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

[Blue-Jay]

Today's show will feature the African Premier Family, and the Chocolate Ladies plus two other single outcrosses not related to African Premier or Chocolate.

Last year when I grew African Premier I found the one on the left which has similar color markings to AP but the seed was glossy. African Premier has a shorter seed and the base color is flat no gloss what so ever. This year the seed that appears the most similar to this is the one on the right.

The growing of the glossy seeded bean produced about 5 segregations. I like these two plump seeds from this planting. One on the left is solid pink without markings and has a slight blueish under color. The one on the right also solid pink without markings and a slight blueish under color but is flat no glossiness.

These two segregations try to mimick African Premier, but don't really quite make it. They are still both a bit different than African Premier in seed shape and slightly different in their color shadings.

Another variation of the glossy ones, but slightly different color shadings. If you wanted to compare the differences of these to African Premier you can go to my website http://www.abeancollectorswindow.com and go to the first bean page A-Ca.

 

[Blue-Jay]

The Chocolate ladies put on quite a show in my garden this year with lots of variations.

The original chocolate is a short plump oval two toned brown and white seed with a pattern similar to Jacob's Cattle. The seed on the left is similar with the exception of the third color tone mixed into the brown. The seed on the right reminds me of Topcrop snap bean seeds.

A pretty solid milk chocolate brown seed with a black eye ring apeared in one of the plantings of last years segregations. The one on the right is a variation of the one on the left in the first photo panel. All these segregations seemed to have very nice drying characteristics.

The one on the left is very similar to the original Chocolate except this seed is a bit shorter and rounder. The bean on the right is almost a variation of a Soldier figure with figure being very wide covering about half the seed.

The one on the left is like a short plump rounded brown soldier. Then the one on the right is nearly another variation of the one on the left in the first panel at the top of the post with a lighter tan coloring and red markings.

The one on the left looks very much like a brown soldier bean. Longer seed than the one directly above it in the previous photo panel. Yet another rearanging of colors on the one on the right.

One last variation the Chocolate ladies had up their fashionable sleeves.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I was not able to keep tract of a couple of new outcrosses I found this year. Just about the time the beans started to get into the peak of dry pod production along comes a months worth of rain in a single week. Not good for drying seed. So I was going crazy pounding in long stakes into the ground pulling up mature bush bean plants and hanging them on these long stakes to get the plants off the moist ground. At this point the plants are still in their correct rows but are no longer in the their original positions in the row. So some new seeds I was not able to tell which varieties produced the new outcross. Below are two new outcrosses that I know what area of the garden they came from but not the varieties that produced them.

The one on the left has very thin seed. Hal sent me a wax bean called "Honey Keygold" that has seed
very similar to this but is glossy solid jet black. Perhaps it came out of one of those wax bean plants. I will grow these tan beans next summer to see what they might produce in the way of pods and color. Looks like a slender poded snap bean to me. The bean on the right I have not seen this color combination before this year. Black and pink mottled together. I think a pole bean might have produced this one. As I was shelling the pods for the first row of pole beans this seed popped up among those pods Definitely interesting enough to want to grow it again.

 

[sea-kangaroo]

@Bluejay77, I got a surprise this year that reminds me of your Blue Aspen. Here's the mother Zona Upchurch Goose, which I grew for the first time this year as part of the distributed inheritance from MI SC R:

And here's the surprise offspring:

Zona Upchurch Goose is very similar to Rose, Ohio Pole, and Melungenon beans, all of which are Appalachian/Native American in origin, have very large fleshy pods, and have flattened & slightly elongated seed in the same color & pattern. The newcomer had "normal-sized" pods and pinto bean-shaped seeds, and its mature pods had thin purple streaks instead of wide diluted pink ones. I think the two pale ones are "reverses" of the purpler ones' pattern.

(Is there a term for that, by the way?? I've seen them called reversed, day-for-night, or inverted.)

 

[baymule]

What fun! Plant beans and wait for the surprise colors and patterns! Russ your fashion show is better than any I have seen on TV!! @sea-kangaroo those are some really pretty beans!

 

[Blue-Jay]

What fun! Plant beans and wait for the surprise colors and patterns! Russ your fashion show is better than any I have seen on TV!! @sea-kangaroo those are some really pretty beans!

Hi Bay,

Glad you are enjoying all the beans. The colors and combinations that show up can be quite something. I agree this is much better than TV.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Bluejay77, I got a surprise this year that reminds me of your Blue Aspen. Here's the mother Zona Upchurch Goose, which I grew for the first time this year as part of the distributed inheritance from MI SC R:

Zona Upchurch Goose is very similar to Rose, Ohio Pole, and Melungenon beans, all of which are Appalachian/Native American in origin, have very large fleshy pods, and have flattened & slightly elongated seed in the same color & pattern. The newcomer had "normal-sized" pods and pinto bean-shaped seeds, and its mature pods had thin purple streaks instead of wide diluted pink ones. I think the two pale ones are "reverses" of the purpler ones' pattern.

(Is there a term for that, by the way?? I've seen them called reversed, day-for-night, or inverted.)

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That's what I thought when I first saw your photo of the Zona Upchurch Goose. It reminded me of Ohio Pole, but lighter in color. My Ohio Pole was such a dark purple this year it almost looked black.

Wow ! Your blue bean is just gorgeous. I think it's probably prettier than my Blue Aspen. BTW referring to my post #888. I found my 2014 Blue Aspen seed crop today. It looked just like the bean I found last year, and there were plenty of them. They were in a jar right in front of my nose and I never saw them when I took photos yesterday.

Your lighter bean is an inverse of the color of the other ones. I don't know if there is an actual term for that. Cranberry beans do that a lot too. Caused by the fact there are two genes that control seed coat color expression. Cranberry beans that have a white base color and red speckles sometimes come out looking mostly red with white speckles. If you planted all the red ones the next season you would get a normal proportion again of white with red speckles and red with white.

Your new bean will go through a period of segregation when the genes of some of them will shuffle and you will get some other colors or combinations. Will be interesting to see what you get out of them next time you grow them.
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[sea-kangaroo]

Sorry, should've noted in the caption that those were freshly-shelled seeds in bright noon sun. Tends to bring out the colors! When fully dry and stored they (and Rose and Ohio Pole) look dark black-purple, like Succotash, and the white gets more grey-tan. I think that group of beans is probably pretty much the same, or maybe forked-off regional varieties like what happened with Brandywine tomatoes. Rose is a really good bean, so I'm not surprised things like it have spread all over!

 

[Blue-Jay]

The Goose Cranberry Ladies are up next, and the Pink Fog duo. After that is the Rabbits foot group. Rabbits Foot is a bean I named in late 2011 and never realized what a fitting name that would be for this bean. I had purchased a 2 pound package of Jacob's Cattle beans from Rancho Gordo in California in the autumn of 2011 for stewing. When the beans came I spread them all out on a table as I usually do just to see if there are any odd ones in the batch that don't match. Sure enough I was lucky enough to find three dark seeds with a little white patch at the bottom of the seeds. Planted them next year in 2012, and not realizing what kind of growing season this was going to be only one plant out of the three produced any pods. Only one pod on this plant had produced only one good seed. So in 2013 not wanting to risk the one seed to the out doors enviornment. I planted the bean in a flower pot and grew it in my house that summer in a west facing window. I got about 15 good seeds that looked like the original so planted 10 of them this summer of 2014. I didn't realize the surprise I was going to get from those 10 seeds. 7 segregations, and maybe you could say the products were better than the original.

In 2013 planted a red cranberry bean called Goose Cranberry and the yellowish seed on the left is what I found among the grow out. The bean on the right is as close to the new outcross that I could find, but the yellowish bean would produce a total of 4 combinations.

The white one on the left I am curious enough about to want to grow it again to see what it might produce, and the ratio of colors on the bean on the right I found quite interesting. With most cranberry types the colors are not proportioned exactly like this one.

The last combination I thought was this nice looking yellow gold kidney looking seed. Goose Cranberry is not an extremely productive variety but hopefully these segregations might be.

Pink Fog on the left is a very light pink kidney sized bean that I got from a Joeseph Simcox who calls himself "The Botanical Explorer". He travels the world in search of seeds and plants to bring back to the U.S.A. He can be found on the internet and you can see some of the things he does.
Pink Fog is a semi-runner plant and I found this mottled bean on the right among it's planting this season. Might throw off some interesting segregations. You just never know.

Rabbits Foot on the left this season threw off this black bean on the right that has this tiny spot of white at the ends of most of the seeds. Such a slight amount of white on the tips you could almost miss it.

Then the Rabbit's Foot surprises started coming as pods began to dry and I would crack open a few pods among the Rabbits Foot planting to get a little peak at what was about to come among each varieties plantings. Both of these beans are the same pattern one in dark red and the one on the right in black.

Then the surprises got even better. Both of these beans are patterned about the same. The one on the left is in brown and the one on the right in red.

Another shade of red and one in purple on the right. Rabbits foot is a true bush plant that grows without runners, and I will be planting all of these segregations in the coming 2015 season.

 

[897tgigvib]

Wow Russ, those are beautiful, especially the rabbits foot segregations.

I didn't get as much variety from the chocolate series as you did, but I still got some nice ones.

I'll do a photo shoot of them today.

We got some small rain now again. Every rain drop helps!

I did harvest some beans the past few days. Some are pods that are now drying on plates, such as a Junin pod that sure does look good enough to eat, so much like an over ripe Tendergreen pod. Also got several more Choctaw pods and 2 more Ringwood pods. And the limas that I cut at the roots to dry gave me a bunch. Yes, I will have plenty of limas for a few pots of soup. This was a very good year for the limas! They liked all that hot weather this summer.

Oh! @TheSeedObsesser , the Canellini runner beans now have a lot of pods working on ripening! Sure glad I didn't give up on them.

Right next to those is one of the Dalmatian #1 outcross plants which has 2 beautiful pods on it.

@digitS' your soldier plants each still have 1 pod on them as a bonus late production.

@Bluejay77 the Sandpiper plants are still producing and fattening up the most of all. Ya know, Sandpiper is acting like it has hybrid vigor, it really is. I know, beans aren't known to do the hybrid vigor thing like tomatoes, but Sandpiper sure is acting like it has hybrid vigor. They won the race to the top netting, and then created a regular canopy up there, then they made beans, all season, the heat and drought did not at all phase them, and they are still ripening up more pods than any of the others, this, while my forest clearing garden is now rapidly losing direct sun on it.

Many of the beans i'm now harvesting are going into my "emergency spare mix" which is going to need some sorting, a nice enjoyable thing to do on some snowy or rainy day this winter.