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

[Branching Out]

Someone is really getting into heirloom beans....... Nice harvest!

Thanks heirloomgal! My fascination with beans has definitely grown a lot in just a few short years.

 

[heartsong111]

Mbombo Green - Pole Dry Snap. Right Photo. The bean was nicely productive this past summer. This unique green colored seed can be used in soups or pods can be eaten as a green vegetable. The variety originates in Kenya Africa. To the people of the Kuba tribe Mbombo is associated with the Creator God. The bean itself is thought of as a sign of prosperity and bringing good fertility to the soil. Seed donor @Stephen Smith from Guthrie, Kentucky.

Ohio Pole - Pole Dry. Right Photo. This bean was one of my top producers this past summer with 20.75 ounces of beans (588 grams). About 95 days to first dry pods. Heavy producer of large 8 inch long pods. This late eighteenth century heirloom grown by the Miami people of Kekionga (present day Fort Wayne Indiana), as well as by the Delaware, Shawnee and Potawatomi peoples.

View attachment 70695View attachment 70697
Mbombo Green................................................Ohio Pole

The Mbombo has been on my very long wish list.

 

[Michael Lusk]

I've an odd question for the group. In the last week, I received my Seed Savers and Baker Creek Catalogs which are always happy finds in the mailbox. Though in looking at both, I notice what I feel like is a fairly big decline in the variety of beans they're offering.

Baker Creek only has 17 in the catalog this year...I dusted off the one from 5 years ago and they were offering over 50 in 2019. Seed Saver has 36 varieties for sale this year which is better, but I still feel like that's low considering they have over 50 peppers.

Maybe I'm just being bean-centric, but is this a trend anyone is seeing in any of the other catalogs?

 

[heirloomgal]

I've an odd question for the group. In the last week, I received my Seed Savers and Baker Creek Catalogs which are always happy finds in the mailbox. Though in looking at both, I notice what I feel like is a fairly big decline in the variety of beans they're offering.

Baker Creek only has 17 in the catalog this year...I dusted off the one from 5 years ago and they were offering over 50 in 2019. Seed Saver has 36 varieties for sale this year which is better, but I still feel like that's low considering they have over 50 peppers.

Maybe I'm just being bean-centric, but is this a trend anyone is seeing in any of the other catalogs?

I noticed that with Baker Creek as well, the number of bean varieties seemed small for such a large company with a devoted customer base. Given that they have to purchase (some anyway) from growers, maybe it isn't easy to find growers for beans? I found a real drop in bean offerings in various vendors since the gardening boom of 2020-2021, and they haven't seemed to bounce back.

I don't know much about SS or SSE, but I do think seed exchanges in general are -sadly-a dying breed. With all the online selling platforms out there, social media and diy websites, I can't help but wonder if they'll go extinct. I know the numbers being offered in the seed exchanges generally has been on a downward trajectory for awhile.

 

[ruralmamma]

I've an odd question for the group. In the last week, I received my Seed Savers and Baker Creek Catalogs which are always happy finds in the mailbox. Though in looking at both, I notice what I feel like is a fairly big decline in the variety of beans they're offering.

Baker Creek only has 17 in the catalog this year...I dusted off the one from 5 years ago and they were offering over 50 in 2019. Seed Saver has 36 varieties for sale this year which is better, but I still feel like that's low considering they have over 50 peppers.

Maybe I'm just being bean-centric, but is this a trend anyone is seeing in any of the other catalogs?

I always go to the bean section first and have noticed the same. The Baker Creek Whole Seed Catalog (paid version) and online lists more varieties but only a couple that I don't have and which pique my interest.

I took an interest in Appalachian beans after realizing our family variety wasn't available elsewhere and that's what fueled my love for growing and saving unique beans.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I've an odd question for the group. In the last week, I received my Seed Savers and Baker Creek Catalogs which are always happy finds in the mailbox. Though in looking at both, I notice what I feel like is a fairly big decline in the variety of beans they're offering.

Baker Creek only has 17 in the catalog this year...I dusted off the one from 5 years ago and they were offering over 50 in 2019. Seed Saver has 36 varieties for sale this year which is better, but I still feel like that's low considering they have over 50 peppers.

Maybe I'm just being bean-centric, but is this a trend anyone is seeing in any of the other catalogs?

The decrease in bean offerings could have something to do with some of their harvests not working out. There could also be a drop off in grower contracts for some reason. Dropping some varieties from their offerings could also be due to a drop in customer interest in some varieties. Vegetables grown in the garden in order of popularity are.

1. Tomatoes
2. Cucumbers
3. Sweet Peppers
4. Onions
5. Green Beans (dry beans are probably even lower on the list)
3. Hot Peppers
6. Carrots
7. Lettuce
8. Peas
9. Squash
10. Sweet Corn

 

[Blue-Jay]

Osborne & Clyde - Pole Dry. Left Photo. I have grown this bean as far back as 1980. It produces two different colors with the same pattern. The bean is very productive and produced a good size crop this year. 8 plants produced 17.85 ounces (506 gm).

Oude Sloveense - Right Photo. Pole snap bean yellow pods. Really nice quality seed but a very small harvest this year at 2.25 ounces (63 gm).


Osborne & Clyde................................................Oude Sloveense

 

[Zeedman]

I noticed that with Baker Creek as well, the number of bean varieties seemed small for such a large company with a devoted customer base. Given that they have to purchase (some anyway) from growers, maybe it isn't easy to find growers for beans? I found a real drop in bean offerings in various vendors since the gardening boom of 2020-2021, and they haven't seemed to bounce back.

I don't know much about SS or SSE, but I do think seed exchanges in general are -sadly-a dying breed. With all the online selling platforms out there, social media and diy websites, I can't help but wonder if they'll go extinct. I know the numbers being offered in the seed exchanges generally has been on a downward trajectory for awhile.

The problems I have with some of those small online sellers are:
(a) they tend not to stay in business very long,
(b) they sell the "seed du jour", and have no long-term interest in preservation, and
(c) they are too often more focused on short-term profit, than on seed quality. The seed purity can be a gamble (as I observed this year with a pepper obtained from one of those small sellers) and they often sell very small quantities of seed for ridiculous prices. IMO, bean counters make poor bean growers.

There are undoubtedly some good, dedicated small growers out there, but unless they have been around long enough for people to post reviews, it's hard to know who to trust. @Blue-Jay and @Eleanor are a couple of the good ones.

Ever-tightening postal regulations have seriously reduced the sharing of seeds across national borders too, to the point where it is nearly impossible to exchange with those in some countries.

Seed exchanges have been diminishing for quite a few years now. The surge in heirloom seed companies has undoubtedly been a factor, as has the proliferation of online sellers. The sad thing is that all of those factors detract from & weaken the few organizations dedicated to long-term preservation of diversity. That some of those organizations sometimes shoot themselves in the foot managerially doesn't help either.

I've been tracking the gradual decline of SSE for many years now; those offering seeds there are only 1/3 of the number in their peak years. Ironically, their success in promoting heirloom seeds has led to the creation of their own competition.

 

[heirloomgal]

Well @Blue-Jay we're on week #2 of the postal strike. My network beans and others are waiting in a box to go, in my dining room. I heard on the radio today 'they've missed out on 10 million packages being delivered'. Funny wording with that, but needless to say... I'm still waiting for postal services to resume.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

The problems I have with some of those small online sellers are:
(a) they tend not to stay in business very long,
(b) they sell the "seed du jour", and have no long-term interest in preservation, and
(c) they are too often more focused on short-term profit, than on seed quality. The seed purity can be a gamble (as I observed this year with a pepper obtained from one of those small sellers) and they often sell very small quantities of seed for ridiculous prices. IMO, bean counters make poor bean growers.

Accuracy is also a big issue. Many use stock photos, and often not the right one (there's someone I ended up buying a LOT of orange sweet pea seed from becuase the picture they provided, rather than showing orange flowered Lathyus odoratus, showed Pisum eltatius, which was what I actually was interested in. I also bought a lot of "miniature blue glass gem" and what I got looks suspiciously like Hopi Blue. And there was the person who I ordered Hog peanut from. Everything about the listing looked okay, EXCEPT the seeds when they arrived. I've seen hog peanut seed before, and what I got did not resemble it (it looked more like some kind of vetch*).

Not that the big ones are always that much better. Compare the Navajo Robin's egg corn seed you get from Turkey hill with that you'd get from Native Seeds/SEARCH, and they are clearly two different corns (based on other sources it's native seeds that has the "correct" one. Ditto their Blue Clarange.

As for the few seeds, high price issue, I can sort of sympathize. When you sell a low cost item, the online format really doesn't work well with you. If you put the price at an accurate level and put the shipping at the same, people balk at how much more the shipping is than the cost of the item, and feel cheated. If you combine the shipping into the price and mark the shipping column as free, the item appears to expensive for what it is. And if you absorb the shipping yourself by combining the low product price with free shipping, you end up LOSING money on every sale.
As for small size, moist people don't NEED huge amounts of any specific seed. They don't have ROOM to plant 25-50 tomato plants, they have room for maybe five or six. And they aren't planning on planting the same type next year and so on, so saving the balance seems sort of pointless. To them, a big packet isn't a bargain, it's a massive waste of seed.

There are undoubtedly some good, dedicated small growers out there, but unless they have been around long enough for people to post reviews, it's hard to know who to trust. @Blue-Jay and @Eleanor are a couple of the good ones.

Online shopping sites like eBay and Etsy actually make this even harder due to how they handle feedback. Since they expect you to leave your feedback almost the moment the seed gets to you (in the case of eBay even sooner, they start pressuring you to leave feedback as soon as you have PAID for the item.) all the review can really tell you is how good the seller is at sending seed through the mail, or, at best, how many germinated. By the time they have grown to the point where you could tell if they gave you the correct variety, the window to report on that has long closed.

Ever-tightening postal regulations have seriously reduced the sharing of seeds across national borders too, to the point where it is nearly impossible to exchange with those in some countries.

I recently had a seed package confiscated from customs that was from a PROFESSIONAL seed company in England. Customs won't even trust THEM anymore for clean conditions.

And we are probably on the cusp of them extending the requirement for a seed lot permit number to ALL seeds, not just woody plant ones, so pretty soon even if you can GET a phyto, it won't be enough.

That's WHY I rely so much on those "searches" though the bags of beans and spices, it's often the only way around the import rules to get interesting stuff. And I'm not sure how long even THAT will last (between cleaning equipment at the source getting better and better, and the possibility that someone will go ultra paranoid and try to pass a regulation mandating that, say, all food imported into the US from foreign country's must be irradiated first to make them biologically sterile.)