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

[Smart Red]

This is a great thread. So much vegetable eye candy!

Told ya so! You're gonna like it here. You sound like a perfect fit!

 

[Blue-Jay]

This is a great thread. So much vegetable eye candy!

Well Welcome VA_LongBean,

You are going to like this if you like beans and lots of color. You just might have more fun then you can stand. This is the time of the year when some of the members of this thread are trotting out their fancy bean colors.

 

[897tgigvib]

HippyChick says these look like a Harbor Seal.
I'm going to name this selection from Sandpiper...

HARBOR SEAL

These are Pole growing, not quite as vigorous a pole as the other Sandpiper plants. (Hardly any variety is that vigorous.) They set their pods a bit later. The pods are a dry bean type, but I can see them being stringed, head and tail, and made into real pretty pickled beans, which would look absolutely awesome in a bloody mary.

 

[Blue-Jay]

That's a nice assortment of colors, @aftermidnight. It reminds me of "Pusacc Punuy" beans I saw in a book once (different patterns though): http://tinyurl.com/pusacc

Russ, I was just reading upthread about your Kishwaukee Yellow Wax stabilizing on three patterns, and I want to show you the five patterns I got out of it and ask if you'd ever had something similar. I got them in 2009 from ME LA N and the first year I grew them got 4 patterns: big dark brown, beige, black, and black-and-beige mottled; and the second and third years I got those 4 plus a pied one. Here's three each of the types from the third year:

And here's the pied ones from the second year:

So it's clearly still changing around some, since the pied ones switched from being pied + black-and-beige mottle to pied + solid black. A nice surprise when I opened the pods, though.

Holy Bean pod @sea-kangaroo ,

I acquired Kishwaukee Yellow again after starting my collecting up again in 2011 from Amy Hawk of Calhan, Colorado. I've grown the bean three years in a row now and I still get my three different seed coats that I've always gotten from this bean going back to 1977.

Did you happen to save the original bean packet that the seeds of KY came in from ME LA N. I was wondering how the bean was spelled on the packet. In the SSE yearbook the bean is missing the letter H after the S. Kiswaukee Yellow. Before SSE created this new website of theirs I posted a comment about the bean being misspelled. I believe ME LA N's bean is the my Kishwaukee Yellow. Some one in SSE saw my comment and typed in their response as being inappropriate. So I withdrew the comment. However I think they have had someone who entered data for their listings and made misspellings of bean names and didn't proof read their typing before the yearbooks get printed. These misspellings then become a permanent part of their data base and never get changed or corrected.

Neal Lash gets outcrossing in his bean in his school gardening project. Which is fine, but I can tell you that Kishwaukee Yellow has outcrossed again in his school gardens. Had to have done so to do what your sample has done. I got one called Chocolate from him in the winter of 2013 and when I planted it I got about 4 or 5 other segregations. I've never gotten these patterns and colors from KY so this has to be the result of more outcrossing of this bean. Have not gotten the spotted black and white one in your first photo or the solid reddish one. Also have not gotten the ones in your second photo. Those are really cool looking beans though. You should name the black spotted one and the spotted red one in photo 2. I've gotten a bean looking some what similar to the one in your photo 2 from a different bean which I will be showing off here on this thread in about another week or so after I get all my shelling done and put them up in jars. Then it will be time for my bean fashion show.

I had also gotten a seed sample of KY from ME LA N back in 2012 but I wasn't sure of the seed shape so I got Amy Hawks seeds. Neil Lash's seeds look just a bit shorter than mine to me. Unless I've just been looking at too many beans lately. I'm always looking at seed shape too besides just color, as I've always known a particular bean to have had. Hers looked like mine always had looked. I still haven't planted Neil Lashes KY version. Might have to grow them next year. I'll be posting more about this seed shape thing of KY after I get my KY pods shelled out and see what the general shape of the seeds are compared to ME LA N's seed sample. There is also a photo of Mostoller Wild Goose on the Bohen-Atlas website, and when I first saw it the seed shape caught my eye right away. MWG has always had a shorter plump looking seed as long as I've ever grown it. This one on the B-A site looks way too long.

Maybe I should send you some of my KY seeds and you can see what you get out of them.

Just curious, what seed did you plant to get the red spotted beans the second year? I'm going to guess that it was the black and white spotted one in the photo #2.



Anyway, just neat stuff @sea-kangaroo. You driving me crazy with those pretty beans. Glad to see others have bean fun besides Marshall and I.

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Beautiful beans Sea-K!

What are you going to name you're new varieties? If I can, I'd like to make a suggestion for your pied beans in pic #2 - maybe Clark's Calico if they keep their color/pattern?

 

[sea-kangaroo]

Harbor Seal is a great name for that, Marshall! It is shaped just like a fat seal banana-ed up to sleep on a rock.

"Holy bean pod," lol. I don't have the original packet. His 2007 listing says he got them from MN AN J2, though. Somebody at SSE is careless with names and it's really annoying. I've run into quite a few where the IA HF SSE listing's spelling differs from everyone else's. I did get them to correct the spelling of "Mrociumere" just by putting a comment in my listing for it (when it went to print my comment was gone and the spelling was fixed), so maybe with the new history/community-focused staff they hired you can finally get it corrected.

I really like the pied crosses I got. At the time I'd never seen anything remotely like them and was amazed when I opened the pods. The black + pied ones in my first photo remind me of bluetick coonhounds, with the larger & smaller spots and way the black bleeds into the white a little. So I'll go with Bluetick if I can get those stable.

I planted an even mix of the colors each year and didn't keep track of which individual seeds turned into which individual plants, so I can't say. I did get two twiner/short pole plants in the KY patch in year 2 or 3, though. Part of the crossing may actually be from me, as my first two years I was going off of bad info (from SSE!!) saying that beans never cross and consequently planted them all jumbled up together. And we all know how that goes when there are large bees around!

I think seed shape is at least partially affected by growing conditions. The original Flagg seeds I got from SSE were pretty sorry-looking, small & kidney-curved and brown where they should've been black, so they clearly had some moisture damage. But the seeds they produced for me were the proper-colored and -shaped versions.

Anyway, I'll put the pied KYs on my list for next year and see what they make. I'm trading some (the full mix) with TheSeedObsesser, and could send you some too if you like.

 

[sea-kangaroo]

Beautiful beans Sea-K!

What are you going to name you're new varieties? If I can, I'd like to make a suggestion for your pied beans in pic #2 - maybe Clark's Calico if they keep their color/pattern?

Thanks for the suggestion; nice and alliterative. I haven't eaten from those yet though, so I'll wait before naming them-- don't want to put my name on something less than delectable!

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

I couldn't manage the camera work to put a tutorial together. I think there was a link to a tutorial in last years bean thread.
Also is at least once decent video on Youtube I think.

After watching a few youtube videos and doing some reading, seems to be a whole lot like crossing peas through hand pollination, except for the keel is more fragile. I think that I'll give it a try next year.

Also remembered reading something interesting over on HG about there being two different gene pools of bean (Andean and Mexican) and crossing between gene pools usually not working. I'll see if I can find the thread for you.

 

[Smart Red]

Learning something every day. That means if you want to make crosses less likely you can alternate Andean and Mexican beans in a row.

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Couldn't find the specific HG thread but found another link (and saw plenty of different websites) confirming part of what I had read on HG.

http://archaeology.about.com/od/bcthroughbl/qt/Bean-History.htm

From memory of HG post - Andean gene-pool includes all kidney types and most eastern North American "heirlooms." Supposedly if you make crosses between them, either the actual plants will die or the flowers will abort? I'll keep looking for that TEG post.

There's another pic of some "true blue" beans on there two, the beans mixed in with them appear not to be the common bean but a variety of runner bean.