You have some varieties that I'm curious about too, although Rockwell was the only purchase this year...
Ask away if you have any questions about those varieties! Looks like you and I are in very similar climatic regions. I, too, am dying to know if Beefy Resilient Grex lives up to its reputation -- haven't cooked them up yet.
I've only saved seed once from one variety of bean (last year) so it was easy to isolate from any garden by distance and large physical barriers in a front flower bed. This year I will be saving more varieties! Aiming for minimum of 20 foot distancing within the garden (but will go as low as 15 feet if necessary in the more optimal of the 2 gardens), with barrier crops in between.
aha! So this is something I've always wondered -- whether obstructions and distracting plants could be used as barriers. You, and a few other people below you in thread, have confirmed it!
I also had no idea heat stress made beans more vulnerable to pollinators. So glad I joined this thread; I've learned a few things already. I'd be curious to know which of your beans survived the PNW heat wave; all of mine did great except Rockwell and Nez Perce. Chester Skunk and Ojo de Cabra were particularly productive; they pulled the poor trellis over!
Unfortunately I've run out of prepared garden space
The perpetual sorrow of the gardener.
I'm actually a little surprised that Bantu works for you. I'm somewhat further South than you, and I had problems adapting it to the season here (plus, no matter what color the seeds that went in were, everything came back purple) Maybe it's a matter of whether you got it directly from Simcox, where it was probably as he picked it up in Uganda, or whether you got it through someone who filtered it through their own growing and adapted it.
That's a tragedy that they all came back purple; wonder what happened there. I didn't have the breadth of colours I'd hoped for -- there were some jade ones that never produced, and an ugly wrinkly gray one -- but in general I'm happy. I've segregated the colours I didn't have enough of so I can grow more of them and less of the others.
I didn't get them from Simcox (just learned about his work this year through Russ' website), but from Dan Jason of Salt Spring Seeds. His website doesn't list where he got them from
But I have seen photos in other catalogues and though, "whoa, that's not the same beans I grew." Probably just so much variation in the landrace.
I wonder if they worked so well for me because of my climate? I don't know if Uganda is hot/wet or hot/dry, but if the latter, then I'm in the perfect place for them. Especially last year with peak temps of 46C/115F.
There is a gardener here (
@jbosmith you still around?) who mentioned in a post some time ago to me that cross pollination has a lot to do with the kinds of winged creatures one has around. Over the last 14 years, I have never seen a bean cross. And I plant everything (which can be a lot of beans) together with no isolation distances.
That's encouraging. We do honestly have a lot of insect pollinators -- wild ones and professional ones employed at the neighbour's orchard -- but I haven't seen a crossed bean yet either (although I do suspect I've seen some drift in the colours of two of my beans).
I've found a cherry tomato cross twice ( I used to grow over 100 varieties a year) and a pepper cross once.
Wow, and my mother-in-law rolls her eyes at my twenty tomato varieties! Sounds like fun. Did you do that for the sake of preserving varieties, or for resilience, or just cuz you loved them all?
I've never seen a pepper cross either, much to my dismay -- I'm trying to let a bunch of early varieties cross in the field, so I can select some locally adapted ones, but darned if they don't keep coming true to parent every year.
how many lima beans do you grow? any squash, cucumbers, melons?
Never tried lima beans -- guess I have too many traumatic memories from frozen lima beans at church potlucks
Are they good as dry beans?
We do grow plenty of cucurbits of all sorts; sounds like they'd do well as barrier crops for beans? I've heard that it's helpful to time the flowering of barrier crops for the crops you're trying to protect; any idea if cucurbits will do the trick for beans?
As an SSE member, I use an isolation distance very similar to that recommended by SoDC... but bean spacing depends upon the type & numbers of pollinators present, the intended use of the beans, and how much the purity of the seeds matters. If the seed is rare or irreplaceable - or if it is important to share seed that is true-to-type - then wider spacing (or blossom bagging) might be prudent. To a lesser degree, spacing even depends upon variety, since some beans seem to be more prone to crossing (Goose for one).
Wow, different varieties even -- that seems complex. I think I'll just stick to recommended spacings -- it's doable in our garden, just will require a bit of planning. And I'll only do one tepary variety -- or maybe two. Thanks for the detailed advice!
). @heirloomgal I especially loved your story about the flock of kids giving up their hide-and-go-seek game to shell and play with beans with you -- that resonates so much with my experience too. My kids always end up getting caught up in the gravitational pull whenever I start shelling beans. So fascinating. Apparently kids have long attention spans and don't need iPads; who knew?!
There seem to be a lot of bean fans in BC, I've exchanged beans with several gardeners there over the years.
