2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[heirloomgal]

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This is the same garden I posted pics of the other day with the 60' row of pinto beans. I took this one from a different angle to be more honest about the wall o weeds encroaching from all sides. Plus the garlic looks pretty cool right now ;-)

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These are at the other end of that garden. I believe these are MN-150 bush cowpeas. This is one of my zone 3 gardens I'm not sure what their chances are but they're doing ok so far.

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Same garden - Gorah peas!

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Not the best lighting, but from left to right - Kabouli black chickpeas, Yancheng bush yardlongs, some tomatoes I needed seed from, the limas from @flowerbug that may or may not be Fordhook, Ezonishiki soy, MN-13 cow peas, and Amplissimo Viktoria Ukrainskaya pea. The section in the back is mostly out of commission this year to get ahead of the perennial weeds, but it seemed like a good reason to grow pumpkins too.

@Zeedman gets a lot of credit for all of the soy, cowpea, and yardlong varieties in these gardens.

Your peas! They're huge! The garlic and cabbage (brassica? on the left) look fantastic. You have a superbly beautiful garden @jbosmith , I just love the look of hay mulch. I'd use it more myself, and have a lot in the past, but after a vole problem last year I'm terrified to put it down.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Triffid , I'm not sure if I wrote to him. I think I forgot all about him and got busy doing stuff in the gardens. I'll have to get back to that sometime. I really like one of his beans.

 

[jbosmith]

Your peas! They're huge! The garlic and cabbage (brassica? on the left) look fantastic. You have a superbly beautiful garden @jbosmith , I just love the look of hay mulch. I'd use it more myself, and have a lot in the past, but after a vole problem last year I'm terrified to put it down.

Aww thank you, @heirloomgal ! Those pea varieties are some of the ones I found after we talked last winter! The cabbage is a mix of Brunswick, which is my most reliable variety, and Ruby Perfection F1 which made it to the start tray as a last minute backup. It's been a pleasant surprise.

The hay is great. It does make a home for some voles, but they don't seem to cause a problem, such as vanishing starts, the way that mice might, so it's mostly just an annoyance. It also makes a great home for snakes, so that problem tends to keep itself in check.

The hay can also harbor a lot of snails, which will likely be a menace in that cabbage row late this fall. Those walls of quack grass are likely a bigger problem though, and I need to get on that. The snail damage is mostly aesthetic and annoying, so I don't worry about it, but it's worth mentioning.

On the flip side of things, that hay is the only thing I add to the garden these days. The soil is nice enough from over a decade of adding mulch that it doesn't need extra fertility. I'm pretty stingy with compost so I feel like it balances things.

 

[flowerbug]

in an effort to discourage further deer predation on the bean gardens outside the fence i've changed my habits and plugged up one of the deer access runs that they were regularly using. yesterday i pulled out the comfrey plants that they've been chomping on (they smelled like squash plants to me so i can see why the deer like to eat them). i hated to pull them or to keep trying to remove them, but they're attracting the deer and from there they eat the clematis and anything else they can find in the front gardens and also they get right into the beans too.

instead of watering in the evening the seedlings have all been sprouting well enough with me watering in the morning and once in the mid-afternoon so there would be less smell of water attracting them in this very dry time we've been having. so by the time night comes around there's nothing giving them the signal that there is nice tasty fresh bean sprouts anywhere.

i've also been emptying the birdbaths in the evening right before dark so the deer aren't able to get easy drinks from those. it's not like they don't have two running ditches they can get water from around us...

so far the last planted bean garden (along the crushed limestone pathway) has not been raided nearly as much as the North Garden and i'm hoping things remain this way for the next few weeks, but i really can't get too attached to these plants as they might also get grazed...

this is a picture from 2021 but this year it looks much the same other than wider rows (double rows) and i've finally gotten a lot of the gravel removed from along the one edge where it was in the dirt. i still have more screening to do sometime, but i'm not sure when i'll get back to it.

the North Garden i don't even want to take a picture of as it looks so bad right now. i'm weeding it from all the purselane and oxalis, removing all the dead stuff from the daffodils that Mom hates when i leave it alone and getting the low growing creeping thyme weeded too. one part done and much more to do, it will probably take me a week to get it all done.

i already miss the comfrey. it was a nice background plant and nice and green (when the deer would leave it alone). it also helped keep other weeds from growing in those two spaces so it is going to mean more work for me to weed along that edge. it covered up a lot of space... ah well... some year when i can get a proper fence put up then i can put it back in how i'd like it. it definitely makes an excellent green manure plant and was growing really well even in a primarily clay raised edge that wasn't being particularly watered and never fertilized.

 

[meadow]

Network beans are doing well. I'll feel better once they start setting some pods though. Thank goodness they are all bush beans!! (yes, I'm still worried about our lack of sunshine this year)

I decided to net Marfax when Russ expressed concern about proximity to pole beans. It's about 30 feet away from Ga Ga Hut but I don't want to take any chances. The netting has worked really well for Zeedman's Mesa peas; I'm very pleased with it as a means of isolation.

 

[heirloomgal]

L

in an effort to discourage further deer predation on the bean gardens outside the fence i've changed my habits and plugged up one of the deer access runs that they were regularly using. yesterday i pulled out the comfrey plants that they've been chomping on (they smelled like squash plants to me so i can see why the deer like to eat them). i hated to pull them or to keep trying to remove them, but they're attracting the deer and from there they eat the clematis and anything else they can find in the front gardens and also they get right into the beans too.

instead of watering in the evening the seedlings have all been sprouting well enough with me watering in the morning and once in the mid-afternoon so there would be less smell of water attracting them in this very dry time we've been having. so by the time night comes around there's nothing giving them the signal that there is nice tasty fresh bean sprouts anywhere.

i've also been emptying the birdbaths in the evening right before dark so the deer aren't able to get easy drinks from those. it's not like they don't have two running ditches they can get water from around us...

so far the last planted bean garden (along the crushed limestone pathway) has not been raided nearly as much as the North Garden and i'm hoping things remain this way for the next few weeks, but i really can't get too attached to these plants as they might also get grazed...

this is a picture from 2021 but this year it looks much the same other than wider rows (double rows) and i've finally gotten a lot of the gravel removed from along the one edge where it was in the dirt. i still have more screening to do sometime, but i'm not sure when i'll get back to it.

the North Garden i don't even want to take a picture of as it looks so bad right now. i'm weeding it from all the purselane and oxalis, removing all the dead stuff from the daffodils that Mom hates when i leave it alone and getting the low growing creeping thyme weeded too. one part done and much more to do, it will probably take me a week to get it all done.

i already miss the comfrey. it was a nice background plant and nice and green (when the deer would leave it alone). it also helped keep other weeds from growing in those two spaces so it is going to mean more work for me to weed along that edge. it covered up a lot of space... ah well... some year when i can get a proper fence put up then i can put it back in how i'd like it. it definitely makes an excellent green manure plant and was growing really well even in a primarily clay raised edge that wasn't being particularly watered and never fertilized.

Lookin' good flowerbug!

 

[heirloomgal]

I am so pleased with last night's rain; we finally got a good, deep, warm soaking for all the beans. We had one good rain so far this summer, but not this good. It also stayed pretty warm, which was nice as it can get chilly when it rains. I don't like that combo. I'm seeing little bean pods all over the place, so the rain was well timed. DH & I spent some time setting up our barrels and rain catchments and we collected a lot, probably close to 1, 500 litres. Trying to stay off the ho$e$.

Irish Connors is really kickin' butt right now, over 6ft and loaded with little pods and Vulkan is close behind in size though I'm not sure about the pods. I'm actually a bit worried, it's surpassed the pole and we've got at least 2 more months. Any ideas on what to do when this happens? Sink another taller pole next to it? (That'd be hard to do without disturbing roots?) That said, I have a few poles that are no where near the success of those 2. Mangeta Ganxet is lookin' real poor right now. Maybe it' ll catch up; strange because it was one of the most vigorous of the European starts. It is surprising (and a little interesting) to see the differences in growth between them.

One of the (?sp) Karachaganak beans is not looking like a semi, more like a true pole. It's already 5 feet and still climbing, so I pinched it. I got this one from Mandy and I think it was a semi for her, could there be some wild cards in there still?

All in all, the network beans are doing well, all the leaves look nice and healthy. Still a few inept climbers, but less so each week. So far so good @Bluejay77 .

 

[Ridgerunner]

One of the (?sp) Karachaganak beans is not looking like a semi, more like a true pole. It's already 5 feet and still climbing, so I pinched it. I got this one from Mandy and I think it was a semi for her, could there be some wild cards in there still?

Karachaganak hasn't been stabilized as to growth habit. I got some crosses Russ had from Will Bonsall one year and one that those produced was Karachaganak. The first year it grew as a climbing bean, right at the half runner-pole break, could have called it either. I sent some back to Russ and he offered them to others as he did with all the other Will Bonsall segregations with the warning that they were not stabilized. Many people took them.

The second year I grew them they again grew to about 7-8 feet and the color/pattern stayed the same but there were two different bean shapes, one more round, one more oval. The third year I planted them by shape. Again the color/pattern repeated. The round beans produced round beans but I got a bush out of them. Not semi, bush. The oval produced some oval, some round. I haven't gotten anything to stabilize as far as growth habit. Some years it did OK down here but some years it didn't seem to like my Gulf Coast climate. It did great in Arkansas.

Russ and others, correct me where I'm wrong. I think the first year Russ grew it he got a consistent Semi. @Artorius grew it and got some bush, not sure what other growth habit he got, half runner I think. Others have grown it but I don't know what growth habits they got.

So there is a bean out there called Karachaganak that has not been stabilized as to growth habit. I was naively hoping we could stabilize a growth habit/bean shape and call that Karachaganak and rename the others. Once the genie is out of the bottle it will never be put back in.

 

[Blue-Jay]

All in all, the network beans are doing well, all the leaves look nice and healthy. Still a few inept climbers, but less so each week. So far so good @Bluejay77 .

You did very well with most of the network beans last year. I think you have your technique of prestarting plants then transplanting them to the garden when it's warm enough down very well. You know the length of your growing season and turned in really beautiful seed last year. I think there were a couple of varieties you wanted to regrow again this year as you weren't satisfied with 2021's results. So how is Greek Cypriot, Nona Agnes, and Rose Creek Beauty doing this year. Am I accurate on naming those three?

Speaking of getting a good soaking rain. The U.S. Drought Monitor still has this county on abnormally dry and the dryness of late as even expanded again. July 4th late evening and through the early morning hours of July 5th we got 2inches of rain (5 cm) then again the evening of July 5th and through the early morning hours of July 6th another 2.5 inches of rain (6.33 cm). It will be interesting to see what the U.S. drought monitor reports tomorrow for our area Thursday morning at 7 in the morning.

 

[Zeedman]

Speaking of getting a good soaking rain. The U.S. Drought Monitor still has this county on abnormally dry and the dryness of late as even expanded again. July 4th late evening and through the early morning hours of July 5th we got 2inches of rain (5 cm) then again the evening of July 5th and through the early morning hours of July 6th another 2.5 inches of rain (6.33 cm). It will be interesting to see what the U.S. drought monitor reports tomorrow for our area Thursday morning at 7 in the morning.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't you under a tornado warning at one point? Any damage to your gardens?