Mottled Grey Bean Grow out, 2015 growing season (Year 2)

[Pulsegleaner]

Hi all

As I sort of promised. This is the first of what I hope will be an annual series of threads over the next three to four years keeping record of my progress towards my goal of trying to adapt the Ugandan Mottled Grey Bean (from Richter's Seed Zoo) to a more northerly climate and a lesser day length. I have marked this as Year 2 since technically last year's essays were year one, since I DID get a plant to make mature seed. But one plant out of 40-50 starter seed making it is not really enough to be worth making a retroactive thread, especially when that one only made 6 seeds (4 if you don't count the second pod worth, which are a bit immature)

As per the set out plan, this years seed was all seed bearing the mottled seed coat trait (sort of like the Pebblestone pattern, but a bit darker) and long slender seed shape. Originally I had planned to plant ALL mottled seeds this year, but given how many slender there were, and the fact I only can devote one bean pot to this experiment per year (need room for the other beans and such after all). I decided the other shapes would probably be swamped out anyway (there were maybe 15 or so seeds of the other shapes in total, versus about 135 slender) and it would be better to hold them until year 4 (year three is for the solid black seeds) when I will be down to the progeny to that date and a smattering of off types (black with brown speckles, brown, red, tan with brown streaks etc.) and will have a lot more room*.

appx 135 beans were planted in the pot (I know that sounds like a ridiculous amount for one small pot but given that I KNOW these beans will suffer heavy losses at each stage, 135 now probably works out to 20 or so by the time they have a few leaves.

Germination was around 50-60% as is normal for this seed (the Richter's stuff from Africa is really, really old, and showing it) five seeds proved to be hard seeds, and were removed (whether they get nicked an returned to the pot or simply held as backup for year 4 depends on how things go with the rest) Of those appx 65-75 seedlings, 30 or so seem to be developing in an acceptable manner

Whether the others became malformed due to age or due to planting errors (the seeds are pretty symmetrical, so I probably planted quite a few upside down) is hard to tell at this point.

So far progress seems acceptable. In fact the pot is probably ready to be brought out and placed on it's pedestal (one of the few advantages of a bean that may still be Andes adapted is that it tends to be OK with cool weather. It's HEAT it hates. I want to get them out while they are still smallish, so they don't get too leggy indoors (I lost a lot that way last year, the wind basically snapped the whole first planting. )

Updates as they come.

* This may mean there will be a surge in yield in year 4 since the producing one from last year seems to be a short fat seeded one.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

4/17

They MG's have now been outside for almost a week, and seem to have taken to it well

Interestingly, despite being visually identical of seed, there still seem to be at least two morphologically distinct types in the pot; the taller seedlings are universally yellower and paler than the shorter ones (they were all under the same light, so I can't believe they are etiolated and the short ones aren't.

The indoor space that the MG were in now has another pot, with what is left of my own supply of Fort Portal Violet.I almost wouldn't have bothered with those (enough people got seed for that from me and managed to get crops of their own off that I no longer have to worry about mine being the only source, and its not like I NEED three or four pots of beans. But in mine there seemed to be at least one plant that actually was different (despite being called Fort Portal Mixed when I got it, every plant up until now has been more or less identical to every other one) and I felt that that deserved to be propagated to sharable levels as well (unfortunately, all of my FPV seeds which had been separated by individual plant (actually, individual pod) got mixed up when I dropped the box, so making sure I planted the "right" one meant planting ALL of them (as opposed to one seed from each pod.

I also took out the one FP seed I had left from the ORIGINAL packet and put that in a peat pot of it's own, to be added later. At least I THINK I planted that one, it's a lot darker than the current stuff I grew (a lot of the packet stuff was, originally) so I may have planted some other random dark skinned slender bean. Guess I'll find out when it sprouts and the sun shines on it for a while (FPV is the only bean I have that develops that extremely deep purple mottling on the cotyledons when they being to photosynthesize, so if that seedling has it, it more or less HAS to be FPV.)

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Plants progressing well, despite cold weather. That's one of the FEW advantages of growing a type of bean that seems to be Andean in it's requirements; so long as it isn't actually freezing, cold doesn't bother it.

By now the shorter darker plants seem to have sort of caught up with the taller lighter ones. That probably means the darker ones are more cold loving than the pale ones. I suppose that means that the pale ones will have the advantage over the year as things warm up (on the assumption that a plant that likes cold less likes warmth more.

The FPV are also out there now, and actually provide a good contrast to the MG. FPV is also from Fort Portal (as you can probably guess from the name) but is a much more warmth friendly bean. It can take cold, but it doesn't really thrive on it. So it's sort of in stasis now, the beans are alive but are not really putting much growth on (a few of them are still more or less fully jacketed, and have been for almost a week)

The remaining packet FPV alas proved non viable, and rotted. Have not really decided if that means that I will plant some other common beans (the funny looking Chinese one also proved non viable, as did the two black limas. The Red lima was a hard seed, so I haven't yet decided if I scarify it and try again or put it back in the box for another year) or be content with the two pots I have now. Somewhere in my bean box, there is an off type white seed that showed up in my packet of Hashuli that I was planning to play around with, but I have not made up my mind one way or the other (the problem is that with no "soldier" pattern, that bean looks just like several others in the box, so if want to plant it I really have to plant ALL white beans in there and have five or six extra plants (instead of one) ANY of which could be the Hashuli, and no real way of telling which. I seem to recall that Hashuli has a paler version of FPV's cot mottling (pale pink, instead of deep purple) , which might help with identification, but since I can't guarantee that that seed IS hashuli, I have no idea if I could count on that either.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

UPDATE

There may possibly be a bit of a problem now. The beans haven't actually grown all that much since the last time I posted. That doesn't really worry me much. Until the last few days (when temps have soared) it's actually been extremely cold here, and I think it quite possible that the beans simply went into stasis until it got warmer.

What does worry me a little concerns the taller, paler beans. Recently, they seem to have gotten even more pale, as in looking a little bleached. I tend to assume that, as it isn't universal to the pot, it can't be some sort of nutrient deficiency (all of the beans are in the same soil, so whatever nutrients are in there are presumably available equally to all. So I'm beginning to worry that, on top of not liking a lot of heat, some of the beans also don't like a lot of light , that they can't actually take full sun. On it's own that would be no big deal. In fact, given how little full sun I actually have on my property, a bean that actually LIKED shade would be a godsend. My problem of course is that there are some that are doing this and some that are not, so if that is true it means I have shade lovers and sun lovers IN THE SAME POT (and which are now too deeply entwined of root to consider trying to separate them). If that is the case, no matter what I do, one or the other will suffer. Normally, I'd simply shrug and say c'est la vie ; at least I have the dark ones (there are more of them, so if I choose, I'd end up choosing for their benefit.) But given the extremely long odds I know I have getting each of these plants to make anything in time, I'm loath to let any of them go, lest it turn out that that kind is the one that would have produced and the other one isn't.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Not much of an update vis a vis the MG. By now the two sorts are more or less indistinguishable (it turns out the paler ones are just quicker to deplete their first leaves, that's why they got paler. The problem is that none of them seem to be doing much. I'm not sure they have actually grown at all since last time I updated. In contrast the FPV have not only started vining, they already have their first flower buds. I haven't given up total hope on the MG yet, but it may well be that any and all of the MG's that can actually grow in our shorter season are in the parts that have yet to be planted, and this year will be a total washout.

 

[Hal]

I'll keep my fingers crossed that you manage to get seed return this season, hopefully some of those planted are the ones that might set seed for you.
I'm glad I am not the only one trying to adapt equatorial beans to other latitudes there are some great traits and nice seed coats amongst them.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Thanks for the support. And Glad to know caring about how they look is OK. I was beginning to feel a little guilty I wasn't doing the same sort of adaptation to the Voatavu bean from Madagascar Richter's still has. (still may in the future, but can't do both at the same time). Theoretically it's probably just as rare and in need of salvation. But MG has that nice mottled seed color, while Voatavu is a rather uninteresting flat white.

 

[Hal]

Thanks for the support. And Glad to know caring about how they look is OK. I was beginning to feel a little guilty I wasn't doing the same sort of adaptation to the Voatavu bean from Madagascar Richter's still has. (still may in the future, but can't do both at the same time). Theoretically it's probably just as rare and in need of salvation. But MG has that nice mottled seed color, while Voatavu is a rather uninteresting flat white.

To be honest I'd have made the same choice if I had to choose between the two, flat white is my least favorite seed coat color.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Well I suppose that depends on what the "ordinary" color is. I have a few white skinned lentils and horse gram seeds lying around I actually value quite highly, simply because actual true white (as opposed to pale to medium tan) is actually quite rare. And if you are working with some of the lesser bred legumes, like Lablab and Grasspea, white is actually your friend if you are growing them for food; it usually means less of the bad tasting/toxic compounds There is a reason why nearly all of the modern commercial strains of pea are white of coat, and pretty much all Lablab beans designed to be eaten mature are (the speckled stuff I pull out in my attempts to breed a bicolored flowered one are actually considered a flaw to be rouged out, and lower the perceived crop quality.)

Also the best apple I ever ate had white skin (well extremely pale green that became pale cream as they got overripe, but that's probably about as close to white as apples can get.)

 

[Hal]

Well I suppose that depends on what the "ordinary" color is. I have a few white skinned lentils and horse gram seeds lying around I actually value quite highly, simply because actual true white (as opposed to pale to medium tan) is actually quite rare. And if you are working with some of the lesser bred legumes, like Lablab and Grasspea, white is actually your friend if you are growing them for food; it usually means less of the bad tasting/toxic compounds There is a reason why nearly all of the modern commercial strains of pea are white of coat, and pretty much all Lablab beans designed to be eaten mature are (the speckled stuff I pull out in my attempts to breed a bicolored flowered one are actually considered a flaw to be rouged out, and lower the perceived crop quality.)

Also the best apple I ever ate had white skin (well extremely pale green that became pale cream as they got overripe, but that's probably about as close to white as apples can get.)

I consider white the dull common color for Phaseolus vulgaris as commercial breeding work is geared towards such and this then flows over into the home gardener/small farmer seed markets leading to a one size fits all approach, at least where I am. There are some stunning beans circulating around Africa, I wish I had the means to do some traveling to collect them.