The 2014 Little Easy Bean Network - Get New Beans On The Cheap

[baymule]

I took my pet bean-gle to the bean-ch, it was a bean-tiful day. A rooster and some hens gave my pet bean-gle a bean-ting by pecking him with their bean-kers. I took the poor dog home.

The next day, after a good breakfast of bean-con and eggs, I took my pet bean-gle to the woods to hunt for a bean-rskin rug. We didn't find one, but we found a bean-ver. The bean-ver wasn't very friendly, he had a bean-bag and didn't want to share it. The bean-ver was bigger than my pet bean-gle and looked like if there was a fight over the bean-bag, the bean-ver would be unbean-table. So we went home and ate a pot of BEANS!!

 

[897tgigvib]

@thistlebloom Here is some info

First a photo on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bambara_in_the_field.JPG

Here is the wikipedia article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigna_subterranea

 

[thistlebloom]

I took my pet bean-gle to the bean-ch, it was a bean-tiful day. A rooster and some hens gave my pet bean-gle a bean-ting by pecking him with their bean-kers. I took the poor dog home.

The next day, after a good breakfast of bean-con and eggs, I took my pet bean-gle to the woods to hunt for a bean-rskin rug. We didn't find one, but we found a bean-ver. The bean-ver wasn't very friendly, he had a bean-bag and didn't want to share it. The bean-ver was bigger than my pet bean-gle and looked like if there was a fight over the bean-bag, the bean-ver would be unbean-table. So we went home and ate a pot of BEANS!!

I was so totally beanlieving this story 'till she got to the beanrskin rug.
Come on Bay! I bet you made that part up!

 

[baymule]

 

[thistlebloom]

@thistlebloom Here is some info

First a photo on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bambara_in_the_field.JPG

Here is the wikipedia article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigna_subterranea

Thanks Marshall, interesting article. I see why it's important, but somebody really ought to work on it's productivity!

 

[baymule]

The picture on the Wikipedia article showed Bambarra beans pulled up and they looked like peanuts. Notice the plural? There was more than one bean in that bunch.......

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I think this needs a little clarification. I didn't mean it was NORMAL for it to only make 1-2 beans per plant, I simply said the that was the result the only person I know who grew it got. Their conditions were likely marginal, or their seed was of poor quality (they are in Australia, so getting the seed AT ALL through customs is a task and a half). Obviously on their own ground, the plants probably do a lot better (though the fact that they have been so thoroughly supplanted by the peanut that we have hear so little of it means that, ounce for ounce, it probably produces less than that. It is likely better adapted and a better choice for marginal areas, but the odds of Earth Pea ever taking back the whole of it's African range as the dominant underground legume crop is probably more or less zero.) If it made only 1-2 seeds per plant even there, you are right, it wouldn't be grown since it would be a zero increase crop. There really ARE only 1-2 seeds per pod, but a healthy plant probably produces many of them. I was warning what the results could be, not what they would be.
Incidentally, there is actually a SECOND species of underground edible legume in Africa; Hausa Groundnut (currently Macrotyloma geocarpum) However I have never actually seen that one (I know about it from Edwin A. Menninger's Edible Nuts of the World ) , so I have no clue what that even looks like (Macrotyloma used to be the genus Horse Gram belonged to (before they moved it to Dolicos, with the lablab bean) so I imagine the plant probably has at least a passing resemblance to that.)

 

[baymule]

I love the bean-iacs we have here. All this knowledge on TEG that we all benefit from! @Bluejay77 , @marshallsmyth , @Pulsegleaner ya'll are way above my pay grade! I am delighted to be a part of this site where I can participate in discussions like this.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Wow this is a lot to tackle, and I'm not a bean genetics expert. I only know what I know and understand. I'll give it a stab.

The fellow from South Africa who sent me these beans I think may have marked some of the tiny papers I left enclosed with the seed samples as landraces. I suppose that over many years their different beans and strains probably have crossed and recrossed. When they select seed to save and grow you don't know even what those native African people may have inadvertently weeded out. There also may be all the genetics still contained there within these beans. One only seeing mostly what is expressed as the dominate traits. I feel that if this South African fellow (who I got the impression had grown these beans himself as well) didn't take the time to seperate different strains or landraces and mark then in seperate samples then I'm not going to worry about it. I'm going to treat them as a single strain variety. If however anyone who finds any off types or color variations I'm sure they can accomodate those different beans fairly nicely in a return of 25 seeds, and please do so if those color variations arrise. I remember attending one of the Seed Saver Exchange campouts back in the 80's when Kent Whealy one of the original founding members was still with the organization. He was talking about genetic diversity among our heirloom beans. He was told by one of his botanist aquaintances that heirloom beans have been grown, and selected for so long, in such small quantities that there was very little to no gentic differences in your varieties of your beans in a population.

Yes Marshall and I are definitley having lots of fun with all of this, and anyone who stays with this little bean network will acquire more varieties themselves each year, and will begin to get more of a glimpse of that fun we have. I do like to have stable bean varieties but also have the love of trying to follow out the possibilties a new arrival via outcrossing may hold. You might say that a little bit of the Calvin Keeney syndrome has gotten a hold of Marshall and I.

Hey Ridge,

I never thought of doing what you did with the Blue Lake bush beans and plant a few of them just to see if the soil is warm enough for beans to germinate and emerge. I've always just tried to make a judgement by the weather. A white seeded bean is probably a good one to use for that as I think they are not as fond of cold soils as the colored types can fair better in cooler conditions. I think I will use that method from now on. However I think planting time has arrived here in Illinois for me. I think by Thursday and Friday I'll be in my bean garden, with my seed planting. Today we will have our 6th 80 degree day since the begining of April and I think the weather is going to average generally near the low 70's after today with a few more 80 days next week just before the month comes to end.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Russ I would never have thought about it if I didn't consider your beans a kind of trust, especially the ones I only got three of. I don't want to take any chances with them.