LEBN Pre-Season Report !

[Blue-Jay]

Hello everyone on the Little Easy Bean Network. The new 2016 thread will be up probably Monday or Tuesday. Tomorrow Friday April 1st I'll be going to Knoxville, Tennessee for a seed swap and doing a half hour talk on probably my bean collecting over the years at a Baptist Church in Oakridge, Tn. Possibly up to Pikeville, Kentucky Saturday morning for the Appalachian Seed Swap that takes place there the first weekend in April. This year being their 4th year. They are expecting about 600 to show. Then drive home Sunday.

As I think I mentioned before. Scattered Seed Project founder Will Bonsall from Maine sent me 52 packets of outcrossed beans last year. I successfully grew 18 of the 21 tried last year. Last year three did not germinate.

This past Saturday 3/26/16 I started doing a germination test on the remainder of the samples except for three because of extreme small seed samples on those. However in checking all the seed bags this morning I can report that 20 of the 25 samples being tested show germination to varying degrees. One germinating sample goes back to 2005. 11 years just amazing! There are a fair number of 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2013 samples with one 2010. All these are showing germination.

So I will take photos of all the seed of these and post them on the new 2016 thread I'm hoping to post on Monday or Tuesday. Hope my bean growing helpers will take these and grow them out and return fresh seed of the original seed coat types they find plus seed of any of the new segregations that could show up. I will be able to grow out 6 of these samples myself. I will choose 1 bush and 5 pole varieties to be grown here.

Talk to you again soon !

"Old Beans Should Never Die"
Russ Crow

 

[baymule]

Let the 2016 fun begin!!

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have a preliminary list ready but I'm waiting for this. I know my list will change. I may mostly go with your outcrosses. Sounds like fun.

I grew up about an hour north of Knoxville and made several trips to Oak Ridge, to the museum and to participate in math contests when in high school. Oak Ridge had the best public school system in Tennessee at the time and probably still does. All those scientists with the nuclear program would insist on it and fund it. Oak Ridge High normally took 8 of the top 10 positions for each grade in those region wide math contests. Best I could ever do was 5th. I remember Oak Ridge as a clean well-laid-out city. I think you will enjoy it. And that part of the country should be really pretty this time if year. I think you will enjoy it.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hi @Ridgerunner and @baymule. I came back from Florida a little early this year. Drove through Tennessee on I-24 on Friday March 18th, and the Redbuds were all in bloom probably even past Nashville on the way up to Clarksville. It was a very pretty drive that day. God's country.

The packets of these beans that I send out will have number designations on them since the beans are unnamed. They will be for instance WB-PKT #22. That is how we will keep tract of these growouts over time until we can get the beans settled down and then give them names. I would like everyone to make sure they know where each of these beans are planted and keep accurate tract of them when harvesting seed. If you get a number of packets it could get confusing. You might have WB-PKT #25,
WB-PKT #36, WB-PKT #41, WB-PKT #29. Keep tract of any new color seed coats that come out of them and which WB-PKT # they came from. I keep a planting diagram of all my plantings so I know which position in my plantings are which varieties. Something to think about. I'll take 6 of them to grow so that will leave 19 more to send out of these outcrossed beans. I certainly hope and pray we all get good growing seasons for beans this year. Not too wet and not too dry, and drier weather when your pods begin to dry mature seed.

Over time if these beans settle down. I'll probably say you can name the bean if you want to dream up names for them. It might be a good idea to start putting names on the WB-PKT packets right from the start. Then in the future it will be easier to keep tract of them all. What do you think.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I've got all of last years WB-PKT beans to name plus all the combinations that came out of them. Plus I have all the outcrossed beans I sent to Marshall to name that I've found in my garden patches over the last 4 years.

Yes so my bean growing helpers will have the fun of dreaming up names for these beans if they want to.

 

[aftermidnight]

Sounds like a plan, It's going to be fun to see what we actually end up with, I'll have to start thinking of names, if things continue like they are now it's going to be a good growing season here.
Annette

 

[Ridgerunner]

That sounds like fun. I have a few names in mind so now I need to grow beans to match the names. I'll stick to your numbering system until I see what variations I get in the harvest.

I've been thinking about how to plant these. Normally I plant half of one variety in one spot them about two weeks later plant the other half somewhere else. With these I might split them up more, say interspersed with peppers and eggplant, at least for bush beans. Each one of these has to be kept separate from all other varieties. It does take some planning.

 

[journey11]

Pikeville is only 3 hours from me. I'll have to check that out. I won't get to go this year though. My dad is in the middle of doing chemo and radiation, so that has kept me hopping.

Looking forward to 2016's garden and the what these out-crosses will turn out.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

i'll be sitting back to observe this year again. i'll be working with the few i got from you a couple years ago. i also have some of those Shortwave Sunshine i'll try again this year. hoping everyone this year will have much better luck growing!

 

[Blue-Jay]

Some of last years mundane looking outcrosses turned out some neat colors and patterns. You just never know what they might be capable of just by looking at them. Just like trying to read somebody's mind. You don't know what's inside. Potential surprise packages in all of them. I hope I get takers for all 19 of them. I'll do six and Aftermidnight gets one. so there is eighteen of them left out of 25.