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

[ruralmamma]

Black Coat runner beans! I've always wanted to grow those! I have seed for them, but they're in a rotation plan because of cross pollination. Are the flowers all bright red?

More of an orange red but really beautiful as they started blooming as the cutshorts were finished. I started some other varieties but rabbits kept them mowed down.

 

[heirloomgal]

Took some more pictures today. Beautiful sunshine-y day!

'Wildtäler'. A somewhat later maturing bean for me this year, but very nice seeds. Quite difficult to get a photo of these dark seeds though. It's similar to Astrid, except that Astrid has smaller beans. Excellent production. I think the name means 'Wild Valleys'.

'Syrian Fire'. Such an incredible bush bean. After this year, one of my faves.

And a bit darker background. Makes them look a wee bit different.

'Muni Chocame'. This is the write up I found for it:

AKA Ochoriwame from the central southern Sierra Tarahumara. Distinctive Jewel like bluish-purple-gunmetal gray mottled bean. Selected from original seeds provided to us from Joseph Lofthouse after his decades of growing and thus further adapting this bean to a short season. Beautiful beans on strong vines!

There seems to be about 3 color tones in the mix, and one of them has no stripes.

'Veitch Wonder'. I saw after taking these that there is somewhat of an unusual seed variant in there. I don't think it's an entire plant, just a few pods that made different seeds because there aren't many of them. Just love this bean!

'Zimbabwe Stones'. The pods were both purple and green, which explains the slightly different colored seed. These
remind me of 'Mrociumiere' except that ZS are considerably smaller seeds.

 

[flowerbug]

always fun to see what everyone is growing!

 

[flowerbug]

...I'll be planting garlic and mulching the beds as I can but I neglected a sprain for far too long and am facing a bit of down time soon.

oh that is a hard spot to be in when the weather is nice and there is so much yet to do outside. i hope you will find ways to still get things done and also not keep injuring it. you really don't want it to be a chronic issue later in life.

Luckily I have lots of pretty bean seed to sort and keep me occupied.

 

[Dahlia]

To everyone using spreadsheets, do you keep a physical copy of your inventory for backup?

I've lost too many garden notes do to electronic failures and my own failure to periodically transfer those notes to a journal. I'm currently growing 48 pepper plants as a trial and keeping note of characteristics of each. I observe them first thing in the morning and sometimes I just take my physical records outside and take notes.

It is super smart to keep both digital and paper records! It's easy to mess up data or lose it on a computer if you don't do regular backups. On the other hand I have had boxes kept in storage get the contents damaged by water too. The odds of both copies getting ruined are low indeed!

 

[flowerbug]

since i am a out of sight out of mind type of person whatever written records i have aren't too likely to be very accurate. my boxes of the actual collection are the records and in them are the dates when grown and if there is a named variety the name is in the container.

the challenge is finding things after the collection has been moved or abused and i need to do some reorganization each year to remove beans i'm no longer going to grow. getting ready for the late winter seed swap is normally when i do most of this kind of thing. right now with all these beans in bags that will need shelling out there's little chance of me doing any reorg work at all.

 

[Blue-Jay]

What can you imagine that this bean guy is doing this weekend and for probably a number of days ahead? Well packing tomato seeds in 2 x 3 inch ziplocs. A guy I know named Jim in Stanwood, Iowa got tomato seed from @heirloomgal. He grew them this summer. Fermented, cleaned and dried them. He passed them to me to take to seed swaps. What a small world it real is indeed. I met Jim at a Seed Savers Exchange campout/conference I think in 2017 in Decorah, Iowa. We've been bean friends ever since.

 

[Shades-of-Oregon]

@Blue-Jay what a great story. Just goes to show how dedicated gardeners are and friends forever.

 

[heirloomgal]

What can you imagine that this bean guy is doing this weekend and for probably a number of days ahead? Well packing tomato seeds in 2 x 3 inch ziplocs. A guy I know named Jim in Stanwood, Iowa got tomato seed from @heirloomgal. He grew them this summer. Fermented, cleaned and dried them. He passed them to me to take to seed swaps. What a small world it real is indeed. I met Jim at a Seed Savers Exchange campout/conference I think in 2017 in Decorah, Iowa. We've been bean friends ever since.

Oh my gosh, that is wild! Small world indeed!

 

[heirloomgal]

I have been on such a streak of luck lately. DH got up this morning and decided today is a good day to take down my last garden nemesis in the front yard - 9 cedar trees in 2 separate clusters. I've only been dreaming of this moment for about 10 years! I don't know where this came from, but I was happy to jump on board with the plan! He generally has a hard time parting with trees, whereas I'm very chainsaw happy, so I staggered slightly in disbelief. I foresaw somewhat of a problem, seeing that we don't have a trailer for haulage and these are huge trees. However, I kept quiet about that part and wondered what things will look like by evening. Main goal - cut the darn trees.

He popped over at the next door neighbour's to tell them we're dropping the trees, since the easement between our properties where the trees would fall are more his area, since he takes care of it (the city owns that land technically). Just wanted to be considerate and let him know before we started cutting. To our delight he told DH that he was just sitting around wasting time on the computer and would be happy to help, and would bring his 10 foot trailer!

So, I have a ton more space all ready now to grow beans for next year!! I thought the look of the pole beans in the front was great this year, and will do more next year for sure. And they'll get 100% full sun! Oh man, this is a great development! I get a whole new garden area. Getting the stumps out remains to be done, my least favourite part of the process, but I'm happy to wait until next year to tackle that. Wahoo, more beans!