A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

It's actually not bad. A supermarket in the neighboring city carries several flavors of Magnolia ice cream, corn is one of them. They also have Halo-halo (which is a mixture of fruit & sweet beans) and avocado, among others. The family & I drove to Chicago years back, there was a Filipino ice cream shop that carried most of their flavors. I tried all of the more unusual ones, and most were good... it was an interesting experience. I've since looked for that shop while visiting Chicago, but it seems to have closed.

I'm pretty open minded when it comes to food, and I love the cuisine of India especially. I cooked my way through Yamuna Devi's Art of Indian Cuisine, which is close to 3 inches. The more spices - cumin, coriander, cardamom, hing, mustard seed, ginger, turmeric - the better. Homemade roasted garam masalas, chutneys, raita. I even got into all the halwas, assorted milk fudges, fried dough sweets plunked in rosewater sugar syrup, lassis. But, I have my limitations. Seaweed is one, I just can't handle that taste. I've eaten it, a bunch, but hid that taste with pickled ginger and soy sauce. And when it comes to desserts, I've tried a lot of different things, but comfort of home pies, cakes, cookies, crumbles have no competitors - it is in the sweets department I enjoy most that which is from my childhood. The only far from home dessert that ever felt similar to my old favourites was made by an Eastern European lady who cooked for me traditional plum dumplings, boiled in water, then fried in breadcrumbs. I looked on with much trepidation as she prepared it, but the results blew me away! I've never eaten a raw plum since, only cooked.

 

[heirloomgal]

Well, I think @Zeedman was right. I don't have a cross, but a high population of reverse markings in my Chester beans. So unusual to have so many though! Several entire pods full of these markings.

Chocolate beans?

'Tarahumara Purple Star'. This is only the 2nd time I've grown it, but it has all the lovely qualities I recall it having years ago. Very easy to dry. Looks so much like a mini runner bean seed, but it's a true P. Vulgaris.

I think this bean will be in my collection forevermore - 'White Horticultural'. The beans are all perfectly smooth as well as very fat and round. I don't think I saw a single mishapen bean so far. And the surface sheen is a pretty true eggshell, though the camera didn't capture it. Like little capsules of peace & serenity.

'Junin' bush bean. So pink when fresh! As it ages the pink turns more dark rusty red, so I'm enjoying it before it becomes so ordinary.

I'm mesmerized by this purple network bean - which I can never remember the name of. Fagiola Viola something something...just so incredible how truly purple this bean is!

And of course, the one and only...'Blue Jay'

 

[Blue-Jay]

I'm mesmerized by this purple network bean - which I can never remember the name of. Fagiola Viola something something.

Fagiolo just means bean in Italian. Viola- Violet, di - of, Assiago - The place in Italy where it's from. We could probably drop of the the Faigolo and just say Violet Of Assiago or Viola di Assiago.

 

[heirloomgal]

Couple seed saving tricks I discovered this year. Saving tomato seeds on any scale requires that the fermented seeds be dried fairly quickly since they no longer are coated in germination inhibitor. But when you have amounts up to 1/8 cup of seeds, or even several tablespoons of them, and it's humid out, the drying down is slow. That's risky for the seeds. So what I've been doing is laying across the top of the stove several cake racks, and laying the drying papers on the racks. Then I turn the overhead stove fan on low. Seed piles that took 4 days ordinarily to dry, will dry overnight almost.

I've also discovered how powerful an effect an oscillating fan can have on pea & bean pods drying down in the house. It really speeds things up. You can't use fans to dry up many seeds because they are generally too fine, but beans, peas and corn are the exceptions. They do VERY well with the fans. Some of the new beans I'm trying seem to have pods that 'hold moisture', some seem to repel it. Not sure if this is varietal, weather related, or both. But the varieties with pods that get almost saggy or floppy with moisture (we have had rain, and there is more to come), endangering the seeds inside, can be dried up and brought to 'safety' quick. I need more fans!

The bean shelling I've been doing nightly is slowly chipping away at all the hanging bundles. Hard to get them to the 'dry as a bone' phase with the humidity. I'd prefer to shell them perfectly crispy, but a couple I shelled just as they were starting to turn hard at the neck. The pods were just too soggy for my comfort, I was worried it would cause sprouting (which it is probably designed to do). Some of the beans I've shelled have been torture, like the pods had cemented themselves to the beans and I need to break off each bean from the pod individually, and then chip the dry shell off each bean. Purple Teepee, Topcrop and Saxa have all been like that. Very difficult and time consuming to shell out. Maybe all the humidity made that worse. All the little black bean variety pods though are like shelling beans from tissue paper - so easy!

Pic of the bean I shelled tonight - 'Topcrop'. I like the colour of this one, sort of an almonds meet mocha chestnut. For a commercial bean, it has unusually pretty colouration and markings.

 

[Artorius]

This year I tried a method of quickly obtaining more tomato seeds. I add 2 - 4 drops of pectoenzyme to the cup with seeds and set aside overnight. In the morning the jelly is dissolved and the seeds are clean. Just rinse them with water and set aside to dry.

 

[flowerbug]

...
I've also discovered how powerful an effect an oscillating fan can have on pea & bean pods drying down in the house. It really speeds things up. You can't use fans to dry up many seeds because they are generally too fine, but beans, peas and corn are the exceptions. They do VERY well with the fans. Some of the new beans I'm trying seem to have pods that 'hold moisture', some seem to repel it. Not sure if this is varietal, weather related, or both. But the varieties with pods that get almost saggy or floppy with moisture (we have had rain, and there is more to come), endangering the seeds inside, can be dried up and brought to 'safety' quick. I need more fans!

The bean shelling I've been doing nightly is slowly chipping away at all the hanging bundles. Hard to get them to the 'dry as a bone' phase with the humidity. I'd prefer to shell them perfectly crispy, but a couple I shelled just as they were starting to turn hard at the neck. The pods were just too soggy for my comfort, I was worried it would cause sprouting (which it is probably designed to do). Some of the beans I've shelled have been torture, like the pods had cemented themselves to the beans and I need to break off each bean from the pod individually, and then chip the dry shell off each bean. Purple Teepee, Topcrop and Saxa have all been like that. Very difficult and time consuming to shell out. Maybe all the humidity made that worse. All the little black bean variety pods though are like shelling beans from tissue paper - so easy!

thanks for the tips!

i feel your pain! lol not really, i don't consider it a pain, i just save those for later when i have more time to shell them out.

some are downright difficult to do and that may be one of the reasons why they're not popular or as often planted. one thing i try to do here with any varieties i grow is to get them in the sweet spots for shelling out. i don't want them to shatter, but i also don't want them to be too hard to shell. so when i am shelling out i do set aside seeds that seem easier to shell. like right now i have some Yellow Eye set aside that seemed a bit easier to shell. even an incremental improvement is important enough to notice and work with.

i don't go as far as set up fans in the house but on the sunny days (but not windy days!) we've been having i'll take box tops (AKA flats) of pods outside to dry down quicker and stir them once during the day so the pods on the bottom can get another chance to be dried more. that can speed up drying by several days. which for me with limited space inside is important. last night i had to combine a bunch of flats into paper bags so i could reuse them for drying down the next batch that i had picked yesterday. i sort out the green or other pods that aren't really close to getting done (they're colder to the touch) and than after that it only takes a few days of drying before i feel comfortable putting them into the paper bags until i can get back to shelling them out all the way. also while i'm sorting that first round i'm pulling out any pods that might rot further so i can either discard them or check them sooner to rescue some of the seeds nearer the tops (that weren't dragging in the dirt as much). i may only be able to get one seed out of a pod that ways but one is better than none.

i don't do much with tomato seeds, but some day i may.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I've used fans for drying bean pods for years. Pods spread out over cardboard sheets. I'll have a small 100 square foot bedroom with the entire floor area covered in sheets of cardboard with just enough space to walk between them in case I want to retrieve a batch of pods that has dried sooner and I can shell them. I'll set two fans on medium speed at one end of the room and let them run all day and night with the door of the bedroom open. It's amazing just passing air over the pods constantly will remove tremendous amounts of moisture quite quickly.

Currently my bean pod harvest is going as fast as I can. I'm up at 5 am shelling beans until about 10 am and for about two hours in the evening. Still piling up more pods faster than I can shell them. That's ok I'll enjoy shelling them all after the plants have been picked clean and I've turned the garden plots back into bare soil. A clean slate for the next coming season. My winter rest will be filled with Bean Dreams.

 

[heirloomgal]

The bean pod shelling is about midway, nearly all the bush beans are pulled up and hung. 'Giele Waldbeantsje' is taking its sweet time. That is a long season bean for sure, though some pods are finally yellowing. 'Goliath', 'Outlaw', and 'Topcrop' took a very long time to dry down too. I guess because they are commercial green bean seeds, they are bred to not go to seed for as long as possible. Also notable, though my 'Topcrop' seeds were from a pretty well established seed company (I think it was Livingstone's) the beans were twiney, not true bushes, all of them. Makes me wonder if excessive heat alters plant growth.

I can't say with 100% certainty yet, but it seems the semi-runner beans I planted were some of the most productive plants this year, in terms of plant matter to seed ratio. Makes me wonder if this is perhaps a wildness throwback, much like the high production of anthocyanin tomatoes. Possibly the old wild beans, from which modern ones were selected, were most like semi runners. I find any of the wild gene veggies I've tried are super productive, whether it's eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, physalis. 'Candy' despite being a very large bean, is also remarkably productive; I would have thought the beans' size would cut down on productivity.

I had one bean tree trunk break on me, 'Schneebohne'. That is a bit scary since I had only 3 or 5 seeds (can't remember) and I really don't want to lose that one. It's a later maturing variety it seems, but it's just loaded with pods. The tree fell on some tomato cages, and didn't hit the ground luckily. I hope they can mature in a partly vertical position.

@Bluejay I am just loving my network beans! So many beautiful new colours to enjoy; the true blue of 'Sacre Bleu' is some kind of magic. I hope I can get a really good photo of it. It is still maturing out there, but the forecast is good so I'm optimistic for a good harvest of it. The vines were quite vigorous. The 'Conserva' beans have a lot of that subtle pink marbling effect, which is really nice. There has been a few interesting crosses too - in C. De Sicili I found one as well, pink and white.

'Conserva'

'Meerbarbe' pole bean. This bean is very difficult to photograph, the blue darkens behind the lens. I will try again with this one, but this is what I have in pics for now.

A variation on the 'Tarahumara Purple Star' pole bean. I thought this was a landrace initially, but I think it is actually a bean that will grow true to whatever colour version is planted. There are about 5 colour types. It shells quite easily, but the pods are as hard as cement. I've not seen a pod that hardens this much, and it is relatively fresh.

'Candy' semi runner. It is such a pretty colour when fresh. The seeds are probably the largest of all the varieties grown in 2021.

'Cornplanter Purple' pole. Seeds I planted were black, but perhaps this is a natural landrace type variation. Was very productive.

A couple photos from my last tomato seed saving.

'Cosmic Eclipse'

'Carmello'

'Old German'

'Landis Valley Brandywine'

 

[Zeedman]

Some of the beans I've shelled have been torture, like the pods had cemented themselves to the beans and I need to break off each bean from the pod individually, and then chip the dry shell off each bean. Purple Teepee, Topcrop and Saxa have all been like that. Very difficult and time consuming to shell out. Maybe all the humidity made that worse.

Some of the pods that shrink down over the seeds can be a real bear to shell (the hyacinth beans I'm growing fall in that category). Some cowpeas too, especially those that are long-podded... they tend to break rather than unzip. I made a tool that is helpful for those, cutting a small hook in the corner of a used gift card. If the pod is dry (or nearly so) I can pinch the tip of the pod, and open a small hole in the belly suture. Inserting the hook into that hole, I can usually unzip the entire pod. Other hooks might work for difficult beans... maybe a filed-down crochet hook?

And for some of the more stubborn beans, you may just need to place them in a burlap sack & dance on them.

As for drying wet or partially-dry seeds, I too use fans. Fortunately for me, my living room has a ceiling fan, and the HVAC keeps the indoor humidity low enough to dry pods & seeds quickly. Because I wash some pepper seeds after removal, those need to be dried especially quickly. Any seeds processed wet also need to be dried quickly after cleaning, or they can begin to sprout.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@heirloomgal,

Talking about tough beans to shell when the pods have dried. The toughest all time most difficult bean to shell for me has been one called Petit Gris. You should grow a couple sometime just to experience this bean. It is mean and tough. I put small amounts of this beans pods in an old pillow case and work it with my hands. Kneading and crushing the pods. Then seperate the beans, chaff and pod matterial in front of a fan in my garage.