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

[Zeedman]

Garrett,
My Uzice were prolific, grew very tall with beans covering the full length in my Zone 7B. I've noticed a Uzice pic here on Easy Garden BUT mine are more like this pic below. Mine have more of the black spots. Do your seeds resemble this photo? I know I was sending some of mine through seed swaps hoping to share the bean love.

Those look right. Although I am not the original source (it was sent to me in trade many years ago) the source had no name for it, so we jointly agreed on Uzice Speckled Wax. I'm really glad to see this great bean variety so widely distributed. I received a 2nd pole wax bean in the same trade (Tisa) but sadly will no longer be able to maintain it.

 

[Ladyreneer]

Mine look just like those beans (pictured below). They remind me of a more speckled Yin Yang bean.
View attachment 55672

Yes, those look just like mine. Do you have any for sale if I need a few extra? I ended up with only 5 beans left.

 

[Ladyreneer]

@Ladyreneer,

Let me know in an email (upadam@comcast.net) what you would like to grow out and return 60 quality seeds of each variety that you grow out. I will be back home from my winter break on April 2nd.

What state do you live in?

Bluejay,
Okay, I live in SE Tennessee about 10 miles from Georgia so I have a pretty lengthy season.
How many seeds would be in the sample? Enough to easily get the 60 beans?
~ Renée

 

[Zeedman]

Yes, those look just like mine. Do you have any for sale if I need a few extra? I ended up with only 5 beans left.

I would be happy to send you some... my seed is from 2017, but should still be reasonably good & I could send plenty. Just send me a PM if interested.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Bluejay,
Okay, I live in SE Tennessee about 10 miles from Georgia so I have a pretty lengthy season.
How many seeds would be in the sample? Enough to easily get the 60 beans?
~ Renée

Most seed samples are between 12 to 15 beans each. If you planted an entire sample and didn't over crowd them you would probably grow at least 5 lbs. of beans from each sample for pole beans and about 1.5 to 2 lbs of beans from bush types. 60 seeds is probaby slightly over 1/2 ounce.

 

[Ladyreneer]

I would be happy to send you some... my seed is from 2017, but should still be reasonably good & I could send plenty. Just send me a PM if interested.

Zeedman, I just have to ask...what is that in your picture? A pepper of some type? Very interesting looking.

 

[Zeedman]

Zeedman, I just have to ask...what is that in your picture? A pepper of some type? Very interesting looking.

That is a heart-shaped Bitter Melon, one of the odder things that I grow. About as large & thick-walled as a stuffing pepper... I may even summon up the courage to actually try stuffing them one of these years. Who knows, baking might improve their (questionable) edibility.

 

[nune]

Apologies for the absence. I will be starting the African Cave beans on the 10th of next month.

 

[saritabee]

Welcome to the Latest (2022 Bean) Show on Earth! *hangs head in shame*

It was just one thing after another all winter, until I got into the cycle of being ashamed it was taking so long that I put it off longer… like ya do.

Well, hopefully this will at least get y’all psyched up for planting season soon!

Last year’s bizarre weather meant that any beans planted before the beginning of June were actively stunted; but then when it finally got sunny, it stayed sunny – I didn’t do my final harvest until November (a few days before our first projected frost)! By the time seeds started getting dry enough to safely pack away, it was almost Christmas.

The very discouraging predations by the mystery animal continued (through the rabbit fence, plus the 2’ chicken wire apron I installed along the ground last summer), so this year I’m upgrading to deer-height fence, and hopefully the third time’s the charm. Most of what survived did so because I ended up making separate chicken-wire cages for each plant.

I did have a few successes, which makes me hopeful that I can begin to have at least mediocre results in this location.

I’ve been regrowing my bean network beans every year since the Terrible Bean Summer of 2019, and slowly getting at least a couple off the backlog every year. I was down to Lila Stuart, Davis, and Frost for 2022 – and the first two grew a decent amount of great-looking seed this year, so that was a weight off. Frost was still basically a loss – I got just enough seed to be able to try again in 2023, so hopefully Artorius had much better luck! I’ll have to go back after this and find his bean report. Lila Stuart below – more on Davis later.



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Russ’s version of Blue Shaxamaxon was one of the first beans I ever ordered because the pattern reminded me of the blue-speckled camping enamelware. I got two interesting outcrosses from the seeds I planted in 2018, both of which I really like and I’ve continued to work on – but nothing like the original! I finally planted the last of the originals I had, and almost all of them were eaten – but one plant survived, and it had the blue-speckled-enamel coloring!



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Kroatische Stange is one of my favorite beans, and I planted it this year because I was mainly only planting beans I had a ton of and that I knew would grow well. When I grew it in 2018 I got 4oz off of 4 plants. But for whatever reason – even though the seed was from 2018, and looked beautiful – only 3 seeds of the entire batch germinated. I didn’t get a lot of seed this year, but I at least got enough to try again another year.



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I had attempted Devil’s Finn in 2019, but got zero beans, and thought my line was defunct. As I was unpacking boxes the winter before last, I found three seeds tucked away in a separate tiny baggie. Two of those survived to maturity in 2021, and the seeds from those did well again this year, to the point that I now have a comfortable amount of seed.



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Blau-weisse von Bernarda was another of the previously-successful beans I planted to fill in the ranks this year, but thankfully it (unlike Kroatische Stange) continued to grow like crazy and was definitely my winner for the year. (This is only the final harvest; I got almost a pound of seed off 5 or 6 plants.)



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This was one skimpy plant’s worth of Harriet’s Black Hook, lol. (It was stunted by the cold weather, only grew half the height of the previous time I grew it, and still had a ton of green pods in November.) When I grew it for the Network in 2018, I got a pound of seed off two plants, and they grew almost 15’ tall… This thing makes a *lot* of beans.

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I also had a few fun outcrosses I’m excited about:

This came from a single plant's worth of seed I got in 2021, out of a semi-runner called Petit Gris; I planted that outcross this year, and it threw these new outcrosses (all pole). I find the drastic difference between the matte beans and the shiny beans really interesting.





This was a gorgeous outcross out of a bag of Rancho Gordo Good Mother Stallards.


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Now, for Davis: I need some help troubleshooting.
Has anyone else grown this before, and can weigh in on what the pattern should look like? I don’t know whether it’s a somewhat variable seedcoat pattern, or whether mine are outcrossed.

I’ve been fighting with this one since 2019 (in 2020, for example, I got a grand total of 3 seeds off a bunch of beautiful plants), and this year it did fantastic, which was exciting. However, as I was sorting all my beans last spring, I noticed that the beans I was planting did not have the same pattern as the leftover beans in the original baggie from Russ. I started the last 5 original beans in wet paper towels, to try and grow them for comparison, but none of them germinated (it was 2013 seed, I think, so it was already getting old in 2019). The original pattern was a brown soldier-ish pattern around the hilium, but rounded more like a shield than an actual soldier.

I had 32 plants this year, and the plant size/leaves/pods were all 100% identical. But every single plant produced beans with a somewhat different soldier pattern. I kept separate drying trays for every single plant so I could confirm this. The thing that makes me think this variety is maybe supposed to be this way, is that there was often some variation in pattern even within a given plant (see photo #5, for example).

I’ve gone through every packet of beans I have, and my entire camera roll for four years back plus my stash of bean photos on my computer, and cannot for the life of me find any examples of what the beans looked like the first year I grew them. (In 2020 and 2021 they looked the same as they do currently.) So I can’t tell whether they got outcrossed with me, or whether they were outcrossed the year before I got them, OR whether this is just how they are.

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@Bluejay77 , I’m putting the Lila Stuart in the mail this week -- do you want me to send a selection of the Davis I have, or do you think they got crossed up somewhere?

 

[flowerbug]

Welcome to the Latest (2022 Bean) Show on Earth! *hangs head in shame*

It was just one thing after another all winter, until I got into the cycle of being ashamed it was taking so long that I put it off longer… like ya do.

Well, hopefully this will at least get y’all psyched up for planting season soon!

Last year’s bizarre weather meant that any beans planted before the beginning of June were actively stunted; but then when it finally got sunny, it stayed sunny – I didn’t do my final harvest until November (a few days before our first projected frost)! By the time seeds started getting dry enough to safely pack away, it was almost Christmas.

The very discouraging predations by the mystery animal continued (through the rabbit fence, plus the 2’ chicken wire apron I installed along the ground last summer), so this year I’m upgrading to deer-height fence, and hopefully the third time’s the charm. Most of what survived did so because I ended up making separate chicken-wire cages for each plant.

I did have a few successes, which makes me hopeful that I can begin to have at least mediocre results in this location.

I’ve been regrowing my bean network beans every year since the Terrible Bean Summer of 2019, and slowly getting at least a couple off the backlog every year. I was down to Lila Stuart, Davis, and Frost for 2022 – and the first two grew a decent amount of great-looking seed this year, so that was a weight off. Frost was still basically a loss – I got just enough seed to be able to try again in 2023, so hopefully Artorius had much better luck! I’ll have to go back after this and find his bean report. Lila Stuart below – more on Davis later.
...

welcome back!

i cannot see those pictures (i suspect you were posting links to your personal google account), but glad to hear from you and that you had partial success.

to me if i get seeds back i'm happy. more seeds than i planted mean happier, but i'm also ok with moderate results because i do know that not every year or every variety is going to do as well as some others.

last year was my final attempt with what were left of the Galopka seeds and none of them sprouted.