pole dry bean, but might have been eaten also as a green bean.

Also got another bean in the mail when I got home yesterday from my Austrian bean friend Harriet Mella from Liebenfels. She has come up with this outcross snap bean she calls "Stibitz "

View attachment 54681View attachment 54682
Yooni's Ennie Bona - Pole Dry..................................................Stibitz - Pole Snap

Yoder and Miller are very common Amish or mennonite last names in their Northern Indiana communities. Ive been to amish stores many times and have never seen beans for sale other than bulk regular type store beans that they repackage like Great northerns, navy, pinto, Cranberry, etc. Next time i go i will ask some of the amish store owners if they have any family beans like that lady has.

 

[flowerbug]

I know, how tacky, replying to my own post! I was talking with a friend yesterday and asked about this as she seems to travel more than I do (doesn't take much for that to be true) and she said coming back from Canada one time the car ahead of them a dog was called in and it went around the car, in the car, and did a very thorough sniff through. She didn't know why the dog was called for that car, or what they suspected was there, but her car was just waved through with no inspection.

for many years i regularly visited friends in Canada (it was also a short-cut from here to the east coast and i had friends in VT, MA and CT) and then one year they pulled me aside and searched everything and never told me why. four hours later i was told to go. no explanation ever given. next time they held me up for two hours. third time's a charm i got through without problems but then my friends moved from Canada to the USoA and i've not been back since.

i just figured i got on someone's SH*T list...

 

[flowerbug]

I was so excited to get my chili bean seeds that I didn't read the package well.
Could've said, arsenic, and I wouldn't have noticed.

so i'm not coming to tea...

 

[nune]

First flower(?) peeking out!
I know that early flowers like this are somewhat common.

 

[Triffid]

Are those the seed leaves? If so, that little bud will be the first set of true leaves.

 

[heirloomgal]

@Zeedman! I had the most astonishing bean revelation today! I now have some of your beans from a fellow seed trader we have in common (here in Can) and today I found in my mailbox your Tekomari runner beans, WOW! I have seen a photo you've posted of these beans as shellies, and also a picture that my seed trading partner has, but neither of those photos fully communicated how incredible these beans are! They're BIG and they have a coloring that I've never seen anywhere, certainly not in any runner bean. The only P. vulgaris that sorta-kinda resembles the coloration is @Bluejay77 's Passage to India. But these beans are truly singular. Many beans, both P. vulgaris and P.coccineus have look alikes, or looks similiars, but I don't think these do. Gosh am I excited to grow these beans! I'm going to try and take a picture of these beans to show their scale and beauty and post it here to share.

 

[Zeedman]

@Zeedman! I had the most astonishing bean revelation today! I now have some of your beans from a fellow seed trader we have in common (here in Can) and today I found in my mailbox your Tekomari runner beans, WOW! I have seen a photo you've posted of these beans as shellies, and also a picture that my seed trading partner has, but neither of those photos fully communicated how incredible these beans are! They're BIG and they have a coloring that I've never seen anywhere, certainly not in any runner bean. The only P. vulgaris that sorta-kinda resembles the coloration is @Bluejay77 's Passage to India. But these beans are truly singular. Many beans, both P. vulgaris and P.coccineus have look alikes, or looks similiars, but I don't think these do. Gosh am I excited to grow these beans! I'm going to try and take a picture of these beans to show their scale and beauty and post it here to share.

That unusual seed coat is what first caught my eye. But although all the seed the trader sent me looked like that, the beans GROWN from that seed were a mixed bag; some black, some white, some various shades of gray, and some typical runner bean purple. DTM, seed size, and even flower color were highly variable too. When I questioned the source, they said their source was Native Seeds / SEARCH, so I contacted them. NSS verified that the variety was a highly variable land race, and sent me a photo from their archives... yup, pretty much the same as what I grew. My source must have just picked the gray seeds out of the pile.

There was one plant in that first grow out with exceptionally large gray seeds - almost like limas - so I have been selecting for that. I was apparently able to eliminate the purple and black-seeded variants in the first generation. In the second generation (the seed I have now) I was able to cull out a few white-flowered plants as soon as they budded (all the remaining plants were gray seeded) so you might need to watch for that, and cull a plant or two. The white flower/seed trait is recessive, so it may take another generation or two to completely eliminate it; and there are two distinct gray types, the smaller of which I hope to eliminate.

I was supposed to grow another really interesting runner bean last year, Tucomares Chocolate. It has beautiful bi-colored flowers, and dark coffee-brown seeds. a pretty high dry seed yield too. Hopefully this year, barring the unforeseen.