Mr. Bean

[digitS']

Save seed of one sort or another, every year.

Saved bean seed for years but can only remember using it for supper last year and wwaaaaay back in the seventies! Waay back then, I remember that Soldier beans did fantastically for me. Well, they look like they are gonna do it again!

The Soldier beans are in the smallest basket but they had the least ready to go yesterday so, give 'em about a week. Beyond those are the Jacob's Cattle beans - just because they were so darn pretty in the catalog. Nearest are the Cascade Giant rattlesnake beans. I had 1 nice pot of those beans last year, missed a lot in the garden and didn't even need to replant them in 2013! They volunteered like crazy!. We've had the Cascade Giants as green beans several times off those 2 teepees and still have most of them to harvest and dry.

Drying in the greenhouse with many more coming in from the garden . . . Good thing the dry beans have done well. The soybeans are flops this year! I think I planted them too early :/.

But, anyway . . . here is "Mr Bean Driving on roof of car" or "Mr Bean fhrt auf dem Dach seines . . ."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zavsd6etz_Q[/youtube]

. . . of course.

Steve

 

[Carol Dee]

Steve your beans look great. Thanks for posting the funny Mr Bean clip. A fun way to star my day!

 

[digitS']

Familiar to Marshall and BlueJay . . . but, I haven't done this for years!

Oh, there were the soybeans. They did so poorly this year that these dry beans are taking their place (& processing time) just fine. I've also saved some bean seed and some of the Cascade Giant rattlesnake beans last year. But . . . I've got LOTS more of those near-white Soldier beans drying and more in the garden. More of the Jacob's Cattle beans, too.

Steve

 

[digitS']

While I was in the garden this morning, I measured the division of the row, then came home and weighed the beans. Here is how those 2 dry bean varieties compared:

Jacob's Cattle Beans: 1.75#/17 foot row
Soldier Beans: 5.75#/23 foot row

The Jacob's Cattle beans yield amounted to 1/10th of a pound per row foot. Whereas, the Soldier beans produced 1/4 pound per foot!

I looked at this and I did the math! The Jacob's Cattle bean in my garden was right at (just a little below) the yield reported grown byWSU in Vancouver, Washington (link). The Soldier beans (& I am not quite sure of the sub-variety) did 2x better than the best yield for WSU! Wow! That makes me feel good for some reason .

This is about how I remember from 35 years ago. The Soldier beans are just remarkably productive compared to whatever I have grown at the same time. Now, keep in mind that I am not experienced growing dry beans. This is just about the only times I've grown them. But, I wanted to share my success with these "Soldiers."

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Steve

 

[897tgigvib]

Wow, your soldiers did awesome possum!

And you measured and weighed. That was smart and good.

I did not measure or weigh. Except for a few places, most of my bush beans are in patches, and the main patches are about 4 by 4 foot. Some patches are 2 by 2 foot, and then there are the tuck them in places to fill. This year my pole beans were mostly in rows.

Remember back during planting time how worried I was about the Dapple Grey, slow to sprout and all, even paper towel in a baggie sprouting some to fill? Well, those Dapple Grey sure made nice healthy, almost commercial type plants. And they just kept on producing. I think maybe today I picked the last pod from them, but most of their plants still look good so I'm leaving them in for if the season decides to last to December again and I might get a few more pods.

It looks like a close call between "Burgundy Kidney" and "Dapple Grey", with probably Burgundy Kidney edging Dapple out for productivity per plant. Oh, I should let Russ know that one plant among the Dapple Grey made a smaller pattern of grey on all its beans, and next year I will plant the main pattern patch separate from the smaller pattern patch to see if it breeds true.

 

[journey11]

Very nice! I get a kick out of measuring/weighing some of my harvests which my family thinks I am silly for doing...but sometimes it's nice to have proof of just how productive that variety was. I hate to waste space on things that don't earn their keep!

 

[digitS']

You will notice that I used a scale that measures by the 1/4 pound. The university researchers measured things by the gram . . !

Well, I also measured the 40' bean row by the foot - my foot. It is close, HEY! Anyway, with a little conversion, I can see the homeplate. It is enough to see that the Soldier beans did far better.

I first became aware of the sometimes remarkable difference in varieties long ago when I grew 4 different carrots in 50' rows. One variety (Nantes) nearly filled more buckets than the other 3 combined! This sort of thing may or may not hold true in another garden. Obviously, WSU had varieties that did much better than Soldier but if anyone knows something about WA State, they know that there is a good deal of difference between the growing conditions in Vancouver and the WA/ID border.

Steve

 

[897tgigvib]

Digit, did those university studies say how they did the harvesting of their dry beans?

There is a big difference between machine harvesting all at once and harvesting by hand every few days. That difference in harvest is also different from one variety to the next.

Commercial varieties are selected to produce a large flush all at once and then be machine picked, threshed through, bim bang, and then the plants are goners. But if those commercial varieties are grown in a garden and hand picked, some of the varieties will still do that single flush of production and be done and others will do that big flush, get harvested, and then make more flowers and pods. That's what those Burgundy Kidney beans do.

(Oh wow, just noticed a super beautiful pre sunrise is starting. High red clouds, deep blue sky!).

The Dapple Grey on the other hand, picked by hand every few days, produced a few pods each day for a long time.

I forgot to mention the Hopi Beige Lima short viners actually out produced by volume the Burgundy Kidneys. Those are definitely not designed for any kind of commercial harvesting, but for hand picking every few days.

Dalmatian produced a good amount for a fair time and the plants then became very tired. Healthy, just very tired looking.

I can compare varieties by volume not weight, how much of a 12 ounce coffee can did a patch of what size did I get.

Little Brown Cat's very small bolitas type beans filled half a can. Now, half a can of very small beans is more actual beans than a whole can of medium sized Lima beans. So, Little Brown Cat did some good production!

Piros Feher's large rounded beans also filled a can half full and was in a patch of about the same number of plants as Little Brown Cat, also about 4 by 4 foot. Piros Feher produced a good flush and then made a few more while the plants just died off one by one, tired and done.

Vermont Appaloosa, now is an unusual bean. I sure think Phaseolus vulgaris comes in several subspecies. Vermont Appaloosa and Flageolet are in the same not very common subspecies, I can tell. There is something about the way the pods are made, the pod shape, and the kind of density of the beans and their shape, and also the way the beans ripen. They barely go through a golden stage while ripening. The pods are thin walled, not at all meaty, oh except maybe right after the flower dries off the tip of the pod. For one of this subspecies to have a pod eaten as snap the pods would have to be eaten as very tiny things. (Hmmm, a new delicacy like baby corn?).

My strain of Black Coco has a more ancient type of bushy viney growth than other more commonly available strains. I got them from among other varieties I received a few years ago from some friends who got them from friends who did not know the exact names of all of their varieties, but these were named Black Coco. They produced rounded good sized beans in almost mid sized pods early in the season then continued producing and have finished tapering off production with smaller pods and beans that are longer and generally smaller. Their tired plants are now dying off so I'll pull them and probably discover a few small camouflaged pods in among the vimes.

My mix of bush horticulturals I just can't see a way to sort them out. They all make similar healthy plants of bush borlotti type and sorting them to variety is well nigh impossible. Coco Rubico is mixed in with them as are some bush Capirames. These got all mixed up in my move from Montana but at least I have them. The nicely sorted ones were in the box I accidentally left behind...arrrgh! As a mix though they are really nice! Beautiful too! Most of them are large rounded beans, some are more shaped like pintos. They are all very colorful with shades of white to beige with red to shades of mauve or taupe stripe patterning. Many of them age or cure; the white or light beige developing to a nice beige, the red deepening. Oh. The pods are gorgeous! Some do appear very edible at various stages with only fine strings to pull. Most of the pods are green or yellow with red striping, some so red the other colors seem to be the stripes on the red. Most of these pods are thick meated, and these are great shell beans! They produced like crazy at first and then just stopped. 8 plants made almost half a can of beans. (!)

Wren's egg, this is the variety I had to replant because something gobbled the original planting's seedlings except for 1 or 2 plants. I really love this variety! This is a good strain I got from Shumway's years ago, and I did several kinds of selections over the years and then mixed my selections back together. :bee That really works to give a great selection of what I like! They are true MULTIPURPOSE Beans. Bush. The 12 plants have my coffee can filled. These are best for hand picking but would work for a commercial machine harvested farm for dry beans. Some make pods so yellow golden and red it's unbelievable, others make pods green and red with only a little red stripes. Some of the good sized very rounded beans have very little red on them, others are almost reverse mostly red. The variations are because I selected that way. The plants are nice borlotti type. That means similar to kidney bean plants but not so upright. They lean down on the main stem as they grow. That seems to be the borlotti growth pattern. Oh. Dapple Grey grows like that too.

Chickasaw is the odd one for me! I had problems with them. I thought they'd be bush, but after vining so much I set stakes in the patch for them and some grew up the stakes. Right next to them are the Buckskin Girl. Chickasaw's vines kind of grew into the Buckskin Girl, so the real grow patterns of both I'm not yet sure of. I think the Chickasaw vines lowered Buckskin Girl's production, but I got half a can of Buckskin Girl. Worse, I am only getting a quarter can of Chickasaw. Though next year's garden will mostly be new varieties, these both will be in it again to be grown better. That's the kind of thing that happens with varieties that are new to me, and I love that kind of challenge!

PXBT is the strangest variety! I believe it is the result of several ancestral crosses between subspecies. It obviously has purple pod ancestry in it that does not show in the pods but in the leaves and stems. I can tell it has the very small bush subspecies in its ancestry too, the same subspecies as Little Brown Cat, and there is in it something of Appalachian beans too. I grew them well but got very little production. Some plants just...died...that thinned the patch out. It also I hope gives a better natural selection for my conditions. I got a third of a can plus an envelope of seeds from the best 2 plants, one the prettiest seeds, the other the nicest plant. Small plants that lean over nicely. Definitely not any kind of commercial variety, but REALLY COOL to grow! Mostly pretty deep lavender-pink flowers that show themselves off. Ya know, these plants can work in a flower bed somewhere toward the front. The foliage is also pretty. PXBT is only part of the name, but lol, kinda hard for the ole neanderthal to remember all the numbers and hyphens. I wonder if it stands for...

???Purple crossed with Black Turtle or something??? PXBT. Just that name got me!

And the outcrosses I got! Those will be another story!

 

[digitS']

Digit, did those university studies say how they did the harvesting of their dry beans?

There is a big difference between machine harvesting all at once and harvesting by hand every few days. That difference in harvest is also different from one variety to the next. . .
. . . Vermont Appaloosa. . .
. . . Wren's egg. . . Shumway's years ago, and I did several kinds of selections over the years and then mixed my selections back together. :bee That really works to give a great selection of what I like! They are true MULTIPURPOSE Beans. Bush. The 12 plants have my coffee can filled. . . !

First I'd like to say that somebody in Vermont "borrowed" that name! Yes, that should be a bean variety for up here - in the Palouse. Where the Appaloosa horse comes from!

Anyway, back to what WSU did - don't know. There is a link on the left side of the webpage about Beans & Niche Marketing that may lead you to their procedures.

Then, we see a difference between you and me, Marshall. I also ordered Wren's egg from Shumway's years ago! It may have been in the '60's because I'm pretty sure I was growing it in my garden on the California coast. During those days, I'm not sure if I knew that there were "other than" Shumway's seed catalogs .

I was in a hurry NOT to grow it again! I just didn't know what I was going to do with so many dry beans . . . However, 5 or 10 years later I was growing things like Pinto and garbanzos and lentils - just to see. That's all. That was when I grew Soldier the 1st time.

But look at Marshall's 1# coffee can filled by 12 plants!! Think about how much good food is available there - just for the growing! BTW, along that left-side of the webpage is some nutritional info from the WSU nutritionists. Go ahead. Don't be shy! Find out what we can all be growing in our gardens that give us good food, just for the growing!

Yes, there are still a few green pods on those Soldier plants! The Cascade Giant rattlesnake pole beans have been very productive, too. I can imagine that hand picking would greatly increase yield on vining plants. (As food for his army, I wonder what Na pole an would say about 'em .

Steve

 

[digitS']

. . ! The Cascade Giant rattlesnake pole beans have been very productive, too. . .

I always look to TEG for inspiration and Bernie's recent topic on canning beans inspired me to think about what I might do with these 3 bags of beans!

There could be some notoriety in being the TEG non-canner . . . Well, what about cooking and freezing? I may not be willing to commit my "precious" dry beans to that without some more encouragement. First, comes more cooked beans anyway!

The rattlesnake beans? You know, I put those things on my postage scale -- there's 29 ounces of beans in that bag! Two teepees! We must of had those green beans for dinner 4 times. There were still some pods on those vines when I pulled them down a couple of days ago. Oh no! I may have volunteers again!

There is the thing about the 2 teepees, I suppose. The 2013 volunteers were really crowded. I didn't have the heart to thin them too much - especially after transplanting quite a few out of the paths and the plants having to survive the dang rabbit attacks! So, it was a fairly dense planting but . . . they all grew on 8 poles (and several strings). Two teepees = lots of green beans + nearly 2 pounds dried!

Steve