2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[meadow]

hmm. I'm seeing reference to Marfax as 85 days.... and Swedish Brown as 82-95 days. That sounds okay. Thanks, @flowerbug

Do those dates match with your experience/records @Bluejay77 ?
Btw, did you ever hear back about the Walcherse Bruine Kogel not looking like it is supposed to?

 

[Artorius]

All those beans look beautiful and fantastic. Very inpiring ! Still too cool here except all this week we will have summer temperatures. Next week back to cool sping type days again for awhile. Do you ever amend your soil with anything than contains nitrogen for your beans?

@Bluejay77
Before transplanting seedlings, I give nitrochalk in a dose of 100 g / 10 m2. This is for starters, before root nodules form and the beans start taking nitrogen from the air.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Do those dates match with your experience/records @Bluejay77 ?
Btw, did you ever hear back about the Walcherse Bruine Kogel not looking like it is supposed to?

I have not grown Swedish Brown but Marfax seems like it's close to 85-90 days to start drying pods. Swedish Brown is probably very similar to Marfax. A lot of bush beans then take close to three weeks to dry down their entire pod set. Proabably at about two weeks after first pods start drying you will have harvested the majority of your dry pods on a lot of bush varieties.

Last year I grew a variety that is grown in Canada a lot I think John's Bean. At two weeks after the first pods started drying I had the plants totally picked clean of every pod that grew on those plants. Maybe the weather had something to do with it also. It was the earliest bush bean I grew in 2021.

 

[Blue-Jay]

More New Bean Mail. I had a fellow in Kentucky who bought beans from me send me six varieties of Kentucky grown beans.

First one in Barnes Mountain. Pole variety From Barnes Mountain in Estill County, Kentucky. Good as a snap bean. A well known Kentucky bean grower Bill Best has sold this bean a lot from his location in Berea, Kentucky.

Second bean is Big John. Pole variety. Commonly grown in Harlan and Letcher County, KY. Supposedly came to Kentucky around the time of the Revolutionary war. These were a big producer for me. Good as a snap bean.


Barnes Mountain.......................................................................Big John

Third is another Pole bean called Goose. Common goose bean in southern Kentucky. Some call it the Goose Neck bean. Easy to shell once dried. A great soup bean so it's said.

Fourth is Grandma Barnett. Pole dry bean. Grown by Frank Barnett’s grandmother in Floyd County, KY. There is a Frank Barnett bean in the Network called Frank Barnett. It’s the only surviving heirloom bean the grandmother grew. Difficult to shell once dried. The senders wife used this bean in chili this past winter.


Goose.......................................................................................................Grandma Barnett

Fifth is a semi runner variety called Non Tough Half Runner. A variant of an old time 3-in-1 half runner, stabilized and named by Bill Best. Good as a snap bean.

Sixth bean is a semi runner variety called Old Joe Clark. Also known as pink half-runner and peanut bean. I think I grew this one before back in the late 1970's called Red Peanut. Small bright red pods and small red beans. The runners only grew about 3 feet high.


Non Tough Half Runner................................................................Old Joe Clark

 

[Blue-Jay]

Bean Mail this week from Seed Savers Exchange. I got two beans from them. One is a Ukrainian bean called Ukrainian Pole. Looks like a pretty bean to grow. I also got from them a bush variety called Little Creamy. We have in the Network collection a bean called Mary Ison's Little Brown Bunch. Mary Ison was a Kentucky gardener the grew her gardens for about 40 years and Little Creamy is another one that Mary Ison grew.

I also got from Small House Farm in Michigan Ocean View. These kind of look like they are tending towards more tan than being blue. A little story of how this one got started. In 2018 I had gone to the Appalachian Seed Swap in Pikeville, Kentucky with about a 4 liter plastic canister of outcrossed bush beans that just didn't interest me. A group of us that know each other at the swap all stayed at the same hotel in town and we gathered after super time in the hotel lobby until about 11 in the evening and talk and sometimes swap seeds. I told everyone that they could pick through these beans I had and grow them and if any of them stablized they could name them as their own. The canister of beans created quite a bit of interest and everyone picked beans until we were all tired enough to go up to our rooms and turn in for the night. Ben Cohen of Small house farm picked these bluish looking beans that I think might be an outcross of Dapple Grey. One of his sons has been growing the bean and named it Ocean View. I had bought them before maybe two years ago but I think I might have sent them to Artorius. I thought I would give them a try this year.


Little Creamy.................................................................................Ukrainian Pole



Ocean View

 

[Triffid]

Anyone heard of a variety called Phil's? Saved from the garden of a gentleman named Phil by his neighbour after he passed away.
I received them in a recent seed share and their origins are quite obscure. My donor requested them from the seed bank of a Yahoo gardening group called Tomato Mania around 20 years ago, and the description that accompanied them was limited. They are from 'the US'; that is the beginning and end of the record regarding provenance. At one point my donor was the last remaining person in the group with viable seeds, and their stock was used to replenish the seed bank.
The group has long since dissolved, and it's unknown how far and wide Phil's bean may have spread. So I'd be very interested to know if others have encountered them. Just out of pathological curiosity
They're said to resemble Blue Lake/Kentucky Blue, but my donor states that they grow better than the aforementioned varieties.

 

[flowerbug]

Anyone heard of a variety called Phil's? Saved from the garden of a gentleman named Phil by his neighbour after he passed away.
...
They're said to resemble Blue Lake/Kentucky Blue, but my donor states that they grow better than the aforementioned varieties.

sorry, not heard of that one before.

 

[Artorius]

I also got from Small House Farm in Michigan Ocean View. These kind of look like they are tending towards more tan than being blue. A little story of how this one got started. In 2018 I had gone to the Appalachian Seed Swap in Pikeville, Kentucky with about a 4 liter plastic canister of outcrossed bush beans that just didn't interest me. A group of us that know each other at the swap all stayed at the same hotel in town and we gathered after super time in the hotel lobby until about 11 in the evening and talk and sometimes swap seeds. I told everyone that they could pick through these beans I had and grow them and if any of them stablized they could name them as their own. The canister of beans created quite a bit of interest and everyone picked beans until we were all tired enough to go up to our rooms and turn in for the night. Ben Cohen of Small house farm picked these bluish looking beans that I think might be an outcross of Dapple Grey. One of his sons has been growing the bean and named it Ocean View. I had bought them before maybe two years ago but I think I might have sent them to Artorius. I thought I would give them a try this year.

@Bluejay77
Right, you sent me Ocean View seeds and I have grown this bean in the 2020 and 2021 seasons. In 2022 I will have it too. I choose the bluest seeds for sowing.

Ocean View 2020


This variety is not quite stable, there were new segregations every time. This year I sowed seeds that look like blue Dapple Grey. I would love to stabilize this pattern.

 

[meadow]

I have not grown Swedish Brown but Marfax seems like it's close to 85-90 days to start drying pods. Swedish Brown is probably very similar to Marfax. A lot of bush beans then take close to three weeks to dry down their entire pod set. Proabably at about two weeks after first pods start drying you will have harvested the majority of your dry pods on a lot of bush varieties.

Last year I grew a variety that is grown in Canada a lot I think John's Bean. At two weeks after the first pods started drying I had the plants totally picked clean of every pod that grew on those plants. Maybe the weather had something to do with it also. It was the earliest bush bean I grew in 2021.

Thank you, Bluejay77. Good to know.

 

[heirloomgal]

@Bluejay77 the network beans are getting a really royal treatment this year; I had DH cut down several large pine trees (and a few others) that hem in two sides of my garden for them. I wanted to create the best air flow possible, and already I can tell there is a quite a difference in the breeze back there. I also went out and bought a roll of hardware cloth (the labels calls it that) but it's actually really fine metal mesh. I'm going to line one side of my garden with it - underground. I believe I have a walkway that voles have turned into a highway, because I have a garden on both sides of this path and they tunnel left or right from it down my rows. So, I'm hoping this underground mesh, sunk deep enough, will prevent them. I know they won't approach from the other sides as they are avoiding those more open spaces. Cutting down all those trees will also deter them as trees gave them cover. If this doesn't help my 2021 vole problem, I don't know what will! My only concern now is a family of rabbits that appears to be living, part time at least, under the cedar trees in my front yard. All my neighbours are seeing them too. Hopefully, a fox will show up or a weasel and that will be that, or they'll find enough to eat elsewhere. We do have a wooded area with plenty for them to eat, so they aren't desperate. I have never had rabbit problems before, so I'm thinking it will be alright.

Network beans are starting to sprout in their pots! Strange coincidence, one of the beans I was really looking forward to growing was Zugdidi Flat Cake, the name is just so catchy! And golly it turns out to be the first one to sprout!

I'm also trying a few other kinds of beans/legumes, ones I haven't grown before.
Here is Italian Cicerchia, Lathyrus sativus, technically considered a type of lentil

And I'm also trying some Lupini beans, Lupinus albus (I think that's the latin name, no photo yet) And it's going well so far. The plants look exactly like lupine flower plants and I think it would be impossible to tell them apart. I like that they can be grown in shade. We'll see how they do. Our weather went from miserable, cold and grey to smoking hot at 30 C (86 F) overnight, which apparently they don't like. I should have started them earlier! Oh well, hindsight is 20/20.