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

[Jack Holloway]

@Bluejay77 Should I wait to mail you those non-network beans I promised you? I think you are in Florida for a while and wasn't sure if you would rather I wait till you were home to mail them.

Also, whatever that bean is you are asking Artorius about, it is quite lovely.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Bluejay77 Should I wait to mail you those non-network beans I promised you? I think you are in Florida for a while and wasn't sure if you would rather I wait till you were home to mail them.

Also, whatever that bean is you are asking Artorius about, it is quite lovely.

Yes please wait until early April when I will be home for the rest of the year except for one seed swap in October.

The bean in the photo I posted was collected in Poland by a fellow bean fan on Facebook who frequently travels around the world collecting seeds. This fellow got this bean from a polish genetics professor who thinks this bean is not an original Polish variety but might be from France. I've given the name of the town where they have been grown for along time. I just thought I would give @Artorius a shot at trying to identifying the name if there is a chance the name could maybe be known.

 

[Artorius]

@Artorius

Can you identify a bean. Small, red and white about half the size of Bobolink Maybe similar to Pea Bean Turkey. Having been grown maybe for a century in the Polish town of Podolszynka Ordynacka. However the bean might be of French origin. The bean in the upper right side of the photo is Bobolink for comparison.

View attachment 54903

@Bluejay77
Sorry, I am unable to make an identification. If the genetics professor didn't give any name to this bean, then it probably doesn't have a name.

I have many local cultivars that don't have any official name. When someone is interested, I send them under the name of the place where the seeds come from. People who don't save seeds don't care much about any particular nomenclature for the beans they grow. For them, it's green bean, yellow, red, small, etc

Podolszynka Ordynacka is a small town in south-eastern Poland. A lot of beans are grown in this area, especially of the Piękny Jaś type.


edit: I saw a similar bean called Purpurowe Oko (Purple Eye) on a Polish gardening forum, but I wouldn't bet my head it's the same bean.

 

[flowerbug]

the collectors usually want a name and a story, even if it is just that you've grown them for 30 years and your cousin gave them to you.

the more practical gardeners are the ones you describe, they call it by what it provides and in simple and direct terms.

at the seed swaps people rarely want the mutts i've taken, no names, uncertain results, perhaps some gems in there. i've since culled a lot from my collection, but i've not fed them to the worms or eaten them yet.

 

[Jack Holloway]

the collectors usually want a name and a story, even if it is just that you've grown them for 30 years and your cousin gave them to you.

the more practical gardeners are the ones you describe, they call it by what it provides and in simple and direct terms.

at the seed swaps people rarely want the mutts i've taken, no names, uncertain results, perhaps some gems in there. i've since culled a lot from my collection, but i've not fed them to the worms or eaten them yet.

This reminds me of a story I half overheard at a wine tasting event at a winery. The wine maker was trading stories with a connoisseur. Seems some wine makers were buying an old vineyard that had been in an Italian family for generations in California. When asked what kind of grapes they were, the old man waved at a part of the vineyard and said "White" then at another part of the vineyard and said "Red". That was it. That was all the family needed to know to make wine.

 

[meadow]

the collectors usually want a name and a story, even if it is just that you've grown them for 30 years and your cousin gave them to you.

the more practical gardeners are the ones you describe, they call it by what it provides and in simple and direct terms.

at the seed swaps people rarely want the mutts i've taken, no names, uncertain results, perhaps some gems in there. i've since culled a lot from my collection, but i've not fed them to the worms or eaten them yet.

Besides collectors, there are also the folks (me!) that want to continue eating a particular bean because it has noteworthy characteristics.

We grew Haricot Tarbais some years ago (and found it delicious) and I still had beans from the packet to grow out for seed. Only 8 of those seeds survived my tender ministrations which did make a good seed crop, but I wound up looking at other sources of seed too. I didn't want a white bean, I wanted the particular characteristics displayed by THAT white bean. Not all white beans are the same. Although, I suppose, if a person cooks their beans with additional flavorings (like ham hocks or whatever), then the bean becomes more of a texture rather than a flavor.

 

[flowerbug]

i'm having fun seeing all my bean friends here getting flats looked at and some samples put away into the collection and the rest going for give-aways at the seed swap. i just needed to take a break from that because i just found a flat with a bunch of Peregion selections in it and i just put away all those samples and some seed swap containers and thought i was done with all of those, but nope, now i've got more and will probably go back and redo some things since it would be ok to top off some containers some more, etc. ah well...

 

[flowerbug]

Besides collectors, there are also the folks (me!) that want to continue eating a particular bean because it has noteworthy characteristics.

We grew Haricot Tarbais some years ago (and found it delicious) and I still had beans from the packet to grow out for seed. Only 8 of those seeds survived my tender ministrations which did make a good seed crop, but I wound up looking at other sources of seed too. I didn't want a white bean, I wanted the particular characteristics displayed by THAT white bean. Not all white beans are the same. Although, I suppose, if a person cooks their beans with additional flavorings (like ham hocks or whatever), then the bean becomes more of a texture rather than a flavor.

yes, but we're probably a minority among the people who eat beans. that's ok. i consider myself in good company either way.

 

[heirloomgal]

This reminds me of a story I half overheard at a wine tasting event at a winery. The wine maker was trading stories with a connoisseur. Seems some wine makers were buying an old vineyard that had been in an Italian family for generations in California. When asked what kind of grapes they were, the old man waved at a part of the vineyard and said "White" then at another part of the vineyard and said "Red". That was it. That was all the family needed to know to make wine.

How many times this has happened to me! lol Usually when I ask, 'what kind of beans are these?' while in someone's garden, they look at me puzzled, and slowly say 'green beans' and the person's face says it all - what's wrong with you, don't you know what a green bean is?

 

[flowerbug]

this is the result of growing some Lavender bush beans:

the left white beans and then to right of them are a few silvery bluish ones that i like but i'm guessing that when they're replanted they might just end up as lavender anyways. the middle lavender and purpleish beans are a few variations because some of those are semi-runner or possibly pole beans - i may be able to segregate them by color (we'll see). the tan/dark olive beans on the right are interesting color but i really don't need any more experiments... are they bush, semi-runner or pole? i dunno... your guess is as good as mine.

this is the bigger version of the picture if you really want to look closer:

https://www.anthive.com/img/beans/DSC_20230206_193234-0500_1853_Lavender.jpg