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

[debunkshy]

Hello everyone and hello 2024 ! We are now into our 12th season of this thread with great growers and contributors. Thank you all who have become part of our history and those who grace our pages with their current contributions. I think we all have so much enjoyment and pleasure in what we all do and share here.

Yes we grow the heirlooms of today and tomorrow. The members here do come up with new beans that will one day possibly become accepted varieties. Think of all the bean varieties that exist today. The USDA seed bank in Washington has over 15,000 accessions. Seed Savers Exchange with over 7,000 accessions. The country of Columbia with over 35,000 accessons. There are seed banks in a number of places around the world. Could there be 100,000 bean varieties in all the seed banks combined. Well maybe, and who knows how many kinds there are that have never become part of a seed bank. Every year we all run into more beans we have never seen before.

When humans began domesticating the bean there were not all these beans in existence 7,000 years ago. I bought a book on bean collecting about 8 years ago. The book was not about collecting the way we do it today by seeing new varieties online somewhere or by becoming members of organizations like Seed Savers Exchange or Seeds of Diversity Canada. This book was about going into the wild and collecting undomesticated beans. This book stated that today there are about 50 known varieties in the wild. The humans of many millenia ago probably had about the same number of varieties to work with. So where did all these thousands of beans come from. It had to be from crosses of beans that were domesticated creating new gene combinations over and over until today we have this grand profusion of diversity in beans. So yes we grow the heirlooms of today and probably tomorrow also.

Each year I have this priority list of beans that could be grown. Just a guide in case someone has a hard time deciding what they might like to try to grow. The 2023 list got worked over quite well. I have so many of the beans that are in my collection listed now on my website that this list will not be as long.

1. Barksdale - Pole wax. From Annette Barley of Nanaimo, BC.
2. Blue Coco - Only one sample of 12 beans. Could be split into two 6's.
3. Blue Spitball - Pole with small blue gray seed and black eye ring. Don't know if it's a dry bean or snap.
4. Cold Creek - Black and white Bush dry.
5. Freckles - Bush Dry
6. Fowler Pole - Pole Snap bean
7. Joe Bean - Pole Snap
8. Maria Amazilitei - Italian Pole Snap Bea
9. Menega - A Simcox collected bean from Columbia. Don't know if it's a pole or bush growth.
10. Old Joe Clark - Appalachian heirloom that produces very early yields of beautiful pink pods. Semi Runner
11. Rose D' Eyragues - Bush horticultural type that came from a market in France.
12. Serrano - 7 seeds in the sample

Hi Russ,
I'm interested in growing out some beans for you, but I'm a bit confuzzled by the options...do you need just the dozen listed here to be grown, or from among the many pages of network beans on your website?
Dale
Louisville, KY (7a)

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hi Russ,
I'm interested in growing out some beans for you, but I'm a bit confuzzled by the options...do you need just the dozen listed here to be grown, or from among the many pages of network beans on your website?
Dale
Louisville, KY (7a)

This list is just a guide for those who don't have any idea of what to grow. Yes you can also grow anything you want on the Network pages. On the network pages the ones to really that need to be grown out the most would be those with a Grown ? Those are the beans most in need of attention.

Welcome @debunkshy have we met at a seed swap?

 

[debunkshy]

This list is just a guide for those who don't have any idea of what to grow. Yes you can also grow anything you want on the Network pages. On the network pages the ones to really that need to be grown out the most would be those with a Grown ? Those are the beans most in need of attention.

Welcome @debunkshy have we met at a seed swap?

Sounds good to me. I'll look through the pages again and let you know what catches my interest. And, no, we haven't met at any swaps. I only started seed saving since the pandemic, and I have yet to attend a public swap of substance. I'm looking forward to it!

 

[flowerbug]

... And, no, we haven't met at any swaps. I only started seed saving since the pandemic, and I have yet to attend a public swap of substance. I'm looking forward to it!

welcome to TEG from mid-Michigan.

 

[flowerbug]

since i had three days of no internet access i took the spare time to sort more beans and to work more on the bean collection and getting ready for next spring's planting plus thinking about what to bring to the seed swap (it's actually going to be easier to think of what i'm not bringing )...

 

[heirloomgal]

Welcome to LEBN @debunkshy from Northern Ontario!
Hope you stick around for the upcoming season!

 

[heirloomgal]

A new little seed place popped up on the prairies, and I scooped up 2 new beans. One of them I can only imagine they got from you @Bluejay77 since I don't know of anyone who offers it besides you - Veitch Wonder. The other is Muni Chocame pole bean. I got MC because I've grown Ram's Horn which is similar, and liked it, but that bean is on the late side for me (mind you, I wasn't doing bean transplants back then either). I thought this bean might be earlier since it's coming from Manitoba, and they have a shorter season than I.

Also got the first data report from my website; the bad news is it's a 50/50 success rate with people trying to bring the site up. The good news is the 2024 determinations for browser operations will now allow people to connect with http sites as though they were https sites. The catch, of course, is people using updated browsers. I found out that my not wanting to pay for that 's' is a big part of whether a browser will pick it up or not. Haha, my web designer I think didn't want to mention that part to me yet. So for anyone having trouble, if your browser is updated for 2024 you should have no problem. The 's' would cost too much money at this point, so it will just have to be what it is for now.

 

[Zeedman]

The 's' would cost too much money at this point, so it will just have to be what it is for now.

Haven't seen the site; but will payments be changing hands via the site? If so, that 's' will be important... not many would enter payment info without the safety of a secure site.

 

[heirloomgal]

Haven't seen the site; but will payments be changing hands via the site? If so, that 's' will be important... not many would enter payment info without the safety of a secure site.

Heavens no, definitely not receiving any payment of any kind from people on that site. The contact form is simply sent to my email. No third party payment stuff.

 

[flowerbug]

...The good news is the 2024 determinations for browser operations will now allow people to connect with http sites as though they were https sites. The catch, of course, is people using updated browsers. I found out that my not wanting to pay for that 's' is a big part of whether a browser will pick it up or not. Haha, my web designer I think didn't want to mention that part to me yet. So for anyone having trouble, if your browser is updated for 2024 you should have no problem. The 's' would cost too much money at this point, so it will just have to be what it is for now.

uh, wow, running a website using the s or not is a simple configuration change which should not be a major change.

perhaps the issue is that the website advertising may be geared towards one or the other or both but it should not be a significant factor as once someone finds your website they can figure out if they need the s or not (and really it should have been set up to operate in either manner duh on the designers part IMO).

Haven't seen the site; but will payments be changing hands via the site? If so, that 's' will be important... not many would enter payment info without the safety of a secure site.

encrypting the whole site is silly IMO (it's overhead) but yes, you do want anything that is transmitting private information to be sent over a secure channel. so for that part of a website those pages should be secured.

unfortunately a lot of people think that e-mail is secure, but if it isn't encrypted it should not be considered secure.