2016 Little Easy Bean Network - Gardeners Keeping Heirloom Beans From Extinction

[Blue-Jay]

Yes I believe it's mostly heat that causes spotted beans to become solidly colored. I also believe sometimes it could be soil types but it's mostly heat that does it. The lighter loamy soils with a higher sand content will give you more white and spotting on beans like Jacob's cattle. Wait until I put up Ernie's Big Eye which I grew this year. I'll put up a photo of what I grew this year and the seed that I recieved.

 

[Blue-Jay]

The Big Bean Show - Day #2​

African Premier Grown in 2013


After Growing out African Premier in 2013 I found a some of these beans growing among the variety. I grew these out again in 2014 and got the larger glossy looking bean below in the next photo. After growing this one out again this year I got back about the same looking bean. The original mother bean above has no gloss to it's seed coat.

This bean popped up out of the the bean above in 2014 along with three more. However I grew only this one out this year and got back basically the same looking bean. Glossy with a slight bluish undercolor.

 

[Blue-Jay]

The Big Bean Show - Day #3
​

This is "Amber Pearl" an original bean named and introduced by former Seed Savers Exchange member the late Robert Lobitz of Paynesville, Minnesota. He probably listed this bean in one of the 1990's ediltions of the SSE annual yearbook. The bean is a bush dry bean that grows without runners.

I am way down on my seed stocks of this bean and wanted to keep listing this bean in the SSE yearbook for 2017, but unfortunately only one of my plants survived this year to produce seed. I've also noticed on SSE's online yearbook SSE Heritage Farm has the bean listed as Discontinued.

 

[journey11]

I had one Bluejay plant that matured its pods 3 weeks later than the other seven plants. The pods started out normal green and slowly turned a deep burgundy as they aged, then bleached out completely tan once fully dry. The seed looks the same as the others though.

This year's haul drying down...

 

[Blue-Jay]

@journey11,

Wow ! pretty Blue Jay seeds. Next year in 2017 Blue Jay turns 40. I can't remember if Blue Jays pods do a lot of that turning purple. I think some of them might. I haven't grown Blue Jay in two years. Last year the deer ate everything in my big bean plot. All your seeds drying on paper plates remind me of me. Looks like you got some nice seed. How was your weather during the time the beans were drying? I was lucky here. It's was dry for quite a while. Even when it rained it wasn't much. Two nights ago it got down to 29 degrees. It zapped quite a lot of plants, but some stuff is still ok. Monday it's supposed to be 80 degrees here.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It’s time for my bean show. I got four different numbered beans from Russ last spring, 27, 32, 38, and 39. Photos and comments will follow by groups. It may take a while to get the photos downloaded and the comments done so be patient. I may not get it all done in one session either. I have 24 segregations, it will take a while.

Russ, I plan to grow five of these beans again next year, the 27-4 (Raspberry Ripple), 32A-2 (Miss T), 38-2 (Stinking Creek), 39B-2 (Karachaganak), and 39B-3 (Jas). One lesson I learned this year is that I need to be able to harvest the seeds by plant and know which beans came from which plant. Another is that with these seeds I don’t know when I plant them if they will be bush or pole. What this means is that I won’t plant as many seeds as this year but spread them out more. I should still be able to plant quite a few.

I help back one seed from most of the groups I planted this spring so I could compare the final result to the bean planted. If I have room, I may try planting some of those next year to see if I can get yet another segregation. Some didn’t sprout worth a darn but you never know until you plant them. This stuff can be addicting.

From what I’ve seen this year I expect a lot more segregations out of all of these. I’ve put names on a lot of them. I tried to mostly use names that the color or pattern won’t matter but not always. We’ll see if that becomes a problem with you if people grow out something different and how you’ll keep track of names. I won’t be insulted if some of these names get dropped or they wind up on beans totally different-looking than what I sent you. After what I saw this year I don’t expect many to stabilize looking like what I send you. That becomes your headache. I wish you luck.

Some of these produced a lot of beans. I counted 512 good beans from 32A-2 (Miss T) and that was just one plant. I set an upper limit of 60 for how many of each I sent back to you. For a lot of them I didn’t get that many seeds. Of those I'll hold back a couple in case I want to plant them later and send you the rest.

When I ship the beans, I’ll send four different packages. One each for the 27’s, one for the 32’s, one for the 38’s, and one for the 39’s. Hopefully it will make sense when you see what I send. If you have any questions just ask. I’ll let you know when I mail them, it may be a few more days.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’ll start with my 27’s, the messiest and most confusing. I received 36 beans, all of them a two tone brown. There were slight variations but not enough for me to separate the seeds out when planting them. I planted 18 seeds in two different spots, 14 of them grew so I have 18 in reserve. I’ll end this reserve back to you in case someone want to try to grow them out. They were labeled as bush beans but no, every one grew as a pole, maybe 7’ to 8’ high. All blossoms had at least some pink on them. Some were solid pink, some pink with yellow or pink with white parts. I was not able to separate out the plants individually so I harvested them all together. That’s a big reason they are so messy.

I cooked one of them, it was stringless and made a good-tasting green bean. I don’t have as clue which plant it came from though. Most of the pods were around 5” long and had maybe 4 to 5 beans per pod. The pods were all solid green, no stripes.

While the beans I planted were brown, the beans I harvested were more red than brown. They may not look like it in the photos but if you look at the seeds in the sun the red clearly comes through. Several of these have been drying for over two months and they are still red but I suspect they may turn more of a brown as they age. Still, I’m calling them red.

I tried dividing the beans into different groups based on color and pattern but failed. There is quite a bit of variation in colors and shades but it’s just not distinct enough for me to be able to separate them out. There were always some that could go into different groups. I wound up with four groups.

27 - #1 is the solid beans, the ones I could not detect any pattern on. A lot of them are plum colored, kind of a purplish, but there are some darker or lighter. I’ll mail you 60 seeds.

27 - #2 is what I’m describing as light stripes. Some have a white background, some with more pink or tan backgrounds. Some top colors are more of a pink, some darker red. I’ll mail you 60 seeds.

27 - #3 is what I’m calling dark speckled. They are a darker red with lighter flecks instead of the striped pattern I saw on the others. I’m not totally convinced they are a different bean, they may just be a variation of some of the others, but they suggested to me they might stand on their own. I only had a few of these. I’ll mail you 18 seeds.


27 - #4 is what I’m calling dark stripes. These have tan or purplish backgrounds and darker top colors. On a lot I was kind of arbitrary whether they went into the light (#2) or this dark pile. If I had been able to harvest them by plant I think I’d have a lot more separations, but I couldn’t. I’ll mail you 60 seeds.

And a shot of all with the bean I originally planted in the middle.

The ones I plan to plant next year from this group are some of the #4, the dark striped. As with all I grew I don’t have much confidence they have finished segregating. By the time I plant them next year they may be more brown than red, we’ll see. I’ll still call this one Raspberry Ripple. I’m not going to name any of the other three, I’m just too confused and I think there are still a lot of variations in them.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I had a lot of trouble with sprouting my 32As, I only harvested two plants. Four grew but only two lived and produced. The seed I planted was a deep glossy black and kind of a blocky shape. I mean a pure black, a beautiful seed. One plant was a bush as it was supposed to be. The other was a pole.

The 32A 1 bush bean looks black in the photo but it’s not. It’s a deep bluish purple if you look at it in natural light. It may turn black as it ages but I don’t think so. It had a solid green pod. The flower was a solid lavender, fuschia, dark pink, whatever you want to call it. I’ll mail you 28 seeds. I’ll call this one “Highlight”. No special reason, it just seems appropriate.

The 32A=2 pole bean was special. It was a string bean. I tried stringing it and cooking it but did not get all the string off. That’s the only one I tried, I’m not sure how well it will string. I’ll mail you 60 seeds. The pod was a solid green maybe 5” long with four seed per pod. The blossom had a Lavender banner with yellow wings and keel. You can see some variation in the seeds even though they came off of the same plant. I have no reason to believe this one has finished segregation, seeing how different it is from the seed I planted. I plan to call this one Miss T after my granddaughter’s screen/social media nickname if I can get something to stabilize. These beans are brown with white patterns.

All these beans came off of one pole vine. It quickly overwhelmed my 5’ trellis. I counted 512 seeds off of one plant, that’s after I sorted through them and got rid of all I did not think would grow.

To compare with what I planted.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The 32B seeds I planted were two-tone brown and black. They were supposed to be bush and they were. I planted 31 seeds and got 11 plants. Nine had pink blossoms and 2 had white. I’ll do the pink-blossomed ones now.


I sorted the 32 B pink-blossomed ones into 5 groups. All the plants were bush and all the blossoms were pink. Pods were all solid.

The 32B – 1 are reddish or pink patterned beans. They are not really all that pretty to me so I’ll call them Cock ‘n Bull and return them to you. The color is fine it’s just that the beans are wrinkled, not full. The plant may not have been real healthy. Maybe with that name someone will want to grow them. I’ll mail you 34 seeds.

The 32B – 2 are a solid ivory color. I’m going to call them Aksai. Aksai is a town I worked in when I was in Kazakhstan. There was a deposit of white clay used for making porcelain that the town was named after. I don’t know that these beans will breed true but it seems a good name. If they don’t breed true I’m the only one that knows what the name means anyway so what difference will it make. I’ll mail you 10 seeds.

The 32B – 3 are a tan/brown patterned bean. I think it’s probably two different beans since some are a lot darker than others but maybe that’s natural variation. I’ll call these Davis Creek. My parents were both baptized in a pool in Davis Creek, full emersion. When that pool wasn’t being used for baptizing you could get some pretty nice redeye perch out of it. I’ll mail you 44 seeds.

The 32B – 4 are a purplish/brown and tan bean. A “holler” is a narrow valley in between two pretty steep ridges back in ridge country. Mom was raised in Hopper Holler so that’s what I’ll call this one, Hopper Holler. I’ll mail you 60 seeds.

I’m torn on the 32B – 5. They are pretty similar to the Hopper Holler but more pink and less purple so I’ll separate them and call them Long Hollow. That’s the name of a popular boat dock near where I was raised. I guess since it was a business it was too high-falluting to be a holler so I’ll call it a hollow. I’ll mail you 60 seeds.

The composite shot with the beans I planted.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’ll do the white-blossomed 32B seeds here. They are tagged 32B-6 and not named. The pods were solid green. The seeds are a two toned brown and tan. I plan on sending all these back to you without naming them. These were from two separate plants. The differences in the brown makes me think there are two different beans here but the differences are kind of subtle. I’ll mail you 58 seeds.