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

[Blue-Jay]

Oh Bay,

No need to be hard on yourself. It was not your fault the Bambarra beans didn't produce seed for you. It's just one of those things. Next year you can grow some beans more common to the U.S.A. I'll bet that you will have a great time of it in 2015.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Oh Bay,

No need to be hard on yourself. It was not your fault the Bambarra beans didn't produce seed for you. It's just one of those things. Next year you can grow some beans more common to the U.S.A. I'll bet that you will have a great time of it in 2015.

Glad you can take that view, it makes me much less guilty about following through with the "Final Plan" vis a vis the Mottled Grey beans (I really don't like that name, since I'm nominally Jewish and "final plan" sounds a lot like "final solution" but I can't think of a better one. "Last Gasp", and "Last Chance" sound so depressing.)

Basically the plan is as follows; I have, at this point bought every package of Mottled Grey Beans Ricter's had left so as to have the widest starting gene base I can (that's about 350-400 beans). Over the next three years I'm going to plant all of them.

The real problem with Mottled Grey (besides that it hates heat, and the age of the seed means that only 50-60% even germinate at this point) is that it is SUPER long season. Most of the plants didn't even get their first flowers until the beginning of October (i.e. about two or three weeks before the frost came) So my plan is to make an arbitrary cutoff date of September 1st. Any plants that make at least one mature pod by then will be kept in the pool, any that don't will be culled (in other words, while I do plant most of my beans in pots, I did not take the pots indoors to give the plants more time, and I have no intention of doing so later on). Based on my previous worth this year, that will mean the appx. 2-5% of the beans will "make the cut". Once I have finished, I will put my efforts into increasing the amounts of "usable" beans, and eventually, hopefully have enough I can share them around with anyone else who wants them.

I realize that, objectively this isn't exactly the most moral or ethical way to go about it. Ethically I should probably share out the base seed I bought, to keep the diversity up and speed up the job (some people here probably have enough property they could plant 350 beans all in a single year). Actually, given the low odds, the ethical thing would be to give away ALL of the starter (including what I actually got from my own plant this previous season) to someone who lived in a more favorable climate. It is possible that those members like Baymule and Flowerweaver who live in places where it is still well above freezing all winter could meet the beans ridiculous season needs by planting it in the late summer to early fall, growing it over the winter and spring and get beans in the summer, or actually leave them in the ground for an entire year, though I doubt it (they really do seem to need near winter day length to set flowers, so I'm not sure that they'd make seeds in the spring. And given how they suffered under the heat of our unusually cold summer up here, I have a nagging suspicion southern summer would annihilate them.) But I am too stubborn to give up without trying and, to be wholly honest, too selfish to give it all away and chalk up the money I paid for them as another payment on the infinite debt I owe to the common good and the experience as a lesson in the Law of True and Correct Selflessness i.e "True selflessness in its pure and correct form is not self denial or self deferment, but utter self-destruction."

So that is how it stands

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

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

Good to here! Those failed for me this year, they didn't do much growing and couldn't take the strong winds blowing across from the cornfield. How are the adzukis/sunset runner beans doing?

 

[897tgigvib]

Sunset Runners did fine. Took awhile though. Sure have pretty flowers salmon colored.

The Adzukis did ok enough. Most of the seeds I got are a bit smaller than the seeds planted. They grew as small bush for me. They didn't fail in the heat, but it did slow them down.

 

[Blue-Jay]

My next family of photos is of the Billingsate's. I think this was probably one of the more interesting and exciting bean gardening discoveries for me this year outside of the Rabbit's foot group. Billingsgate that came out of Magpie in 2013 produced 8 segregations out of 10 seeds planted. Most of the color seperation margins on most but not all of this group of seeds is in a diagonal pattern similar to Magpie.

The bean on the left I think is very much like the Billingsgate seed I discovered in 2013. The seed is nearly identical in color and pattern, but shorter and plumper. I haven't quite yet decided which of the group of seeds looks most like the original Billingsgate. The bean on the right is patterned the same with the margin of color between dark and white being displayed accross the seed in a diagonal. The red is also mottled with a pinkish tan. All my photos are taken with the zoom level on my camera set the same. So any size differences in each of the seed groups is real for comparison to each other.

Possibly the seed on the left which is longer that the first set on the left might be more like the original Billingsgate. Seed on the right is a different shade of red and does not display as strong of a mottling with a third color as most of the other seed groups do.

The seed on the left is very pretty with small spotting in purple. Very similar to a Jacob's Cattle pattern. The seed on the right is a slight different shade of purple. Shorter in length, larger and some what flattened. No mottling of a third color is present.

On the left a longer seed again like Mappie, Billingsgate. Dark purple in color and also very little mottling of a third color. The original Billingsgate and Magpie was fairly strong in the seeds mottling with a light tan. The seed on the right with it's red coloring is mottled but not displayed in a diagonal across the seed. Somewhat similar to Dalmatian, and Money.

This seed is slender like Billingsgate, and Magpie however solid red and mottled with a bit of pink similar to a red cranberry type.

 

[aftermidnight]

I think I just learned how to tag, see if works .
@Bluejay77
Earlier I mentioned when I grew your Comtesse de Chambord BN226 I had one that ended up a vining bush. As soon as I harvested seed from this one plant I planted 3 seeds, when these grew 2 stayed as bush types with green pods, the third ended up a vining bush but this time the pod color was mottled not just plain green. I had to finish off the tub where they were planted in the greenhouse, I ran out of warm weather . The seed is still white on both, but on the vining bush you can make out faint veins in the seed coat and maybe it's a smidgen bigger, whereas the seed coat from the non-vining shows no sign of veins. I'll grow a few of mottled pods next year,see what happens.

Annette

 

[journey11]

My next family of photos is of the Billingsate's. I think this was probably one of the more interesting and exciting bean gardening discoveries for me this year outside of the Rabbit's foot group. Billingsgate that came out of Magpie in 2013 produced 8 segregations out of 10 seeds planted. Most of the color seperation margins on most but not all of this group of seeds is in a diagonal pattern similar to Magpie.

View attachment 5144
The bean on the left I think is very much like the Billingsgate seed I discovered in 2013. The seed is nearly identical in color and pattern, but shorter and plumper. I haven't quite yet decided which of the group of seeds looks most like the original Billingsgate. The bean on the right is patterned the same with the margin of color between dark and white being displayed accross the seed in a diagonal. The red is also mottled with a pinkish tan. All my photos are taken with the zoom level on my camera set the same. So any size differences in each of the seed groups is real for comparison to each other.

View attachment 5145
Possibly the seed on the left which is longer that the first set on the left might be more like the original Billingsgate. Seed on the right is a different shade of red and does not display as strong of a mottling with a third color as most of the other seed groups do.


View attachment 5146
The seed on the left is very pretty with small spotting in purple. Very similar to a Jacob's Cattle pattern. The seed on the right is a slight different shade of purple. Shorter in length, larger and some what flattened. No mottling of a third color is present.


View attachment 5147
On the left a longer seed again like Mappie, Billingsgate. Dark purple in color and also very little mottling of a third color. The original Billingsgate and Magpie was fairly strong in the seeds mottling with a light tan. The seed on the right with it's red coloring is mottled but not displayed in a diagonal across the seed. Somewhat similar to Dalmatian, and Money.

View attachment 5149
This seed is slender like Billingsgate, and Magpie however solid red and mottled with a bit of pink similar to a red cranberry type.

Saved the best for last. Billingsgate was particularly interesting.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I think I just learned how to tag, see if works .
@Bluejay77
Earlier I mentioned when I grew your Comtesse de Chambord BN226 I had one that ended up a vining bush. As soon as I harvested seed from this one plant I planted 3 seeds, when these grew 2 stayed as bush types with green pods, the third ended up a vining bush but this time the pod color was mottled not just plain green. I had to finish off the tub where they were planted in the greenhouse, I ran out of warm weather . The seed is still white on both, but on the vining bush you can make out faint veins in the seed coat and maybe it's a smidgen bigger, whereas the seed coat from the non-vining shows no sign of veins. I'll grow a few of mottled pods next year,see what happens.

Annette

That's interesting. I must say I think I was expecting something different to come out of the one with the runners on it. Anyway I think I like Comtesse de Chambord BN226 to stay just the way it is.

 

[Hal]

I've been out of the picture lately due to the lack of a computer, I manage to get on and sure enough there are a billion amazing photographs to catch up on.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I've been out of the picture lately due to the lack of a computer, I manage to get on and sure enough there are a billion amazing photographs to catch up on.

Hi Hal,

Glad you got your computer troubles taken care of. How's your gardening season going? You must be getting close to getting some new seed from some of the plants you have been growing since September. Maybe you can put up some photos of any interesting seed you find in your grow outs while our gardens are in their long winters rest. Well my garden takes a long winters rest, but some of our other gardeners like Baymule who live in a southern U.S. climate will be at it again relatively soon.