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

[Blue-Jay]

@Pulsegleaner you did warn me that Bambarras were tricky. But I thought I might have the best shot at success due to the climate here. That's what I get for thinking.......

I can definitely see doing the stomp dance on these pea pods! The seed coats are tight and hard and the peas are slightly smaller than a dry black-eyed pea. The dry peas are more rounded in shape than the kidney shape of black eye pea. Haha, I thought I was giving lots of info on these peas, and you got me! The pods are about 6-8 inches long!

I am used to shelling purple hull peas, crowder peas and cream peas, they are EASY compared to the "Inkosi Umhlaba"

Hi @baymule,

You don't need to send me peas in lew of the Banbarra nuts that didn't produce for you. I so busy with beans I probably wouldn't get around to growing them anyway. All of these varieties that I got from a guy in South Africa was just a crap shoot anyway. No telling how old some of the seed was as some of the network gardeners reported some of the beans not germinating. We will wind up with what we will have and that's the best that can be done.

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Nope, haven't heard of a tetraploid bean haven't even heard of a tetraploid legume. Very interesting about the bean subspecies. I've grown... maybe four different bean varieties with different growth habits (four subspecies?) - wonder what the fifth one is?

Pulsegleanr, I just got some of those "Haricot Rouge Du Burkina Faso" cowpeas from Baker Creek, and the seeds look pretty much identical to both Torkuviahe and "Inkosi Umhlaba" (just a tinge darker). Another distant relative?

Never heard of a wax cowpeas - they exist?

 

[baymule]

Hi

You don't need to send me peas in lew of the Banbarra nuts that didn't produce for you. I so busy with beans I probably wouldn't get around to growing them anyway. All of these varieties that I got from a guy in South Africa was just a crap shoot anyway. No telling how old some of the seed was as some of the network gardeners reported some of the beans not germinating. We will wind up with what we will have and that's the best that can be done.

Well, that makes me feel a little better. Nothing ventured, nothing gained I guess. I'll try again next year, hopefully with better results!

@TheSeedObsesser I looked up the Haricot Rouge Du Burkina Faso peas on Baker Creek. The picture of the pea seeds look remarkably alike to what I grew. However, the description says the Haricot pea pods are a colorful red-purple and the ones I grew are green pods.

 

[baymule]

How did everything in the above post get underlined? I must have talents I knew nothing about!

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

I grew those "Torkuviahe" peas that Pulse mentioned this year - those have green pods with a red "tan."

 

[sea-kangaroo]

@baymule, looks like the "@baymule" link in Russ' quote was irked about being deleted and spread to encompass your whole post instead. Vengeance!

@Bluejay77, my two African beans' harvests are finally all dried and jarred and just awaiting a few days in the freezer before they're ready to return/store. I grew them both in containers so I could keep them away from my already in-ground beans and help prevent crossing.

Hereboontjie: I hadn't grown one of the larger-seeded limas before, just willow leafs and sievas, so I'm not sure if these are variety or "type" differences, but Hereboontjie had much thicker, stiffer stems than other limas I've grown, and didn't twine or climb as readily. Pods were big and thick-walled with a lighter green edge, and borne in clusters. About 10 weeks from planting to flowers, and another ~5 weeks to the first dry seeds. It's currently setting a second batch of young pods, which are slated for Halloween eating. I like the "vampire bites" (bowties?) on the seeds.

Heavenly Gold: 2 of the 3 seeds germinated, and then outgrew their poles and went 6 feet up the side of the porch before being checked by powdery mildew. Flowers were vivid yellow in bud and white when open. Pods were yellowish-green, wide and flattened, and turned greener and got purple streaks and blushing as they aged. To my surprise, the ripe seeds were bright purple & white, not at all like the red & white ones I planted! Water-damaged/old starting seeds, I guess. Heavenly Gold actually looked very much like Lilaschecke in all respects, which I also grew this year for the first time. I didn't try either so can't comment on any culinary differences. 8 weeks from planting to flowers, 2 weeks after that to snaps, and another 3 weeks after that to dry beans.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Sea-K I grew Volta and Timbavati from Russ's African selection. Both were nicely colored orange or pinkish red when I planted them as you can see back in the third post in this thread but they turned out white when I harvested them. I think something in the soil affects the colors.

I'm one of those that had total absolute failure on one of the five varieties I tried to grow. No germination at all. But Russ is a gardener as well as a gentleman. He understood. I don't like it, but I don't feel guilty.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Pulsegleanr, I just got some of those "Haricot Rouge Du Burkina Faso" cowpeas from Baker Creek, and the seeds look pretty much identical to both Torkuviahe and "Inkosi Umhlaba" (just a tinge darker). Another distant relative?

Who knows. I wouldn't surprise me. Beans tend to move around a lot. For example back before you ever saw the Seed zoo listings, there was actually a fourth cowpea (actually there was a fifth too, the Senegalese Purple speckled, but that one sold out before even I made my first order) from the same region as the Torukhiave and the Avakli, called Tsenebawu. THAT one's seed looked almost identical to the "brown eye" cowpeas I sent you. Were they related as well? Who knows?

I grew those "Torkuviahe" peas that Pulse mentioned this year - those have green pods with a red "tan."

Odd; according to the picture the pods on Torukhiave are supposed to be sort of straw yellow when they are mature

Never heard of a wax cowpeas - they exist?

Apparently so. Though to your credit when I mentioned getting this, no one ELSE had heard of a wax cowpea either (I gather it is somewhat unusual).

That pea came from a bag of black cowpeas from Vietnam I bought in Chinatown. If you have ever seen the Vietnamese Black (Che Dau Trang) Cowpea in the Baker Creek Explorer series they basically looked like that.

Actually a lot of the cowpeas in that bag were pretty weird even BEFORE I planted them. About 33-40% of them had cotyledons that were pale green (in fully mature seeds) I didn't know that cowpeas HAD the green cot trait.

Out of that pile of beans, two actually made it to maturity (neither of which is green cot, unfortunately). One was this one, which as I said has pods that are more or less wax colored and fairly fat. Unfortunately that made it really attractive to critters which ate most of the pods (it was a very short plant) I only managed to get ONE before the animals did, so I only have 9 seeds)

The other from the bag was more or less the same in most respects, EXCEPT for the pod. That one's pods were really skinny and constricted and a deep, deep purple maroon. I got a lot more seeds off that one (with it's skinny pods the animals didn't go for it). But I gave all of those away over time.

Incidentally the next year I got some more black cowpeas from Thailand, but visually the same as the Vietnamese ones (except for having no green cotted ones) One of those made it though as well. THAT one had medium fat pods that were green (gave that one away too at some point).

Oh and there was one in the garden this year also from Thailand (though a different brand, if that makes a difference. Actually that one may have been black with red speckles (a few red speckled ones show up in most of the bags of black) Doesn't matter much since that one never flowered, though the vine it made is pretty impressive (not on the order of Inkosi, but pretty sizable for me)

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Two notes I forgot

1. While I described CITC as "black" it's really "black on black". That is it's black eyed AND black coated. I know this because in one case I caught a chipmunk in the act of raiding a pod. Too late to save the seeds in the pod, but they were far enough along to see the eye formed (the eye color often forms long before the coat color)

2. To my surprise I discovered I still had the bag from the beans that produced CITC. So know the brand

For the record, the brand of the first Thai material (green fat pod plant) was Red Cock (a very common Thai Brand around the New York Chinatowns and the second (big plant, no flowers) was Boat (as opposed to Sailboat, which is a Chinese packing company).

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hi @buckabucka,

Got your seed return yesterday. They are just beauties. Thank you so much for your care of these beans. I had no idea that the Solwezi seed I sent you would come back looking like it did, really a pretty bean. That's why it's so nice to get these beans refreshed. We can now see what they really look like in their prime. I think what I actually sent you was one called Solwezi Variant perhaps. Do you still have the original packet the seeds came in? I will also check the African collection for the beans that didn't get grown this year to see if the Solwezi Variant is still here.