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

[Shades-of-Oregon]

@heirloomgal your have done a super job organizing all the different beans as well as collections info about each one.
This thread for the entire season from your garden to harvest as well as the organization of each variety of beans also reviewed with a glowing coverage of colors , production, weight and sizes from each type grown.

The first thing I gave all my grandchildren at 4 years old to grow were beans . Beans grow quickly and at the same time hold the attention of children throughout the growth cycle.

In a good way your daily coverage has held my attention and learning about so many interesting varieties and techniques for different types of beans has reignited my interest in growing beans again.

 

[flowerbug]

...
Purple Dove did so well, it actually makes me wonder if beans like being grown with kale? This was from 2 plants!View attachment 69985

*cheering noises*

aren't they so purty!

i noticed one bean (sorry i do that ) with a darker ring around the eye which may indicate a bit too much exposure of that bean to fungi. i discard any beans that look like that if i see them (and i do look at all of the many thousands of beans i harvest several times each because either i am planning on eating them or using them to replant and in each case i don't want that kind of influence).

Purple Dove are like the Yellow Eye beans that i grow which still do a decent job of nodulating on the roots if the soil doesn't already have too much nitrogen. from the color of those beans i'd say you have great garden soil and also great conditions to get that many beans from just two plants. i'd need about 10-20 plants (depending upon the garden) to get that many beans, but i'm working in more difficult conditions and not perfect soil at all.

 

[heirloomgal]

I can't believe you grew all of these!!! How big is your garden(s)?

I have 7 gardens, 1 large one and 6 smaller ones. I honestly never measured them all, and the main one has grown over the years. I'm in the burbs so it probably doesn't add up to a lot, however, I use every single square inch VERY carefully!!

 

[heirloomgal]

reignited my interest in growing beans again.

 

[heirloomgal]

i'd say you have great garden soil and also great conditions to get that many beans from just two plants.

I have always gardened organically so yeah the soil probably is a factor, though that garden had only ever grown perennials before so it had no bean innoculant in the soil - which makes it even harder to understand the yield. I wonder if the fact that each bean was grown totally isolated, next to kales only, if that is a factor - maybe they like crucifers? Plus the electroculture factors in, but that is an odd yield for only two plants AND from seeds that I purchased, those weren't even my seeds.

 

[flowerbug]

the question on my mind in recent weeks was how much (percentage wise) nitrogen is supplied by the dry weight of bean stems and some leaves and then if you are returning a percentage of the bean harvest to the soil each time you grow them how much of that is also a supply of which nutrients? it looks like about 15% of the dry beans are crude protein which is not nitrogen percentage but at least useful edible food for beef cattle if not overused (2% or less). so roughly none of what i'm doing is going to waste. and of course there is some percentage being supplied by the dry stems and leaves of the plants and also the roots and nodules left behind.

now does that mean that using large amounts of dry beans to feed the worms in the worm buckets was a great idea? well, based upon my own informal experiments it was not a great idea and so it is better if i don't do those experiments again in every bucket of worms. this year i'm returning to a more moderate diet plan and if i use things from the beans it will mostly be the dry bean pods and there will be some scattered dry beans in those but nothing like what i did by adding a lot of rejects and several lbs of dry beans that were bulk food sourced and given to us by a friend but they were so bad quality that i did not want to cook with them so i used them as worm food. the worms didn't really seem to like them either, but i think that is simply a matter of too much of one thing not really being the best approach. had they been cooked drained and mixed in with other vegetable materials they would probably have done much better.

of course i'm also interested in nitrogen fixation by beans in the nodules on their roots and and read articles about that. mixed reviews available as to if supplmental nitrogen is actually useful vs. what the plants can supply for themselves. some indications that lower pH inhibits nodulation so wood ash applications for those with more acidic soils may give a boost (be careful to not overdo it).

the garden i was putting up yesterday has been used for growing beans for most of the years i've been here. sometimes i find extra amendments of organic materials or grow some garlic and other things in that area but on the whole most of it is just used for beans (and weeds ). the soil is in pretty good condition other than the usual high clay content and poorer drainage than i'd like but i get good crops from it even with those limitations. i probably turn under 10-25% of the dry beans in the pods or rejects or what falls from shattering.

any places i do have beans (or peas) growing in gardens does make a big difference in the softness of that immediate area where they are planted so i also don't mind growing them as a cover crop and that was a part of the plan for the late plantings of beans. i didn't expect to get an extra month of growing season and i did not expect that the beans that were shut down due to the frosts we finally did get to be in decent shape, but my survey of shelling some of those out yesterday determined that they will be edible and appreciated by us - that means 5-10lbs of Purple Dove beans extra i wasn't expecting (which is likely going to help offset some of the losses i had from other beans due to groundhog feeding and some too dry weather spells we had).

ok, here is one reference i've been able to find which gives actual values of some terms that i've not been able to find using a general search for % of nitrogen by weight for dry beans and dry bean plants (if you happen to come across such references i would like to hear about it ).

https://extensionpubs.unl.edu/publication/g2036/2010/html/view#target2

 

[heirloomgal]

I started counting out network bean returns this evening! Fun, fun, fun!

The good news and not as good news; despite my 1st official terrible bean year I still managed to harvest good quality beans for most of the network varieties. The not so great news is that there are still some I need to regrow next season, because I just didn't get enough seeds. 2 would would be Fagiolo Ruviotti (which had a cross in it and the other plants didn't do great) and Botosani Cyclops. Plenty of seed to try again with both, but not enough to make a return.

The envelopes earmarked for a brown paper wrapped package were the ones that I struggled with the most strangely and had the most failures, though I didn't fail with all of them. This makes a little sense, because I give prime real estate in the garden to the network beans first and foremost and all the others get seconds. Maybe this time, that factored in. Either way, all those that bombed I still have plenty to try again. (There were a few network beans in this lot with the A-Z beans for the wrapped package.) Blue Gold Star fared the worst by far and I'll need to post photos of the dozen or so seeds I would up with because there are 2 shapes that appeared. Actually, I need to do this for 'Kruger's Speckled Caseknife' too because of the 3 plants I grew every single one produced different seeds, so I'll post photos of the two similar ones that could be the trues to see which one is the real deal. Two envelopes were sent to me for the bean 'Ilene', but those beans were not in the shipment so I'll just scratch that name off the inventory sheet? Is that okay?

It's a disappointment that I didn't succeed with everything, but at least I haven't washed out on anything completely and in the end I did better than I thought I would. First week of July I thought I'd have to regrow everything. So I'm relieved that things worked out considerably better than I expected. Beans, such ruthless masters.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Did someone mention that certain bean pods like Cresnjevec are hard to hand shell? I found a way this morning to make the Cresnjevec pods pretty much just unzip right open. you hold the pods left hand at the top and right hand at the other end of the pod. Then at the same time twist the hands in opposite directions. Back and forth two or three time if necessary. The pods will unzip down the unbilical vein and the beans will practically drop right out of the pods.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@heirloomgal,

I'll just let you be the judge of what you want to return new seed of and what you want to regrow next year. I also could send you some Ilene beans for next year. You are very conscientious and grow some of the nicest seeds that anyone would want to gaze upon. Not to worry, no stress !

 

[Shades-of-Oregon]

@heirloomgal Despite the ups and downs of growing beans this season you did a fantabulous job with every single one you grew, and had a terrific display . count, weigh in, colors and descriptions on each one. You need to get a high tech bean counter to help you out. I think I would be going nutty if I had to count so many beans, besides eyes goin cross eyed.

High tech bean counter..