2021 Little Easy Bean Network - Bean Lovers Come Discover Something New !

[flowerbug]

Thanks for the welcome! I'll give the bean pods a try! I have 4 10 gallon tubs in my basement which don't even come close to denting my food and garden scraps but are still fun

i keep ten buckets now, i've gone as high as seventeen but that was taking up way too much space here in my room so i backed down to where it worked out better again, plus Mom is not cooking so much for other people so with ten i can still keep up with the scraps. during canning season i can not ever keep up with all the extra from that - i just bury that stuff in a garden.

 

[jbosmith]

i keep ten buckets now, i've gone as high as seventeen but that was taking up way too much space here in my room so i backed down to where it worked out better again, plus Mom is not cooking so much for other people so with ten i can still keep up with the scraps. during canning season i can not ever keep up with all the extra from that - i just bury that stuff in a garden.

Well I chopped up some cowpea pods tonight and added a layer to the tops of two of my bins. I haven't mixed them in yet as they're pretty full of apple goop (food mill leftovers) and that seemed like a recipe for heating up the bins but they can at least start getting wet and moldy. I also recently added some bean leaves from vines that were getting pulled. Thanks for all the info!

 

[flowerbug]

Well I chopped up some cowpea pods tonight and added a layer to the tops of two of my bins. I haven't mixed them in yet as they're pretty full of apple goop (food mill leftovers) and that seemed like a recipe for heating up the bins but they can at least start getting wet and moldy. I also recently added some bean leaves from vines that were getting pulled. Thanks for all the info!

i don't do things normally with worms, for more info check out:

Worms | Anthive

Worms, worm keeping, food scrap prep and breakdown...

www.anthive.com

Potatoes | Anthive

Funny things about potato peels...

www.anthive.com

 

[flowerbug]

i finished up one bag of the painted pony beans (and other misc beans in there too, but mostly painted pony) this morning. i tossed a large percentage of beans/pods without even having to open them as they were empty or moldy. in comparison to the bags of Yellow Eye i probably got about 10% return. the worm bins will be happy with all the rejects i tossed in the bucket for them.

i then sorted things out a bit because i had various beans that had come about from the plantings of the Domino Children and Monster Children beans and also i had planted some Monster beans too so the results of those were in the mix.

i think my hands need a break to rest up today for a while before i move on to shelling more beans. the question is do i want to do box tops or try another bag o' beans to see what is in there. the two bags of beans are mostly Purple Dove but there might be other beans mixed in with them. the box tops i have left are Lima beans and others from the bulk patches, likely mixed with some other beans too since i was often checking all the patches to see what was left and needing to be picked right before it rained again. no certain idea as to the quality of any of these, but i think most of the Purple Dove beans should be ok since i was picking them when it was dry out and had been dry enough for long enough. the Red Ryder beans i suspect will have more issues. i don't know if i have any Huey or Yellow Eye beans left to shell out. if there are there's not much.

so things are winding down here, a few more weeks of odds and ends, some shelling for the next week or so, pick a few pods here or there as they dry out enough. so i'll be starting in on the final sorting a lot earlier this year, but i still will leave them dry out for a few more weeks before i do that or i'll have to go through them all again anyways. rushing them won't accomplish anything as if i do the final sort and put them into the storage containers too early they'll have a chance of getting moldy. i'm not going to take chances with that after going through all the work of shelling them and sorting to begin with. nope... they can dry for a while longer first.

it's a rainy and humid day here so i've turned on the AC to get the humidity down. it rained most of yesterday and last night (off and on but not enough to cause any issues with the water running off).

 

[jbosmith]

Potatoes | Anthive

Funny things about potato peels...

www.anthive.com

I love this one, especially, because I have bins full of carrot peels that won't break down at the moment. I kinda knew this would happen but didn't think about it and now I don't care quite enough to do anything about it. I also have a rather blanched out looking head of lettuce trying to regrow in one bin.

 

[jbosmith]

How much do you folks pay attention to isolation distances when you're saving beans for replanting or sharing with the bean network? I used to pay very little attention but we have a lot of bumble bees and I started ending up with more and more out crosses. Now I think I've gone too far in the other direction and don't grow varieties that I'm saving anywhere near each other. I'm guessing there's a happy medium

 

[flowerbug]

How much do you folks pay attention to isolation distances when you're saving beans for replanting or sharing with the bean network? I used to pay very little attention but we have a lot of bumble bees and I started ending up with more and more out crosses. Now I think I've gone too far in the other direction and don't grow varieties that I'm saving anywhere near each other. I'm guessing there's a happy medium

i don't have enough space to use that much distance. i don't mind nature doing what it does and look forwards to seeing new crosses when the appear.

in my first part of the bag of Purple Dove shelling last night i didn't find a single out cross. the journey continues...

 

[Blue-Jay]

How much do you folks pay attention to isolation distances when you're saving beans for replanting or sharing with the bean network? I used to pay very little attention but we have a lot of bumble bees and I started ending up with more and more out crosses. Now I think I've gone too far in the other direction and don't grow varieties that I'm saving anywhere near each other. I'm guessing there's a happy medium

As you had mentioned it all depends on how much bumblebee activity you have. I don't isolate varieties. I do get some crossing but it doesn't seem to be a problem. In fact I have taken crosses that I have found and brought them to stablization while exposing them to other beans each season they were grown. I had acquired African Premier from a fellow who lives in a town near the Mississippi river and when I planted his seed I found all sorts of combinations of seed coats and pod types. I knew what African Premier should look like as I had grown it before back in the late 1970's and early 80's. I selected it while exposing it to other varieties each season and it has grown now about 4 times without any off types. Some varieties definitely look like they cross more easily than others.

 

[Ridgerunner]

How much do you folks pay attention to isolation distances when you're saving beans for replanting or sharing with the bean network?

Interesting question and one I have been thinking about lately. When I was in Arkansas I usually did not plant different varieties real close together but they were not separated by that much. A couple of times I had something like Black Turtle Beans and Blue Lake Bush Beans as close as rows 3 feet apart or even in the same row just a couple of feet apart. It just wasn't something I worried about. The only outcross I ever found was in beans that I bought so that happened before I grew them.

When I started growing the Will Bonsall crosses I started isolating them a little better, basically planting them so I could tell which plant they grew on. That was not because I was worried about further crosses but because I was getting so many different segregations and some were hard to tell what was a new segregation or just the way they grew showing variety. This is a horrible photo but all these different colors and patterns were one segregation off the same plant. If I didn't know they were all off of the same plant I'd probably think I had two or three segregations and go even crazier trying to figure out what thee differences were..

Now that I've moved to suburbia in Louisiana I only have 5 raised beds each 4'x8' to grow these segregations, trying to stabilize them. I've been growing four rows of bush beans about 2' apart and three rows of climbing beans about 3' apart. I trellis the climbing beans so they do not grow together but they are not that far apart. The bush beans have been pretty stabile, the climbing not at all. I don't know if they are still segregation or if they are actively crossing. Russ and Flowerbug have mentioned certain beans that have not stabilized for them so I know they can go for a lot of generations.

Probably the worse one is a third generation segregation I called TTA2. In 2020 I got five different segregations from that. This year I planted one of those segregations, TTA2B. I got six new segregations from six plants. Not stabilizing at all. Beans have a perfect flower, both male and female parts, and are supposed to be pretty stabile but I'm starting to wonder if I need to only plant two segregations per bed, reducing the number of segregations I plant by 1/3.

I'm not in a good position to give you any suggestions or advice. Heck, I don't know what I'm doing.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Seed Swap Saturday October 2, 2021 At Teneesee Tech Facility in Livingston, Tennessee ​

Not a huge building where the seed swap was held. But clean. This was the second time I have attended and sold at this swap

Seed Swap Attenedees

Jim Wyant from Indiana with his tomato Collection. He probably has over a thousand varieties.

Ken Fry from Ohio with his tomatoes. Ken runs has a website called Forgotten Heirlooms. Ken does tomatoes and peppers. He also grows a few beans.

My bean packets at my table.