Blue Lake Pole Bean Seeds

[vfem]

I was collecting seeds the other day and getting my fall garden going. It occured to me that the pole beans were done. Isn't the Blue Lake Poles a hybrid though? Could I save seeds or do I just have to buy more next year?

 

[897tgigvib]

There are no hybrid F1 Beans out there on the market. Blue Lake Pole beans are a standard variety.

Beans are very difficult to hybridize. On the rare circumstance that a pollinating bee or a surgeon (it just about requires a surgeon) does cross two bean varieties, the F1 is grown, and the seeds saved from those are grown on for several generations, and the best of those are saved and selected into a new standard variety.

Once in awhile you will see in a catalog something like Kentucky Blue, and in the description it says those are from a cross of Kentucky Wonder and Blue Lake pole beans. This is probably true, but the cross was originally made a long time ago, and it is now a fully stabilized variety.

If anybody does find a catalog that sells F1 hybrid Bean seed, please let me know.

Bean flowers are tortuously complex. That little tiny bean pod in there has for its stigma the entire inner crease of the pod. As the immature unpollinated pod elongates and grows its inner crease rubs against its own pollen that grows at the ends of many fibrous stalks that are also tiny, like a mat. The pollen is also very fine, and in an almost liquid suspension.

Beans are natural self pollinators. Their hybrid vigor lasts for hundreds of years, hundreds of generations. Yes, there is the very rare cross pollination that happens when some bee does just the right kind of digging.

Actually, I do wonder if my Anasazi beans are an example of a bean variety so old it has lost some of its hybrid vigor. They have a strange way of ripening that seems weak. The pods seem to develop to a 3 fourths development, then shrivel and go greenish golden.

Phaseolus vulgaris, a naturally self pollinating species.

 

[Smart Red]

As already correctly mentioned, Blue Lake pole beans are a non hybrid variety.

I read that Blue Lake pole beans were recently named the best eating green bean, but that in the process of 'taming' them into a bush bean, most of the flavor was lost. I guess I'm adding Blue Lake pole beans to my garden next year and skipping my BL bush variety.

Love, Smart Red

 

[Smiles Jr.]

Marshallsmyth - what does F-1 mean?

I go back and forth with beans. Most years I have 4 teepees with Kentucky Wonder and Blue Lake pole beans (about 10 plants at each teepee) and 4 forty foot rows of bush beans that I usually plant twice during each growing season. A few years ago we decided to cut back on the beans a little as we're getting older and eat less beans. Also DW can't get around anymore so I'm the sole veggie gardener and I do not see the point of working my fingers to the bone only to give 60% of our harvest away. We have found that only 20 -24 pts. of canned beans is plenty to get us through the winter months. Along with all the other stuff we put by.

So for the last two years I only put up 2 teepees and have 2 rows of bush beans. I know that the crazy weather we have had the last two growing seasons (drought and heat) has a lot to do with it but we have had some terribly stringy beans and some low yields.

My plan for next season is to have 3 teepees w/10 plants each and no bush beans at all. If we have a scorching summer again next year I'm going to build some type of umbrella sun screen to erect at the top of the teepees. Hopefully our lake will be filled by then and I can pump water to the garden. I bought a little gasoline powered water pump at auction last weekend but the carburetor needs attention - another winter project.

 

[897tgigvib]

F1 stands for "filial first generation". I know, that never made sense to me when I was a young ole neanderthal!

What it really means is that it refers to the seeds that are in a cross pollinated fruit (or berry or nut or pod or cob or cluster)
It also refers to the plants that those seeds grow into.

When an F1 plant grows, and makes seeds, those seeds are called F2.

F1 plants from the same cross all tend to be very similar, and the dominant traits tend to get expressed more.
F2 plants all tend to be assorted mixes of the parents of the original F1 parents.

:happy_flower

 

[so lucky]

I planted Blue Lake Pole beans this year because I, too, had read that they were the best green bean, but I really was not impressed with their performance this season, growth-wise. I have hardly harvested any at all, perhaps a gallon and a half, tops, out of 5 tee-pees, with about 15 plants per tee-pee. Granted, they are still blooming, but lately the few beans are misshapen and short. Nevertheless, I will grow them again next year, hoping they will live up to their expectations. I realize this has been a difficult year for some growing things in my area.
For those of you who are still able to stoop and pick bush beans, Cascade, Derby and Jade are all really good green beans. They are what Blue Lake Bush wishes it was.

 

[Smiles Jr.]

F1 stands for "filial first generation". I know, that never made sense to me when I was a young ole neanderthal!

What it really means is that it refers to the seeds that are in a cross pollinated fruit (or berry or nut or pod or cob or cluster)
It also refers to the plants that those seeds grow into.

When an F1 plant grows, and makes seeds, those seeds are called F2.

F1 plants from the same cross all tend to be very similar, and the dominant traits tend to get expressed more.
F2 plants all tend to be assorted mixes of the parents of the original F1 parents.

:happy_flower

Thanks. What does "filial" mean? I know, I know, too many questions.

 

[897tgigvib]

I think "filial" was some old french word originally that meant "in the family".

Lol, now I'll google it and see how close I am!

filial

1393, from M.Fr. filial, from L.L. filialis "of a son or daughter," from L. filius "son," filia "daughter," possibly from a suffixed form of PIE root *bheue- "to be, exist, grow" (see be), though *dhe(i)- "to suck, suckle" (see fecund) "is more likely" [Watkins].

Yeppers, from Middle French, wow, 1393, that's a while ago. I guess I was kind of close to the dictionary meanings.

 

[Smart Red]

I'd have gone with Latin. . . . . filius: son or filii: sons. . . . . as the etymology of filial.

Love, Smart Red

 

[digitS']

I vote we change it:

F1 = "Family, 1st"

Steve