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

[jbrobin09]

Just so thrilled that our weather has been fabulous this week. It's an indian summer. The nights sure have been cool, to 6C/42F, but it warms right back up into the low 20's C/high 60's low 70's. It will actually get HOT again this weekend and early next week. What a blessing. I'm actually kicking myself that I pulled the Khabarovsk pole out of the ground to hide in the carport when we had a short frost risk awhile ago and I ran out of tarps. I planted it late.

Took some more bean pictures today.

Gray Mountain network pole bean. I thought this one might be like Giant Nilgiri, but it actually isn’t - these are darker, more greyish black and what I really like is the shellacked finish. It’s a later bean for me but definitely worth the wait. First two pods today!View attachment 60968

Trebulino di Domenico network pole bean. Such an interesting pattern on these ones. White tends to get overshadowed by color on beans when planted in my soil, so I'm glad these held some of the white. View attachment 60969

Mongeta Castellfolit de Boix semi-runner bean. What a wonderful little bean, quite early and very, very prolific. The biggest white bean of all the varieties planted this year, aside from Dead Man's Tooth.
View attachment 60965

Tuvagliedda network pole bean. Found my first bunch of dried pods today, they were dried awhile ago but the pole took a tumble a few weeks ago and they were dangling underneath. Lesson learned - no more re-using saplings year to year!View attachment 60971

Hagnauer Rote bush bean. This is the latest bush bean I've ever grown, and most of them are still in the process of drying upside down, but it is a gorgeous one! I believe this is a historical European bean, typically used dry. It is quite productive as well. Love the pink. It's actually a terrible pic, but the sun was setting and I lost my light.View attachment 60970

Garden of Eden pole bean. This one is for use as a snap bean, the pods were Romano style - long and flat and wide. This bean was recommended to me by a Seeds of Diversity member who loves this bean. It certainly impressed with the number of pods considering it was direct seeded. View attachment 60972

Dlouha Pulena Ze Smolijanu network pole bean. Oooooh, how I love this bean. Great yield. If there is such a thing as an elegant bean this is it. I feel like taking them ballroom dancing.View attachment 60973

Stephano Borlotti D'Avento network pole bean. What a wonderful bean, HUGE seeds! Really excellent production too - which is not always the case with big seeded beans. Will weigh this one when they're all in.View attachment 60974

Broughton Astley Polish pole bean. So productive and early to dry down. Great selection went into this bean, I really like it. Wonderful for short seasons. I lost not a single pod to mold or any other problem. Thank you @Jack Holloway! This is a great find. View attachment 60966

Got to weighing Grand Mere, 5 plants on a pole. So many little pods! The vines were just covered with them, and they start to dry down pretty early as well. The little bean seeds have a unique color and shape, I've not seen another quite like it. Sorry, lighting is terrible it was dusk when I took this.View attachment 60967

I’m taking notes on the pics I like so I know what to look for this winter

 

[heirloomgal]

Wonder of wonders, the Lavender Swirl plant had some dry to the touch pods on it today. I probably should have waited one more day to shell them, but I was so excited I opened them anyway since they all seem to be steadily maturing. This was one network bean I really worried about, almost all my transplants for it failed and it basically had to be direct seeded. And then it turned out to be a late maturing variety on top of that. I’d like to keep my thus far perfect record as a network grower! This year I was a little over my head with a few, but it looks like I’m steadily approaching safe ground.

Lavender Swirl

Liscek network bean, another direct seeded one that made me sweat. But all the pods have filled and yellowed, they just need to dry now. Very nice beans, easy to shell, yield looks like it'll be good. The name seems to mean fox, which is odd. I don't know of any foxes this color.

La Vigneronne direct seeded and new to me. Planted this one more or less on a whim, but sheesh, this variety produces ALOT of pods. It not only climbed its pole, but the poles on either side of it too, both of which matured awhile ago. The seed isn’t much to look at, it’s a green snap bean. Nice longish pods, will be curious to weigh the results.

Copied this from Seedaholic.com:

'Weinländerin La Vigneronne' Beans are a classic of Swiss garden culture. This little known variety has been cultivated and preserved by the country women of Switzerland. Known as 'Wine country beans' this vigorous, old variety of pole bean has distinctive pods that are marbled and speckled with purple, as if stained by drops of wine.
The plants are hardy and can cope with both cooler weather and longer periods of drought while still producing excellent yields. This stringless pole bean can be used both as beans pods and as grain beans, the pod has a beautiful colour, and the kidney-shaped kernels are also beautifully mottled.

 

[flowerbug]

@heirloomgal i may not get shelling thumb but i have at times developed shelling foot because i don't remember to keep my left foot relaxed and flat on the floor so i end up with it in various positions including one that causes it to ache a bit. i need to check my posture regularly because i kinda automatically prop it up if i'm not thinking about it. today it hurts, but i also am a little sore from gardening/weeding this afternoon.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Do you ever get 'shelling thumb'?

Not sure if I have ever gotten shelling thumb from beans (there usually aren't enough to shell at once time to do that, since I pick as they ripen.) Maybe once or twice (the wild soybeans may have done it when I picked all of the remainder at once.)

But I DEFINITELY get it each year when I do the CORN I buy. And it's WORSE with corn, often. Bean and legume pods are at least generally fairly smooth, so the pain is mostly muscular. But corn kerels can have razor sharp tips at their ends (depending on the variety) which tear at your skin while you pull them off. You don't just get a sort thumb, you get sores ON your thumb, and index finger too. Dry bean seed coats can also be sort of sharp, so the same thing can happen when I have to "window" a bunch of soybean or vetch seed (break a little big of seed coat off each one to see what color cotyledons it has, so I can segregate for the one I want.

Add on my wrists will start going out almost instantly the moment I try to do ANYTHING, and it can be painful.

 

[Artorius]

Can anyone please offer insights as to why a small portion of my Rosso di Lucca dry bush beans seeds shattered inside the pods? I harvested the pods incrementally as they dried down, so the beans did not remain on the plant any longer than necessary. It's not a big deal, but rather just that I am curious to learn what might cause this.

@Branching Out
Such damage occurs when, after a long period of drought, the beans receive too much water at once. The center of the seed swells rapidly and the coat splits.

 

[Artorius]

I only managed to get a single seed of Dikpenske to sprout, and I planted it with the poles and it turned out to be a bush bean! Amazingly, I still - by some miracle - got the plant to survive and produce good seed. And I’m glad I did because this is indeed a rather unique bean variety. The eye is different somehow, and the matte seed coat stands out.

@heirloomgal
I'm glad you managed to multiply the seeds of this bean. I have to plant it next year. Now I wonder what percentage of the seeds I left for myself will germinate.

 

[heirloomgal]

The first dry pods of network bean Cape Sugar are slowly starting to roll in. I think I've already collected 60 !

This was a bean gifted to me by @Jack Holloway - Khabarovosk. This is a lovely bean specimen, nice large seeds and deep purple swirls on cream. Even though I pulled it far earlier than I should have, it has still formed really nice beans of great quality. Considering I direct seeded it I think the 2nd week of June, which is very late, it has still managed a nice crop of seeds.

Network bean Selugia is also finally drying down some pods. Crescent shaped tight little pods. The beans are a shade somewhere between deep purple and a deep galactic blue. Very pretty seeds, not quite as dark as the photos show. I've been wanting this bean for awhile now, so it's great to finally grow it.

A lovely bean that I received from @jbosmith - Tonawanda Seneca, which I think is synonymous with Tonawanda Strawberry. This bean outproduced my expectations! It was in a spot in the semi-runner bed that has a bit of shade for part of the day but it still produced really well and started drying up it's pods fairly early. I definitely collected over a pound from a 5 foot row, will weigh it eventually.

Monaco Musso Niriu, a new bean for me, and I didn't know much about it. Interestingly, when I was browsing the 2017 bean thread the other day, I discovered the original source by accident! lol I received this one from a lady on the seed exchange, and it turns out that she received it from a lady who was on the 2017 bean thread! Can the bean world be this tiny?! This variety is a wee bit late for my area, though to be fair it was another one that had a bit of shade for part of the day, so it may have started to dry down sooner in a more sunny spot. It certainly produces well, and of the Italian beans I've grown this year this is one of the bigger ones.

Borlotto del Vardano, the giant bush bean. Huge plants, enormous and they certainly needed more room than I gave them. But all things considered they did very well for a 5 foot row, another one that probably produced over a pound or close to it. It's for dry use, as I guess most Borlotti beans are, though these beans are not near as large as the other Borlotti bean I grew from @Bluejay77 and the shape is totally different as well. I guess the term 'borlotti' is a fairly loose one.

Hopi Pink. I thought there might be more diversity in the genes, but it looks like it's actually more uniform than I envisioned. The smaller seeds may just be pods that didn’t develop in the same conditions as others. A semi-runner. I like it freshly shelled best in bubble gum pink, totally dry they turn a rather dull dusty rose. I believe this bean may originate with Native Seed Search.

 

[heirloomgal]

@heirloomgal
I'm glad you managed to multiply the seeds of this bean. I have to plant it next year. Now I wonder what percentage of the seeds I left for myself will germinate.

It may not have been the seed itself @Artorius, we had some pretty hot temperatures when it was planting time and that may have had an effect. It's hard to say what it was. But I am going to plant it again in 2024 so if you have any trouble with yours I should have a supply of this bean.

 

[jbrobin09]

So I had a number of podsworth of not quite mature or misshapen Graines de Cafe, definitely not keepers. So today I boiled them and made a quick “baked” beans recipe on the stove and they were delicious! I’m quite pleased with this bean and I’ll grow it again for sure.

 

[Ladyreneer]

Am butting in here with a quick question. Is Tongue of Fire and Dragon's Tongue the same bean?

Colcol! I was in a seed swap a few years back with you and privately admired your beautiful photos of your yard and flowers. Good to see you around again!