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

[Blue-Jay]

@Bluejay77
Found the packets. It does, in fact, say "Solwezi (color variation or off type?).

Thanks for the verification. I checked the African seed still here that didn't get grown this year and only found the Solwezi sample. The Solwezi Variant was gone.

 

[Hal]

@marshallsmyth I'm posting the link to a photo of my bean and corn patch on Flickr so I don't have to upload them all here as it will be ongoing and photo heavy. This is my current offsite garden you can see three beds of beans there are another two beds planted yet to germinate and possible another 2-4 to be planted depending on rainfall. I also have my beans at home as well which range from carrying pods to just climbing or starting to get flower buds.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/plant-nerd/15385136378/

 

[Smart Red]

@Hal, I like your raised bed gardening style. It looks to be quite a large area, however, and I'm not prone to keeping all that land weeded anymore.

I love the flowers on your desert peas! It would be so much fun to be able to spend the summers in the northern hemisphere and the winters in the southern hemisphere. I suppose it would be a tad cheaper to invest in some sort of greenhouse and just stay home, but if I could, I think I just might.

 

[Hal]

@Hal, I like your raised bed gardening style. It looks to be quite a large area, however, and I'm not prone to keeping all that land weeded anymore.

I love the flowers on your desert peas! It would be so much fun to be able to spend the summers in the northern hemisphere and the winters in the southern hemisphere. I suppose it would be a tad cheaper to invest in some sort of greenhouse and just stay home, but if I could, I think I just might.

I won't lie the beds were actually already there so I used them rather than start from scratch, I invested in a trapezoidal hoe and it is magnificent I can weed the rows in minutes without harming my back
Thank you the desert peas are difficult but so rewarding when they flower.

 

[sea-kangaroo]

@Hal, great photos, and a lovely succulent collection! They look fantastic all blooming in the greenhouse.

 

[flowerweaver]

@Hal what a great garden! We just got a wheeled hoe/cultivator last year, but some of our new fields are a bit rocky yet. Nice succulents, too. I once had a very large caudiciform succulent collection that took a hit during an unexpected freeze. Once I get a bigger greenhouse I'll collect them again.

 

[flowerweaver]

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?

Seed-O and Pulse, I just happened to be photographing cowpeas today, so here's a photo for comparison of the Torkuviahe you sent me and the Haricot Rouge du Burkina Faso I grew this year (also from Baker Creek). To my eye the T is slightly larger and a more purplish-red where the HR is smaller and closer to red. So far I've found the Haricot Rouge to be early, prolific, and easy to shell.

I'm also growing Corrientes which looks like it will be similar, but nothing is ready for harvest yet.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Love to say "yes" but I don't think I have. The closest thing I can think of was a few years ago, when I was wandering around the dried bean section at a Japanese supermarket. I found these small bags of black soybean that were ENORMOUS (we're talking nickel to quarter size!) And bought one to try and plant. However when I pulled the seed coats of a few sacrifices to check the color of the insides (with a black skin you can't really guess from the outside, and green innards is just as common (if not more common) in black soybeans in Asia as yellow.) I realized WHY they were so big. I doubt they were polyploidy, but it appeared as if someone had done some sort of genetic jiggery-pokery to make them poly-embryonic, or more accurately poly cotyledonous. Their insides were a mess, with four of five six or more cotyledons inside, all folded over on each other and the embryo radicle so twisted in most cases its tip was actually pointing back INTO the seed. I saw quickly that they were unlikely to grow well (and I was right, few even made sprouts and those were malformed and died before getting their first true leaves.) Though it does make me wonder how the GROWERS got seeds (maybe every now and again there is a seed that is sufficiently normal as to make it as a viable plant and they are productive enough to allow the growers to still make a profit.)

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?

Hold that though I just remembered a tetraploid legume.....I think.

Some time ago, on my other forum I mentioned something that had always mystified me, why around me none of the American Groundnut (Apios americana) plants made pods or seeds, though they flowered profusely (I never saw an Apios pod until I was in college). Someone mentioned that part of the problem is that a lot of Apios plants are actually triploid (which makes the tubers bigger) and those ones are sterile. As far as I know, the commonest way to get a triploid plant is to cross a tetraploid with a diploid. So while I have never seen one, I imagine that somewhere, out there, a tetraploid Apios exists.

 

[897tgigvib]

30 more cans of beans to sort. Might be done today doing this.

What I'm doing, since I have so many outcross varieties, is now sorting each into envelopes labelled, described, and sort of numbered the way @Bluejay77 does it. (Hope I'm getting it right.)

So for example, the Nippersink outcross is sorted into envelopes like this: (Let me see if I can do this on a post here.)

The packet I received from Russ, (which still has 10 seeds in it), says on it;

Nippersink
From Molasses Face in 2013
(Bush/Dry)

I made 3 envelopes for these because each of the 3 plants made different looking beans.

First envelope is marked thus:

Nippersink (from molasses face 2013)
3 good plants each made beautiful segregations. All are 4' 1/2 runners which climb well.

#1 White/Black
sharp contrasty seeds.
the black is glossy, the white parts are satiny.
Super pretty, productive
early producer, then finishes

The second envelope is marked thus:

Nippersink (from molasses face 2013)

#2 two shades of orange
deeply colored pinto
1/2 runner, very productive, early
produced then finished

The third envelope is marked thus:

Nippersink (from molasses face 2013)

#3 (2014) Nice good sized orange beans, with small brown hilum ring.
Looks like chile to me.
A bit later than the other two.
Plant produced until season end.

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After the # sign marking the numbered segregation, I like to put in 2014, meaning that this is the year this segregation happened in my garden. BUT I NOW NOTICE THAT MY POOR OLE NEANDERTHAL BRAIN GETS TIRED, LOL, AND SOMETIMES I FORGET TO WRITE (2014) AFTER THE # SIGN.

These are the envelopes from which mostly I'll be getting seeds from to send to Russ. Each of these envelopes has from as few as 3 or 4 seeds, up to so many I could barely fold the envelope in half. I usually tried to make sure these envelopes have the best seeds of each kind. Those which didn't pass my quick inspection got put back into the can, such as small for the kind or slightly wrinkled. Also, a few had so many that I put a handful back in the can. (Always try to make sure I have more than one stash of each kind.) Also, I have, always have, a few cans of emergency spare mixed beans. As the season progressed harvesting, a few nice looking but smaller or slightly wrinkled seeds go into that.

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Some of the envelopes are also written on the back side where I added notes and thoughts about that kind.

 

[897tgigvib]

@Pulsegleaner I found a pdf technical website that talks about inducing tetraploids in vulgaris using colchicine, a chemical that messes with chromosomes and genes.

https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/cytologia1929/41/1/41_1_105/_pdf