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

[Blue-Jay]

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.

Yeah things like this are inconvenient and as painful as they seem to be. That strike will be over eventually. For post customers it's a waiting game.

 

[Zeedman]

For me, the question isn't whether my mail is moving (it is) but whether it gets to me. It's comical (in a dark humor kind of way) how often my neighbors & I meet to exchange mail - despite our complaints to the PO about this. There seems to be an inverse relationship between the ever increasing postal rates (which now go up twice a year) and the declining reliability of the service.

 

[heirloomgal]

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.

This is so true @Pulsegleaner. When I first started gardening I wanted maximum sized packets as some kind of default setting in my mind, I don't know why. I suppose for bush beans and peas that still makes sense for me, but I used to wonder with some seed companies why only 10 -15 seeds for a tomato or pepper? It seemed too little. Then after a few years of saving seeds I realized exactly what you've written here. I have never grown 25 tomato plants of a single variety! And I almost never grow the same variety of anything year to year unless I struggled somewhat with it. Same with most beans. I didn't really need that much seed, and I'd prefer a surplus of my own seed anyway for future plantings. It's always nice to have a little cushion of extra seed in the packet in case you do need to try again, but generally I bet there are thousands of gardeners with seed packets that they never fully used in their storage compartments.

 

[heirloomgal]

Found a Baker Creek Catalog tonight at the bookstore, probably shouldn't have, but bought it. There is a few new ones in there which are nice - was surprised to see Purple Dove and Red Swan each given almost a full page! Nice pics. Adventist Pole bean, that's one I'd order if I saw other stuff I'd want (and I could actually receive mail.) Nice to see Blauhilde bean featured too, love that bean. It'll be fun to flip through the rest of the book.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

This is so true @Pulsegleaner. When I first started gardening I wanted maximum sized packets as some kind of default setting in my mind, I don't know why. I suppose for bush beans and peas that still makes sense for me, but I used to wonder with some seed companies why only 10 -15 seeds for a tomato or pepper? It seemed too little. Then after a few years of saving seeds I realized exactly what you've written here. I have never grown 25 tomato plants of a single variety! And I almost never grow the same variety of anything year to year unless I struggled somewhat with it. Same with most beans. I didn't really need that much seed, and I'd prefer a surplus of my own seed anyway for future plantings. It's always nice to have a little cushion of extra seed in the packet in case you do need to try again, but generally I bet there are thousands of gardeners with seed packets that they never fully used in their storage compartments.

Lets put it this way

My cousin (the one whose home I am going to be at this afternoon), fell in love with the sweetcorn variety Hooker's Heirloom. He bought his initial packed from Seeds of Change probably ten or so years ago. He grows it every year. And, as far as I know, he's STILL using seed from that ORIGINAL packet! (I'm not even sure if Seeds of Change still EXISTS anymore.)

With the tiny amount of space I have, the seed I get back is usually WAY more than I need for the next year, at least for a while (since I had such a low level of seed survival before the cold frame, it was quite possible for directly planted things to disappear quite quickly, If, out of 100 seeds you plant, only two or three even GET to the reproductive stage, and even those only manage to pull off one pod or fruit with maybe 5-10 seeds, you very quickly get to a point where you get a year with ZERO, becuase nothing made it through.

Plus, there are some heirloom cops that just don't WORK for the casual backyard gardener, like corn and the other grains (here I'm keeping "grains" to the grass ones, and I don't have enough experience with things like buckwheat and quinoa to know if it applies to them.) A backyard gardener may grow a few stalks of sweetcorn for their own corn on the cob, but they generally don't have the ROOM for the 200 or so plants needed to keep the diversity up to variety preservation. And DEFINITELY not to do it the best practices way and leave a 2 mile buffer zone on each side to prevent cross pollination from other patches. That kind of stuff needs rural people with actual FARMS. And running a farm outside the industrial agriculture system with its commercial hybrids is now very hard to pull off financially. Going full homesteader is a commitment most modern people are not going to do.

It's a big part of why I abandoned the wrinkled soybean project (well, that and I stopped being able to find material). I realized that, even if I COULD create a strain that was all wrinkled and even if it DID result in sweeter tasting edamame, it really wouldn't get anywhere. No commercial setup would adopt it, becuase it wouldn't be compatible with the hybrid pesticide ready soybean their system was based on. On the boutique level, it would be only one shot before someone with more space produced enough to out compete me on sales. And if it DID become popular, some corporation would simply take it (everything in it genetically would be taken from natural sources, so probably unpatentable.) And if I COULD patent it, every seed grower on earth would turn against me. In theory, every breeder and saver should be doing what they are doing for the good of all and be content with that, but when the system becomes you giving everything and getting nothing (even the right to a livelihood) you begin to wonder when selflessness has turned into self destruction.

Granted, big seed packets DO sometimes have their advantages. For diverse crops, they give one the opportunity to pre-select which seeds in the pack best suit what you are looking for (same as with the bags, which, if you think about it, really are ENORMOUS seed packets.) But, usually, it's just excess.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Peruvian Goose - Pole dry. It climbs only to about 5 feet. Seems nicely productive for a short pole bean. Over a couple of years I kept getting requests for this bean until I ran out of them except for what I keep for growing about three years ago. Finally got a crop of them grown this year.

Pink Tip Greasy - Pole Greasy. Not eaten like gardeners in the more northernly areas of the country grow and fix snap green beans. These are harvested when the seed inside is in the shelly stage and then the pods and beans inside prepared all together. Very productive Appalachian bean.


Peruvian Goose..................................................Pink Tip Greasy