The Little Easy Bean Network - Get New Beans Varieties Nearly Free

[journey11]

Russ, I was really impressed with how productive those Top Crop are. And they're stringless! They'll be back in my garden for sure next year.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hi Journey !

I was always impressed with Topcrop. It's a good one for gardeners to grow. Nice flavor, and productive. I think a lot of the new bean breeding work seems to tend towards straighter pods and a pods that grow all at the same time. Plus beans that develop seed very slowly. All designed for machine harvesting, and growing on big vegetable farms.

There are other good snap bean varieties to grow to if you like something different to look at once in a while and I suppose they have a very subtle little difference in flavor. I grow a few of the older varieties that were new in catalogs back in the 40's, 50's and 60's. I don't get into the new bean varieties. I got plenty of others to keep me busy.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hey Ridgerunner !


Got the Jeminez beans today. They look very nice. Thanks for being part of our bean Network. I noticed your note in the package included the comment that you have lots of Jemnez seed now. You can take some of that extra seed and plant yourself a bunch for snap beans next year and see how you like them for green beans.

Next year I think I'm going to try Oregon Giant, Weaver and maybe Louisiana for snap beans. Going to test out three of them.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I see we have a new gardener in our midst. TheSeedObsesser he mentions outcrossing. Well I had never had trouble with outcrossing in the past. Some of the outcrossed varieties that I had discovered in my gardens back in the 80's I think actually came from outcrossing going on in other peoples gardens.

Beans are self pollinating, but mother nature has left the door open to allow the rules to be broken once in a while. Bumblee bees and honey bees can cross beans to a small percentage. Bean blossoms are contructed in such a way that by the time the blossom has opened it has already self polinated. However sometimes bees with pollen from another vareity on their tongue poke into an unopened blossom and deposit foreign pollen and an outcross will occur.

Some of the outcrossed beans seemed to stablize into a uniform pattern after a while. Some seemed very frustrating to work with and you just can't seem to get the same thing out of them consistenly. So if you get beans like that from outcrosses you might just want to make bean soup out of them and say good ridence. I do think I had some of it going on in my bean patch. There are so many pros and cons on the subject.

Now two years ago I obtained Corbett Refugee from the Arkansas Seed Bank. Corbett Refugee is a selection for disease resistance from Refugee by a fellow name Ralph Corbett. Now I have Refugee also and can use the seed and plants of them as a reference to compare to Corbett which should look just like Refugee since it's a selected strain of Refugee. The Corbett Refugee which I got from The Arkansas Seed Bank is outcrossed like I've never seen a variety outcrossed before. I mean it's really messed up. Last year. I got a purple podded bean growing amongst it that grew a six foot vine and I saved those seeds. I also got seeds that were so much bigger that Corbett Refugee. I did get a few seeds that seemed to really have the genuine look of Refugee and I planted them this year. Perhaps I didn't get an authentic Corbett Refugee from them to start with but a mixed up mess.

This year I'm getting seed that's bigger than Refugee that doesn't quite look right. It's got a base color that has got tiny little patches in it. I've got black seeded beans, and a few that are growing tiny little stubby round purple pods. So when I get all the Corbett Refugee planting all shelled out it will be interesting to see if I get any seed that looks authentically Corbett Refugee.

So it's probably not a bad idea to keep a watch on outcrossing so it doesn't get out of hand. It's probably not a bad idea to become familiar with how your plants of each variety look. See if a variety seems to still be growing plants that look uniform. Pods that seem to be shaped like the you ones have come to know that variety to have. Seed size shape and color that seems to be the same. I would say if you get some outcrosses that just don't want to settle down and act like a uniform variety after about 5 years. Might be a good idea just to make bean soup out of them. You will have to determine with the amount of bee activity you have if the number of new beans popping up isn't getting to a crazy high number.

Anyway my Corbett Refugee I have not offered it to members of SSE and won't give it out to anyone until I'm really satisfied that I got something that seems right.

 

[journey11]

Hi Journey !

I was always impressed with Topcrop. It's a good one for gardeners to grow. Nice flavor, and productive. I think a lot of the new bean breeding work seems to tend towards straighter pods and a pods that grow all at the same time. Plus beans that develop seed very slowly. All designed for machine harvesting, and growing on big vegetable farms.

There are other good snap bean varieties to grow to if you like something different to look at once in a while and I suppose they have a very subtle little difference in flavor. I grow a few of the older varieties that were new in catalogs back in the 40's, 50's and 60's. I don't get into the new bean varieties. I got plenty of others to keep me busy.

Nice seeds formed in the still yet tender pods is one of my favorite things about these heirlooms (that I've tried so far.) So much more nutrition to them too. They don't take a lot of doctoring when you cook them up either. I just toss in a little dehydrated onion and garlic powder. My DH always goes on about how much tastier they are. And you don't have to cook them to death either. They are tender to begin with! My toddler loves to munch on them raw.

I have another variety I have been saving seed from, called Hill Family Greasy, but haven't shared any of those. This being the second year I grew them, I am not sure if they are outcrossed or not, but they aren't coming out to their description. I would think that they had sent me the wrong seeds, but the seeds in the packet DO fit the description. They are a mix of colors and shapes to the seed, some in darker shades, some black, some white. Is that normal? I haven't seen any other beans out there advertised with that kind of variation within a kind. Supposedly they will vary even within a single pod. I have planted a little of each color of seed, but my first harvest of them a couple of years ago had no variety in the colors at all. They are still maturing on the vines for now, so I'm waiting to see what they did this year.

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

I see we have a new gardener in our midst. TheSeedObsesser he mentions outcrossing. Well I had never had trouble with outcrossing in the past. Some of the outcrossed varieties that I had discovered in my gardens back in the 80's I think actually came from outcrossing going on in other peoples gardens.

Beans are self pollinating, but mother nature has left the door open to allow the rules to be broken once in a while. Bumblee bees and honey bees can cross beans to a small percentage. Bean blossoms are contructed in such a way that by the time the blossom has opened it has already self polinated. However sometimes bees with pollen from another vareity on their tongue poke into an unopened blossom and deposit foreign pollen and an outcross will occur.

Some of the outcrossed beans seemed to stablize into a uniform pattern after a while. Some seemed very frustrating to work with and you just can't seem to get the same thing out of them consistenly. So if you get beans like that from outcrosses you might just want to make bean soup out of them and say good ridence. I do think I had some of it going on in my bean patch. There are so many pros and cons on the subject.

Now two years ago I obtained Corbett Refugee from the Arkansas Seed Bank. Corbett Refugee is a selection for disease resistance from Refugee by a fellow name Ralph Corbett. Now I have Refugee also and can use the seed and plants of them as a reference to compare to Corbett which should look just like Refugee since it's a selected strain of Refugee. The Corbett Refugee which I got from The Arkansas Seed Bank is outcrossed like I've never seen a variety outcrossed before. I mean it's really messed up. Last year. I got a purple podded bean growing amongst it that grew a six foot vine and I saved those seeds. I also got seeds that were so much bigger that Corbett Refugee. I did get a few seeds that seemed to really have the genuine look of Refugee and I planted them this year. Perhaps I didn't get an authentic Corbett Refugee from them to start with but a mixed up mess.

This year I'm getting seed that's bigger than Refugee that doesn't quite look right. It's got a base color that has got tiny little patches in it. I've got black seeded beans, and a few that are growing tiny little stubby round purple pods. So when I get all the Corbett Refugee planting all shelled out it will be interesting to see if I get any seed that looks authentically Corbett Refugee.

So it's probably not a bad idea to keep a watch on outcrossing so it doesn't get out of hand. It's probably not a bad idea to become familiar with how your plants of each variety look. See if a variety seems to still be growing plants that look uniform. Pods that seem to be shaped like the you ones have come to know that variety to have. Seed size shape and color that seems to be the same. I would say if you get some outcrosses that just don't want to settle down and act like a uniform variety after about 5 years. Might be a good idea just to make bean soup out of them. You will have to determine with the amount of bee activity you have if the number of new beans popping up isn't getting to a crazy high number.

Anyway my Corbett Refugee I have not offered it to members of SSE and won't give it out to anyone until I'm really satisfied that I got something that seems right.

Thanks for the info O' wise one! Now that I know this my wallet should be half empty by the end of this week! (Not really, I will find some way to control myself.) It's a good thing that we eat a lot of refried beans around here, don't remember the last time we've had bean soup. And journey11, The only bean that I've ever seen marketed are pebble beans. Elegant Beans and Beyond sells them, they they also sell nuna beans. Elegant beans and beyond are the only place I've seen either of them before. The only downside to this is that they are more like bulk suppliers, so you end up with a pound of beans for each variety that you order.

 

[897tgigvib]

Journey, here is the webpage, part of Bill Best's website of Appalachian bean varieties, that has the description of the beans called "Hill Family Greasy".

http://www.heirlooms.org/greasy-beans.html

They are alphabetical and it is about a third of the way scrolled down. What I am really thinking is that beans can have what I call a wild card gene, a D/r, dominant/recessive set of genes that simply do not stabilize, like Apples, Roses, and humans. Not sure how often that wild card gene happens with beans, but it may be about 50% of the time there is a cross pollination.

I'm going to grow the Nova Star and the Powder Star assortments out, probably for a few years, nicely separated as per plant's seeds, and find out if they are doing the Wild Card thing. It can be good in my humble opinion, as long as the assortment variety creates beans that are all used the same way.

 

[journey11]

Thanks, Marshall. That's where I got them from. I just found it odd that they had grown them for 100 years like that, but my first batch would have no variety in them. :/ I am curious to see what this year's batch did.

 

[Smart Red]

We are expecting rain for the next couple of days so I harvested the last five bean varieties. They were so dry that I feared getting wet would have them popping open.
I still have to shell them, but it's a good feeling to know they are safe. I also bagged the sunflower and several radish plants for seed.

 

[897tgigvib]

Howdy Russ, yesterday I went to Bountiful Gardens, these folks:

http://www.bountifulgardens.org/Aboutus.asp

When I was there I talked to Bill Bruneau, the author of books I have read. I asked him about how Beans work when they hybridize. So he, I, and their seed expert there discussed about it. Beans behave just the way Tomatoes and Corn do when they cross according to them. The things that cause confusion though are two things: When Beans cross because of pollinator bees, it is a surprise thing, so that when it is noticed, it is already an F1 plant making F2 seeds. Those F2 seeds are the seeds of the F1 plant, so when a pollinator makes a surprise cross pollination, a person gowing the F1 bean plant does not know the plant is an F1 until differences are noticed. That's what causes the confusion. The other confusion with Beans is that the Bean seeds are conspicuously noticeable. Tomato seeds are small and not conspicuous. A person does not look at Tomato seeds themselves, not much anyway. (myself, I kind of do, but then I'm just that way, even though these days I'd need stronger than reading glasses for it.).

Plants have 2 generation parts per generation. The green plant, and the dormant seed. When the terminology F1 or F2 (filial1 or filial2) is used, each of those refers to the seed and the plant it makes. An F1 seed makes an F1 plant. That F1 plant then makes F2 seeds. Those F2 seeds then make F2 plants. Each of those F2 plants then make F3 seeds. Each of those F3 seeds make F3 plants. And onward with increasing Fgeneration numbers. Just like Tomatoes, and just like Mendel's Peas in the 1850's. Most of all this you already know I'm sure!

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

http://anthro.palomar.edu/mendel/mendel_1.htm

The next website addresses issues that are commonly misunderstood when learning. I think it's pretty cool that this is being studied. When I was young, some teachers simply allowed confusion and continued on into further confusing things. Hopefully these days teachers can and do focus on clearing things up.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4447413?uid=3739920&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102725387643

The next article gets the explanation pretty good but takes some time and effort...

http://www.bio.miami.edu/dana/250/250S11_3.html

=====

What it all really means is that when we discover an "outcross" Bean seed, it is the seed made by an F1 plant, and that F1 plant grew from an F1 seed that we did not even know was an F1 seed. When we discover that outcrossed seed, it is an F2 seed, and hopefully that plant will have made lots of seeds if one of our goals is to have new varieties. F2 seeds make an assortment of genetic combinations. One cross a bee did can create several new related varieties.