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

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

i got Candy from you last year. at first i compared the color to what was posted on your site and then i checked the SSE for the BH, then i found my packets with remaining beans to see how they compared to be sure. but their color is so close i almost missed the subtle differences. at first i was thinking it could all be Candy but i figured i should run this by you. i'll get some close up pics when i get home later of the 2 different beans from this year.

 

[Blue-Jay]

i got Candy from you last year. at first i compared the color to what was posted on your site and then i checked the SSE for the BH, then i found my packets with remaining beans to see how they compared to be sure. but their color is so close i almost missed the subtle differences. at first i was thinking it could all be Candy but i figured i should run this by you. i'll get some close up pics when i get home later of the 2 different beans from this year.

Another thing about Candy is that is has a higher bump on one side of the eye then it trails off in a little flat section after the bump at about a 45 degree angle. I have never seen this in a bean seed other than Candy. The BH eye will probably not do this and will probably only be moderately depressed from the area surounding it's eye.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

thanks! i'm sure now they are Candy.

one other i got last year i'm hoping i can send back is Milk & Cider. the pods are still green and the beans haven't dried yet. i'm hoping the frost will stay away long enough they will be able to dry outside on the plants. there are plenty of pods so i hope you could use those.

i would like to find a decent lima bean that could grow in my area. do you have any recommendations for the north east? I saw the Ganymede and thought it's really pretty but i know you don't have enough to sell. I saw Neptune but don't see how many days it could take to produce the first dry beans. North Star looks nice too and appears it may do ok in my area. Same could be said for Purple Eye from your description.

 

[Blue-Jay]

i would like to find a decent lima bean that could grow in my area. do you have any recommendations for the north east? I saw the Ganymede and thought it's really pretty but i know you don't have enough to sell. I saw Neptune but don't see how many days it could take to produce the first dry beans. North Star looks nice too and appears it may do ok in my area. Same could be said for Purple Eye from your description.

Purple Eye, Ganymede, Florida Speckled are all close in maturity time. You could try any of these to see if they grow well for you in your area. Neptune is just a bit later than Ganymede. I think by about two weeks.

 

[897tgigvib]

I got different relative timings for maturity of the lima beans.

North star and north pole were first, then came the neptune which makes mostly black seeds, followed soon by purple eye and the more regular looking neptune. then came the horn's speckled and beautiful ganymede. the last 2 to mature were the madagascar and herboontjie.

Right now the limas seem to be in a healthy period of starting to make a few more flowers for a small second crop.

The hopi limas i did not grow this year, but i think they are earlier and don't seem to need as much heat. They do a more continual production, and are good at filling a coffee can.

I also did not grow the large white commercial BUSH limas, but they seem to have timings similar to north star and north pole. North star and north pole for me seem very much to be the same variety, but they may be different accessions of the same variety grown and selected for some years by a different person at different places.

The Grandma Rivera's Red Speckled Puerto Rico Christmas Lima, (long full name I gave them), do have some differences from the regular Christmas lima. They are fatter, very slightly larger, and their pods are slightly slower to ripen. I really enjoy their beauty. At full cured dry the white portions turn very slightly more beige. Very slightly.

 

[897tgigvib]

Ganymede is more beautiful in your hand than a photo can show!

I picked one that was only almost dry, late almost dry shell stage. It's white part was actually at that stage a very pretty off white leaning to the prettiest pastel pink.

Ganymede wins the Lima bean beauty contest. She has some trouble germinating, does not grow as vigorous and heavy a vine as north pole or north star or herboontjie or madagascar, but her vine is more vigorous and heavier than horn's speckled, and about equal to purple eye's vine or neptune's vine.

Guh-NIM-uhdee
Ga-NIM-adee

Too pretty to call her GAN-i-meed!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Actually the original pronunciation makes sense if you 1. imagine it's named after the mythological character instead of the star and 2. start thinking of the bean as a "he" not a "she". After all, the original Ganymede was a young boy (one of the sons of Tros, the founder of Troy) who Zeus found so beautiful he turned himself into an eagle, carried the boy up into the sky, gave him eternal life and youth, made him cupbearer to the gods and ultimately set in in the sky as one of the twelve constellations of the Zodiac (Aquarius). In other words, it's named after and individual who was so beautiful the gods granted him immortality.

BTW, Bluejay77, While I have the thread I have a quick question about your Fort Portal Jade, since you are the only person I know who still currently has some (except Joe, of course) How "pure" was the seed you originally got from Germany. That is was ALL of the seed you got the standard deep olive green or did your have a couple of odd "off colors". I ask only because when I got my seed from Richter's there were two "off color" seeds in my original packed, one purple, one steel blue. The purple does not concern me much; my Bantu basically covers that (in fact the purple one may actually BE in my bantu pool, it's hard to tell). But I lost the steel one before I could plant it and, thanks to my bungling handling of the discovery (i.e. telling Ricter's about it) I basically muffed any chance of me (or anyone else) getting it again. So I just wanted to check if, by some wild chance you had the steel. (If I have asked this question before, please forgive, my memory is fuzzy.)

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

I found my first bean outcross in my Contender beans a few days ago! You can't see this (for some reason aftermidnight's printer trick didn't work) but the beans are mostly white, a lot of veins running through them, and they have a pale lavender-colored "netting" around the eye area (not a pattern that I've seen before). The plants had purple flowers and a few of the dried pods had purple streaking on them. I have no idea what they might have crossed with - the contender seeds that I planted to get these were from an old packet that I found in the bottom of my seed box, likely from the department store. I can't wait to see what I get out of these next year!

 

[Blue-Jay]

I have a number of limas planted this year and right now it looks like I won't get seed of any of them. I think simply not enough heat this summer.

 

[Blue-Jay]

BTW, Bluejay77, While I have the thread I have a quick question about your Fort Portal Jade, since you are the only person I know who still currently has some (except Joe, of course) How "pure" was the seed you originally got from Germany. That is was ALL of the seed you got the standard deep olive green or did your have a couple of odd "off colors". I ask only because when I got my seed from Richter's there were two "off color" seeds in my original packed, one purple, one steel blue. The purple does not concern me much; my Bantu basically covers that (in fact the purple one may actually BE in my bantu pool, it's hard to tell). But I lost the steel one before I could plant it and, thanks to my bungling handling of the discovery (i.e. telling Ricter's about it) I basically muffed any chance of me (or anyone else) getting it again. So I just wanted to check if, by some wild chance you had the steel. (If I have asked this question before, please forgive, my memory is fuzzy.)

The FPJ I got from the Netherlands this year were all dark olive green and from what I've seen by cracking a number of it's pods the color I'm getting back is also dark olive green.