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

[Blue-Jay]

My experience Champagne @Blue-Jay, in light of yours and @Zeedman's posts about this bean, I guess has been pretty good. There were a handful of somewhat strangely shaped beans, but there were not many like that. If anything, the strangeness was more about the fact that these beans were shaped very much like cashews, with a slight curve in the centre sideways making them seem 'bent' for lack of a better word, and many are not fully symmetrical. Sometimes one side is nice and smooth, and the other side is less so. Nothing super drastic, but these certainly do not form with the perfect smooth surfaces and symmetry of Stayley's Star beans! Ha!

That is great news that Champagne produces better seed with you. I wonder if it has something to do with climate or soil type. Champagne originates in the New England states. So perhaps people there grew much better seed than I had grown here in the midwest. When I grew Champagne the soil was somewhat of a clay type topsoil.

The amount of pods on that Nickell bean is just unreal. How many plants is wrapped around that pole?

heirloomgal, your photos of bean seed and plants are just lovely even when you say the light isn't good.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@jbrobin09,

I have striped off the leaves of my pole bean plants when it looks like the seed is very mature and sometimes when there is a hint of yellowing of the pods to facilitate pod drying. I have also taken my hand pruning shear and cut the vines through at the soil line. That will certainly turn off the moisture to the plants and also facilitate pod drying.

 

[flowerbug]

Last year I grew Hidatsa Shield Figure for the first time with great success (in fact it was arguably the best bean for me last summer). The plants were thick and lush, producing robust long pods with gorgeous plump seeds. This year I planted some of those saved seeds in two separate gardens, and the resulting plants are all short and spindly. A few pods have dried down and the seeds look fine. But the pods are few in number and only half as long as last year-- so the yield is really skimpy. Other bean varieties grew alongside the HSF plants and they did well. I just don't get it.

I found this old post from Artorius and flowerbug from the 2022 LEBN . Kind of makes me wonder if Hidatsa Shield Figure is perhaps a bit of a beany princess??
https://www.theeasygarden.com/threa...ns-without-borders.24484/page-185#post-409547

i have outcrosses from HSF but i've not developed them as i already have too many other projects. i do think they need better soil and perhaps cooler conditions along with fence space which i rarely want to have beans growing on the fences since then it adds more wind resistance and i don't want my fences to get blown over. i don't know if i have any HSF beans left themselves.

 

[flowerbug]

my 2nd flat of bean shelling (part way through it still, no more time today) is mostly Lavender beans and they didn't all finish very well but i'll still have perhaps 30% of a decent crop. which is ok. the worms will get the rejects along with the pods. i'm pretty sure the early hot spell we had did not help and we also had a lot of rains at times we didn't need.

the outcrosses may have performed better, but i can't be sure of that until all the Lavender and outcrosses are shelled and compared.

there are some other beans mixed in there and they seem to have done better (smaller beans). as usual Purple Dove does ok.

 

[heirloomgal]

@heirloomgal I noticed in one of your pics the vines had no leaves-was that a natural occurrence or did you strip the leaves? I’m just wondering if that helps ripen off the pods. I’m down to the wire to get some ripe pods so anything I can do… We are going down to +4/5 two nights a week now and I’ve had a very light frost in my lowest garden already. Clock is ticking!

Yes, I strip the leaves once I see them start to yellow a little. I find exposing the pods to sun really speeds things along; that shade cover from the leaves slows the pods drying in an almost shocking way. As @Blue-Jay mentioned you can also cut the vines at ground level, which works really well to rush them.

 

[heirloomgal]

The amount of pods on that Nickell bean is just unreal. How many plants is wrapped around that pole?

3! Isn't that wild!

 

[heirloomgal]

Another gorgeous day! Spent some time this evening stripping vines on poles that I had pulled up and put under cover to dry, and they're bone dry now. After an hour the cling of dried, crumbly bean leaf particles to clothing is remarkable! But I got several box flats full of pods ready to be shelled.

This is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in pole beans. I cannot wrap my head around what happened here, both poles in the photos below are network bean North Carolina. As you can see the top pole is pretty tall and bushy, the bottom one is a bit thin and sparse - it's about 1/2 the height of the big one. The big one is in full sun, whereas the other vine is a location that gets some shade in the early evening and yet despite being in a less ideal location it has pods top to bottom. Not tons, but there's some. The super tall North Carolina (probably about 10-11 ft) has a total of 3 pods in it's middle. I've never seen such a big pole have no beans on it's middle. You can see at the top there is some flowering & pods are forming now, but almost nothing below.

Inside the tall pole - almost nothing. I wondered earlier in the summer if beans can make mules, I've seen it with a pepper once, a huge plant which produces nothing. Most of the summer it was totally bare of pods despite all the foliage. Beans: mysteries wrapped in enigmas wrapped in a riddle.

I planted 4 Purple Dove seeds the 2nd week of June, which is late for me. But I was impressed that they grew so quickly. I can see now that the bushes are starting to dry that the one plant that was less crowded (I planted 3 of the 4 in the kale row) produced 2x the amount of pods. Just goes to show, space matters. I lost my resolve to not eat the PD beans and stripped 1 plant for supper a month ago (which I didn't regret, they were delicious) and thought awe well, 3 other plants are growing. But golly it set a whole new bunch of beans and is now loaded right up again! So, I'll harvest seed from 4 plants after all. What good luck!

I did find the mostly bush plants grew a bit weird, not really climbing but with a big tendency to flop. Given that they produce better with good spacing I think they need a little stake to be twisted around instead of close planting to prop them up. A very fine fresh eating bean, I sampled an old pod today and it was still tender and tasted great. At least it's flopped over and exposed to sunshine. My experience with bush beans is that some are heavy setters, and some (maybe even many) are, sadly, very scanty. I love to find beans like Purple Dove that are super yielding bushes.

First dry PD seeds!

This is a bean called 'White Beauty'. I have no idea how it really grows, the website indicated a pole, but for me it was a bush, though the seeds are exactly as they should be. Given the wonky year, maybe it will grow as a pole in the future. I planted the entire packet, only one seed sprouted! It was a wee tiny bush too. I hope to increase the seeds next year.

Youdou #2. Kind of an ordinary seed for such a wacko bean! The dried up pods of all Youdou beans are the grungiest, garbage dumpiest looking ones I've seen yet.

Bomba! She didn't give me much, but it sure is a unique colored bean. Has the most unusual color tints in the seedcoat, almost a hint of bluish/lilac/ turquoise. I need to find a better background to highlight that. All of the pea beans like this I've tried, Hutterite Soup etc, have not been phenomenal producers sadly. Variety or conditions, no idea. But the prettiness of this one outshines them all I think, and Bomba is a keeper.

First Fesol Afartapobres dry pods!

 

[ruralmamma]

Also wasn't it Turkey Craw that Bill Best mentioned as having a tendency to cross if given a chance? I'll have to find that video and rewatch it

I stand corrected. Found a video and an article about Bill Best in which he states the Goose bean is the one prone to cross-pollination. I think I confused it with Turkey Craw because the local seller I acquire many of my heirloom varieties from sells both and they both are fowl.

 

[Neen5MI]

I have a total of four very swollen pods on my San Fiacre beans and decided to let them grow.

The St. Fiacre story has always had a special place in my heart. Who knew there was a bean?!? May I ask where you got your seeds? I don't find it in either of Russ's collections, Seed Savers, or in a general Google search.

 

[Branching Out]

The harvest seems to be coming in all at once, and it feels overwhelming at times. Every flat surface in the house is covered in trays of beans. I so wish I had a bean drying room like you heirloomgal! Last evening we shelled out several varieties, including this festive platter of Ugandan Bantu beans.