2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[flowerbug]

I don't know what the bare minium your Fort Portal Jade will need require for light each day but a half hour of direct sun seems very little. I would almost think that would eventually kill them. They are daylength neutral so cutting down on the amount of light they are getting will just make them take longer to produce pods and seed. They will produce a lot less pods and seed if grown in the house.

In 2014 I started one seed in each of two pots of my Dalmatian bean in the middle of April in my west facing slider glass door. I took the plants until about early August to produce 4 to 5 dry pods. They got probably about 4 hours of direct sunlight each afternoon. The pods were slightly smaller but the seed seemed normal size. They probably produces only about 15 to 20 percent of what they would normally outside in the sun all day long. The plants were a little leggy and smaller not as robust looking as the bush plants that grow outside. The pods were absolutely blemish free never having been exposed to the weather or insects and the plants totally disease free never having soil splashed on them from the rain. I watered them like house plants down at the root zone.

i'll put them outside on the nicer days that aren't so roastingly hot so they should be getting more than a little light, it just isn't going to be as much as they would get if left outside. i can shift them to another table and they'd get some more light in the evening in this room but it won't ever be like being outside.

this is very much a learning experience for me, i'm not sure i'll repeat it or not.

 

[flowerbug]

What, if anything*, does a darkening eye signify when pre-germinating bean seeds?

I've seen it before as an oddity (maybe 1 or 2 in an entire batch). In this batch of seed though, 2/3rds germinated over 2 days and of the remaining seed, all but one have some degree of darkening... 1 is quite dark at the eye and several are medium dark.

*nod to the Law Nerds out there 🧐🤣🥳

you're not telling us if those specific ones germinate or not. it could be a reaction to water or the things given off by the bean as it changes from quiet to more active. not sure if it is actually giving off gases as it changes or if those are always going out through the roots and leaves and bit of stem as it all appears.

i've yet to find any really good closeup, aka microscopic or magnified pictures of beans germinating and growing. in botany class there were pictures of the growing tips of plants, roots, etc. all very interesting but nothing aimed at beans and being more specific to showing how the bean seed goes from quiet to active. if anyone sees anything like that please let me know i'd be so happy to be able to see it in more detail than what i commonly am seeing now (watching beans sprout and grow from a foot or so away seems to be about the norm).

 

[Jack Holloway]

@flowerbug Your mention of sweet corn reminds me that Ruth Stout (the mother of mulching and Rex Stout's sister) wanted to grow sweet corn, so she had a fenced area of her garden made, concrete foundation, plus completely covered. I think the whole things was made with chainlink, to keep the raccoons out.

 

[flowerbug]

@flowerbug Your mention of sweet corn reminds me that Ruth Stout (the mother of mulching and Rex Stout's sister) wanted to grow sweet corn, so she had a fenced area of her garden made, concrete foundation, plus completely covered. I think the whole things was made with chainlink, to keep the raccoons out.

that's about what it would take.

for me i would make one large enough to grow peas, strawberries, soy/edamame and corn - making the mesh small enough to keep out chipmunks, voles and squirrels. hot wire about 4ft up and then have a bigger mesh up top which would let in more light, but not too big a mesh that would let birds in. just bees. oh, and install a laser gun to take out Japanese Beetles while i'm thinking about a wishlist...

 

[flowerbug]

i was just out checking out the bean sprouting results and giving all the seeds a shot of water so they can sprout even more.

i had to laugh as i was overly pessimistic about a double row of Peregion beans i planted which i'd saved since i got them back in 2012, so it is likely these seeds were grown the year before i got them. because i thought not many of them would sprout i interplanted them with another bean. now i've got two or more beans coming up in each spot and i won't be able to tell the plants apart very easily to thin out the one's i'd rather have less of so we'll see how companionable these plants really are, some will be semi-runner and the others will be bush beans. hmm...

not bad for storage on the shelf here and no other real treatment other than being in a plastic container since i put them away in the box. good to know though that these seeds are still viable. the whole reason to grow them again was to refresh my seed stock of these and hoping i'd get a reasonable number back - they've usually done pretty well here in the past when i've grown them, but i end up sorting them into their individual types of selections and rarely put them back together as a blend which is how i had them sent to me. so this time i want to put the blend back together. next season i'll plant some more and blend those too. i think i have a few more containers of them left... the Tan Goats Eye bean i grow once in a while is one selection from these and Huey is a likely cross from these too.

 

[heirloomgal]

i'll put them outside on the nicer days that aren't so roastingly hot so they should be getting more than a little light, it just isn't going to be as much as they would get if left outside. i can shift them to another table and they'd get some more light in the evening in this room but it won't ever be like being outside.

this is very much a learning experience for me, i'm not sure i'll repeat it or not.

Just a thought @flowerbug, but I've had tremendously good luck with putting plants in an area that gets shade for part of the day when it's super hot. Even for crops like beans, tomatoes & peppers where you wouldn't think that would work. Last year I had Nicaraguan Black Turtle in a spot that was shady for part of the day, and they did just as well as the other black beans (Mitla and Hopi) that were in full sun all day. The only beans that I find a bit more picky about that are pole beans. They seem to be a bit more needy for sunlight hours, but I did grow Chester pole bean last year in a spot that was a bit shady and still got quite a good crop.

 

[heirloomgal]

What do you make of this @Bluejay77 ,

This was taken about June 8th, Ugandan Bimba

This one was taken June 15th (sorry pic is terrible, there was not enough sun)

The colours on the flowers are all exactly the same, hot pink. Two of the plants are not quite this tall yet so I don't know if they'll grow like this too but the rest are pretty uniform. Looks a little climbey to me!

 

[heirloomgal]

@Artorius I'm overjoyed to report that my last 'Floreta' bean sprouted!



I am so excited to grow this bean! It was in the top 5 top of my drool list.

@Bluejay77 I was perusing your Bean Collector's Window the other night and that was a bad idea!

Some of your new additions! I'm falling deeper and deeper down this bean hole every year.

The names of these ones - Mantecosa de Aragon, Van Gogh's Olive, Zarganos of Zestos! These are some really expressive and intriguing names. I also googled one called 'Lastochk' - which sounds almost as musical as 'Galopka'. I think it might mean Swallowtail, or some kind of bird. How pretty and sweet. I am definitely experiencing drooly eyes.

The bean called Goose Liver is also kind of magnetic. While I have distinctly unpleasant memories of spending long periods of time as a child at the dinner table adamantly despising a portion of liver forced onto my plate, I still find some kind of harrowing charm to the name.

I was sent a bean this spring by a lady called Musso Niriu (I think, not looking at it at the moment). It's white with a teeny blackish splotch over the eye, looking much like some of the Italian beans you've listed. She tells me it has one of the highest protein contents for dry P. vulgaris beans.

 

[jbosmith]

We got this guy in December and he would live on that table, overlooking the garden if we let him. We've even got him chasing robins away from the strawberries :-D

... having a roaming dog run around the gardens and a dog that is trained to patrol on a regular basis, all night... all very extreme IMO

 

[heirloomgal]

We got this guy in December and he would live on that table, overlooking the garden if we let him. We've even got him chasing robins away from the strawberries :-D

View attachment 49581

A beagle!