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

[flowerbug]

... I think that vein might be called the Dorsal Suture. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong.

that sounds about right to me. i'm long past my botany best use by date for terminology without a refresher and it would by now be a fresher refresher.

in good news the bean plants looked ok when i watered them this morning so they should be ok. nothing but warmer days now in the forecast for the next week at least. the lowest overnight temperature is 43F and that will be tonight then we bump up to 65F overnight. that's getting downright balmy!

 

[Blue-Jay]

Looks like the planting warmup has arrived. We have had very scanty rain in April and May. We did not get those April showers that bring May flowers. I can remember most past Aprils before 2012 where it would pour off an on sometimes for about 3 days. I have not seen an April like that for nearly 20 years. I looked at the U.S. Drought monitor this morning and it nearly looked like what I had expected for this county. We are now near abnormally dry. If it doesn't rain after I plant I will have 4,000 square feet of gardening ground to water. Will install the soaker hoses again this year.

I have only mowed the lawn around my house twice and I set the mower deck on high for longer grass. The second time I mowed the lawn was two weeks and a day ago and parts of the lawn look like it's slightly water stressed. I use my lawn in my planting beds here at the house for mulch which gets turned under the soil at the end of the season.

 

[Branching Out]

Looks like the planting warmup has arrived. We have had very scanty rain in April and May.

We too have exceptionally dry soil, and no measurable precipitation in the forecast for at least two weeks. I had planned on hoofing out my small pinches on winter rye cover crop when I planted my two large bean patches but decided to keep them in until the seeds sprout, for the small amount of shade that they offer. I was able to cut them down for the second time this spring, and got a big bucket of mulch that I can apply as well. Some small plantings I have covered with row cover to help retain moisture, and others have the white plastic front and back panel from my parents' old box fan sitting on top of the soil for the next day or two, to cast some micro-shade to speed germination. The melting of the snow pack here is one month ahead of last year, so good chance we will be seeing tighter watering restrictions this summer.

In the past I have planted a lot of flowers for my folks but the watering and deadheading is no fun during July and August, so they are going to have other beautiful flowering plants instead this year. Beans. And lots of them. My mom is less and less likely to make the trek all the way down to the vegetable garden, so I put bush snap beans as an understory for the rose bushes closest to the kitchen. It should make it easier to pick them without the beans getting away on us this year (I hope). And if they do get away from us there is always seed for saving which is fine with me. I am planting tepary beans in the hottest, driest spots in the garden to test the limits of what these drought tolerant beans are capable of. In the process I managed to mix up one seed type, so now I have about 20 Royal Burgundy bush snap beans in a parched full-sun raised bed; good chance they will produce a lot of seed for me at the end of the season though, and they will have a row of Blue Speckled Teparies in front of them to shade their roots.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I am planting tepary beans in the hottest, driest spots in the garden to test the limits of what these drought tolerant beans are capable of.

I have read that tepary beans can grow on about 2 inches of water for the entire season. When they do produce their pod set they generally do look very water stressed. However apparently they can produce on very little water..

 

[Branching Out]

And from what I have read the yield in fact decreases with irrigation. Fascinating crop.

 

[flowerbug]

when checking things out today i did see some of the bean plants did show some damage from the frost the other night - i guess i needed to wait another day to be surer. i think most of them should survive. i'll give them another shot of water tomorrow because it has been really sunny and breezy.

 

[flowerbug]

i've been mowing high too this season. i always want to mow higher to keep weeds down and to give the plant more energy in general because higher grass means more food from the sun and more protection from dry spells with better shading and wind protection. Mom usually wants to mow shorter but for some reason she's actually listening to me for a change (i'm kinda scared!)...

the large drainage ditch is running rather low for this time of the year. it has been lower before (hardly flowing at all) during some previous dry spells so we're not as bad as before, but not much rain has hit the ground the past few months.

 

[heirloomgal]

Network bean report. All beans are officially planted! Most went in as plants, but I lost a few transplants here and there; a few were genetically off and didn't make normal starter leaves and were deformed, and a few rotted in the starter pots so I had to put in a few seeds along with the transplants. All in all though, I lost very little. The only ones that truly troubled me were some of the Italian ones, and I had to put in seeds to replace lost transplants. Oddly, a friend send me 'Monaco Musso Niriu' - another Italian one - and that one gave me a hard time too, only one transplant survived. It was not so easy a year as last year for doing bean transplants! But I mostly triumphed and all are growing happily right how.

Another weird thing I've been observing is a higher than normal incidence of albinism. I've actually only ever seen that in peas. I'm growing a bean called 'Lllaminera' (European variety) and it looks like every single plant of the 4 starts have it. That's quite odd to me, and sad, because they will ultimately die. I see another albino in the network beans too, can't recall which one. Adding to this is a strange email I received from a seed requester; she sent me a photo of some peas of mine she's growing. I sent her 30 seeds, and she has 3 albinos in there. I was shocked to see that because it's seldom those arise, just the odd one in the occasional packet. I don't know when these various seeds were grown that are showing albinism, but it makes me wonder if there are planetary/weather/mysterious forces that help contribute to that expression? If they all were grown the same year?

Anyway, looking good so far, weather is hot, 85 F today. Nights will be in the mid to upper 50's. A solid week of good weather ahead, it takes a little turn to more moist weather for a bit thereafter, but hopefully by then all seeds will have sprouted and be growing vigorously and need it.

Oh! I also gave all the bean beds there own 9 feet tall electro culture antannaes! lol

 

[flowerbug]

i've decided i better get the lima beans planted this morning before i move on to the tomatoes. last year a few more weeks would have made a lot of difference...

[later edit] they did get planted.

 

[Blue-Jay]

9 varieties of pole snap beans planted yesterday in my backyard bean nursery plot. They include
1.) White Hastings
2.) Theresa Marchese
3.) Wesley Railroad Spike
4.) Kermit's Smokey Mountain
5.) Missouri Wonder
6.) Gill's Delicious Giant
7.) Tennessee Wonder
8.) Irish Connors
9.) Headrick Greasy Custshort

In the backyard flowerbed I'm going to trial which means picking cooking and eating the fowling pole snap beans.

1. Tennessee Wonder
2.) Theresa Marchese
3. Logan Giant
4.) Delicious Giant
5.) Lohrey's Special
6.) Oregon Giant
7.) Mr. Tung

And the small container start limas contiue to do well and grow larger. They are now about 10 days old since they emerged from their potting soil.