2024 Little Easy Bean Network - Growing Heirloom Beans Of Today And Tomorrow

[Neen5MI]

I'd like to share some optimism about deer predation of beans! I exponentially expanded my bean growing space this year, by using converted beds at my S.O.'s property. He's never had deer damage, in 28+ years, in spite of having hosta, corn, edamame, peas, cantaloupe, watermelon, in his landscape. So, I confidently planted edamame and a bunch of pole beans in space that had previously been blackberries and raspberries. Well, a doe added his property to her daily browsing pattern, and hot pepper spray had no impact on her behavior. We wrote off the legume plantings as a complete loss, but I'm now delighted to be harvesting edamame, anticipating a robust harvest of edamame seed, and even some harvest from pole beans.

Edamame bed, chewed to nothing, but pods develop for harvest and seed saving:

Pole beans, but she seems to just nibble the portions at head height and leave the rest to produce pods.

 

[ruralmamma]

My plants have pods in every stage, from tiny slivers to crisply dried down. Do you mean the decision on how to cook occurs during food prep? Would a "mess of beans" end up a combination of whole beans and shelled beans? Or do the shelled beans get tossed in a separate bowl and held for use in a future meal? I was hoping to find a method to select during picking.

The crisply dried ones I'd either save for dry beans or seed. The plump "shelly" beans just get added in with the regular beans here.

As for leather britches, I am planning to try it this year but only have my Granny's recollection of doing them. She told me that as a kid she would usually have the job of stringing them while one of her sisters would thread them on a string for drying. She also told me me that once jars were readily available most folks opted to can beans instead. I did watch a video on YouTube where a lady snapped the beans before hanging them and also did some in a dehydrator. In all honesty, I'll probably snap them when I attempt it

 

[heirloomgal]

The network Blue Spitball beans are out of the ground today. It rained again and they’re far enough along that they can dry under cover just fine. This is such a unique bean! There were a couple dried pods so I shelled them.

First dried Mazlenk pod.
.

The garden is officially winding down this week. Leaves are yellowing and falling. Aunt Maggie is the big one.

I have been amazed by the Dow Purple Pod bean variety. I have never seen a direct seeded plant grow so aggressively and make so many pods in a super bad year. No other direct seeded bean did this well. And these seeds were very old too. Took this photo last week.

It’s neighbour ‘Musica’ produced maybe a dozen pods, that’s it, while Dow made close to 75~100 I’m sure.

Myrtle Allen pod set. Seeing this gives me hope that some beans will give me a fair return.

The runner bean trellis whose runner beans never grew! Oh well, 2025. This is what I did to be able to enjoy it even without a carriage of vines. Little midnight bean forest.

 

[ruralmamma]

Thought I'd share a photo of a cutshort pod ready to spill its beans. This demonstrates how the seed gets its square ends.

 

[flowerbug]

...Pole beans, but she seems to just nibble the portions at head height and leave the rest to produce pods.

deer will only browse so high. i'm not sure why they don't figure out how to stand on their hind legs like the rest of us... we have cedar topiary around here some winters when they don't have enough to eat they come along and trim our trees back...

whatever the deer don't get the groundhogs and chipmunks will go after.

good fences help. that's is all that works here. nothing else is reliable enough. unfortunately i still have some bad fence up that i'd like to replace and haven't done it yet.

 

[flowerbug]

i finished up picking through one garden yesterday and started another that was showing signs of having a lot of dry beans ready to pick. it was the first garden i planted and it had a lot of test plantings to see what would grow of the various outcrosses i'd found the previous few years. a few looked interesting but i didn't have time to shell out everything (or even start shelling most of them) because we had 100lbs of tomatoes to go through and get canned. i still have one large pan of chunked up tomatoes to get into the jars this morning.

Tinker's Fire and Red Ryder are both fairly early and even if Red Ryder isn't completely done i tend to pick the pods anyways and dry them down in flats inside to avoid getting them wet again. yes, we got rained on again yesterday so some beans are going to be sprouting in the pods, but that is how it can go. Tinker's Fire is showing great promise as a dry bean, continued nice performance in terms of holding upright and not falling over and the pods are sturdy enough that they do not damage easily. i also didn't see too many signs of chewing on them so the groundhog didn't target them as much as the other beans. Red Ryder also was not targetted as much.

next week, decent temperatures and dry and sunny so i should be able to get all the bean gardens picked through (and weeded since i tend to weed while i'm bending over anyways).

 

[flowerbug]

My plants have pods in every stage, from tiny slivers to crisply dried down. Do you mean the decision on how to cook occurs during food prep? Would a "mess of beans" end up a combination of whole beans and shelled beans? Or do the shelled beans get tossed in a separate bowl and held for use in a future meal? I was hoping to find a method to select during picking.

if i'm out picking i don't want to make several trips or several efforts so i will pick everything and then sort for cooking. i'm not picky (oh boy puns already ? ) but i don't want to overcook fresh beans so those are only steamed a short while, shellies and dry beans and leather britches all take longer so i would not mix those together as i also don't want some things mushy. it's for sure a skill that sometimes takes feel of the pod (like when i'm prepping Purple Dove beans that might have hung too long).

Similarly, for making leather britches, ultimately the whole bean is cooked and consumed, and many don't snap the beans before suspending them for drying. How do families ensure they have beans that haven't passed into toughness? These functional details aren't included in discussions by people with long traditions, because the knowledge is acquired by osmosis over a lifetime. I may have to NC, TN, or KY to pick the brains of the matriarchs.

i don't think it takes a lifetime to pick it up, but a few season's should fine tune it for each variety. if you have to take pictures and notes and use other methods to guage how done a pod is i think you could figure it out. like use a pointy stick of a certain size to poke at the pod and see how much resistance it has to the poke. if you always use the same stick/pokiethingy then you would get an idea, but to me i just use my fingers and pinch and feel how hard the seeds are getting and if the pod is still flexible or not. with greasy beans it becomes another layer because you don't mind if the seeds are bigger and more filled out.

 

[ruralmamma]

if i'm out picking i don't want to make several trips or several efforts so i will pick everything and then sort for cooking. i'm not picky (oh boy puns already ? ) but i don't want to overcook fresh beans so those are only steamed a short while, shellies and dry beans and leather britches all take longer so i would not mix those together as i also don't want some things mushy. it's for sure a skill that sometimes takes feel of the pod

Definitely wouldn't want to steam shellies as they would still be really firm. I love to steam fresh beans and especially noodle beans but I'm a bit of an oddball in my family. Beans are usually put in a pot with a bit of water and simmered until tender. The few shellies that are in there are tender too. Of course these are generally the cutshort beans.

I've lived in rural West Virginia my entire life and honestly the only beans we've ever cooked as shellies have been lima beans. Honestly didn't realize people ate them as shellies until I really started researching beans a few years ago. I grew a Romano trial bean this year that would be perfect as shellies because the flavor was great, but the pods were inedible on everything but the youngest beans. I know 4-5 year-old me would have loved shellies as I pulled the beans out of the peelings (hulls) and refused to eat them.

 

[jbrobin09]

I didn't obtain network beans this year but an anxiously awaiting mature seed from two varieties that are network selections.

We have a chance of rain this weekend and I went out last evening and harvested mature pods for drying. Opened a few pods of a dry bean landrace mix I'd harvested earlier in the week and was in awe at the variety. This is why I get so excited (and obsessed) about beans!

View attachment 68284Some of those blue beans will definitely get sorted out and grown separately next year.

Wow those are spectacular! I like the bright red. And the speckled ivory, and the blue of course!

 

[Decoy1]

I'm sorry to read of your climate struggles, and can relate to your trepidation for the future. It's another bad year for me here, too. I'm quite devastated, really, as I desperately hoped for a decent yield of networks beans after last season's non-summer. It appears to be a wet weather repeat, but worse. The pest pressure (i.e. giant invasive slugs) has been unrelenting, and their 'grazing' has knocked back the growth and fruit set of some plants by many weeks, if there is anything left after their visit. The lack of sunshine and awful winds have compounded the issue. There's still time, but so far it's not looking good.

One cultivar that has survived the wind and rain has been Coree de Sang - the Kaigara Mame lookalike. It's very vigourous and productive. Too bad it's not for the network this time

I read a Dutch saying that roughly translates to 'wind and rain grows great cabbages'. Perhaps I'm in the wrong line of work.

I’m sorry you’ve had a bad year again, Triffid. In my corner of England it’s been slightly challenging but in general not too bad. Slugs, following the wet spring, devastated my squash but did much less damage to beans.

I failed on three network varieties last year, Tennessee Shortcut, Kermit’s Smoky Mountain and Ilene.I planted Tennessee Shortcut in my polytunnel as a precaution and it has grown well, produced a lot of quite mature pods and should dry down well giving lots of seed.

The other two have struggled, much as they did last year. I think one plant of Ilene has survived and in spite of looking rather sickly is beginning to produce a few beans. How many will go on to produce seed, I’m not sure.

Kermit’s Smoky Mountain looks quite healthy but isn’t vigorous. It’s barely got to five feet in height and although it has lots of flower buds, it isn’t even in full flower yet. I doubt it will produce seed in time, even though sown in modules reasonably early (15th May). I think it’s just too late for the length of season here.