2025 Little Easy Bean Network - Growers Of The Future Will Be Glad We Saved

[heirloomgal]

new shingles? perhaps a bit of a concern at first but after they've been on for a while and through some rains that doesn't bother me. i'm sure we get a lot more contamination from things brought in on the winds (dusts from farm fields and various sprays).

If there had been a long hot and dry spell and you took the rain off the roof and put that in the rain barrels instead of letting it bypass it could be an issue, but with older shingles that have been weathered enough it would not concern me at all. bird poo is fertilizer they provide it all the time very directly in the gardens here. the water rejecting gadgets are more for people who use their roof runoff for drinking water (which i don't think is very common in the USoA).

No, they've been there for a decade I think. But what got me thinking about the rain barrels was a few years ago I noticed by chance, and at a certain angle that characteristic 'rainbow' sheen of drop of gas on water in one of them. And I mentioned to DH that maybe the barrels got contaminated somehow? And it was he that mentioned the shingles and the runoff. It wasn't much, and you couldn't even really see the sheen if the sun wasn't catching it just the right way, but for small plants I wonder if there may be an influence from something like that.

 

[heirloomgal]

Will do a photo dump of the network beans so you can see how they're all doing. This is a mixture of the 2024 ones that were fails as well as the 2025 ones. Might take a couple days to get through them all. The variation in heights is a bit mind boggling! Most of them are just starting to climb, and there are a couple way out in the margins that are either super tall or still looking pokey.

The rabbit ate most of my Stibitz plants. But I have 2 left.

Blue & White of Bernardo

Barry Island, corner plant, 5 feet!

 

[flowerbug]

No, they've been there for a decade I think. But what got me thinking about the rain barrels was a few years ago I noticed by chance, and at a certain angle that characteristic 'rainbow' sheen of drop of gas on water in one of them. And I mentioned to DH that maybe the barrels got contaminated somehow? And it was he that mentioned the shingles and the runoff. It wasn't much, and you couldn't even really see the sheen if the sun wasn't catching it just the right way, but for small plants I wonder if there may be an influence from something like that.

wow, i've never seen that here on any of the puddles around the house after a rain. two sets of shingles (so far).

any roof leaks that needed patching? source of barrels? mosquito dunks or mosquito sprays? skin lotions?

still i think a small bit like that won't be enough to really harm plants.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Will do a photo dump of the network beans so you can see how they're all doing. This is a mixture of the 2024 ones that were fails as well as the 2025 ones. Might take a couple days to get through them all. The variation in heights is a bit mind boggling! Most of them are just starting to climb, and there are a couple way out in the margins that are either super tall or still looking pokey.

The rabbit ate most of my Stibitz plants. But I have 2 left.

All your photos look like normal healthy bean plants. Very nice !

 

[Ridgerunner]

And it was he that mentioned the shingles and the runoff.

Growing up in East Tennessee we got our drinking water from a cistern that captured the run-off from our house. It was a tin roof, not shingles. We used coal for heat so it put out a lot of black suet. When the rain started it would wash that black suet off.

We had a bypass set up so the first rain bypassed the cistern and went straight to the ground. After the roof was washed off we switched the flow into the cistern. If we failed to bypass that first water after we had been burning coal the cistern water was black for a few days, before the suet settled out.

Shingles could collect pollution between rain showers. Do you have any coal or petroleum burning plants around you? New shingles could easily bleed out products if they are asphalt especially. After 10 years I'd expect that runoff to be pretty minor and would not expect it to hurt your crops. But do you have pollution falling from the sky?

 

[heirloomgal]

Growing up in East Tennessee we got our drinking water from a cistern that captured the run-off from our house. It was a tin roof, not shingles. We used coal for heat so it put out a lot of black suet. When the rain started it would wash that black suet off.

We had a bypass set up so the first rain bypassed the cistern and went straight to the ground. After the roof was washed off we switched the flow into the cistern. If we failed to bypass that first water after we had been burning coal the cistern water was black for a few days, before the suet settled out.

Shingles could collect pollution between rain showers. Do you have any coal or petroleum burning plants around you? New shingles could easily bleed out products if they are asphalt especially. After 10 years I'd expect that runoff to be pretty minor and would not expect it to hurt your crops. But do you have pollution falling from the sky?

Well, I do live in the world's largest integrated mining complex; nine operating mines, two mills, two smelters, a nickel refinery, and over 300 mining supply and service companies so the answer to that is probably a yes. That said we also have the second tallest smoke stack in the world after Kazakhstan's, so we've designed things so the smoke goes a very long ways away. But you make a good point, and it might factor into the explanation of why it's so few times I've seen that rainbow sheen. I do think the run-off from the shingles is quite minor and even occasional, though for small plants I wonder how sensitive they might be.

 

[heirloomgal]

@Blue-Jay could you see the names on the tags of all the network beans in the last post? I realized after that maybe they might be too small in the pictures, I can go back and type the name above the photo if you couldn't.

Network bean plants 2024 & 2025 continued....

Olga's Yugoslavian, two rows on left

Blaugraue

Ora's Speckled

Tunny

Volga German Siberian

Kruger's Speckled Caseknife, these nice plants are really cause for celebration as the plants had a rough go last year

Lambada

A couple of the pole beans are flowering even though they aren't climbing yet, like Zambezi and Fagioli Ruviotti - does that seem normal? They look fine and healthy, but I wonder about that?

Also, another question. So....I managed to get a single bean of 'Rebhuhnauge' ('Partridge Eye') to sprout of the many that I planted. And even then it barely made it. But to my surprise it's actually catching up and growing well now, so because I only had one plant I put it in a medium sized pot. To my horror, I see now that it isn't a bush bean as I somehow assumed. I don't see any way that pole bean can make seeds in a pot that is only 10 or 12 inches across. But it's July 8th, and I'm afraid to transplant it. The soil it's in is compost, so it's very very crumbly. It will never hold together if I try and get the plant out, all the soil will fall off the roots. I wonder if I can try and slice the pot every 6 inches top to bottom, tie it together with string, lower it in a hole and pull out the side sections? But I don't know how I'd get the bottom detached from the side pieces?

Any suggestions? I really really want this bean to succeed!

 

[flowerbug]

...
Also, another question. So....I managed to get a single bean of 'Rebhuhnauge' ('Partridge Eye') to sprout of the many that I planted. And even then it barely made it. But to my surprise it's actually catching up and growing well now, so because I only had one plant I put it in a medium sized pot. To my horror, I see now that it isn't a bush bean as I somehow assumed. I don't see any way that pole bean can make seeds in a pot that is only 10 or 12 inches across. But it's July 8th, and I'm afraid to transplant it. The soil it's in is compost, so it's very very crumbly. It will never hold together if I try and get the plant out, all the soil will fall off the roots. I wonder if I can try and slice the pot every 6 inches top to bottom, tie it together with string, lower it in a hole and pull out the side sections? But I don't know how I'd get the bottom detached from the side pieces?

Any suggestions? I really really want this bean to succeed!

cut around the bottom along with the slices down the sides. just leave the bottom as it is and dig it up in the fall to remove it. pull the sides out after planting like you describe. the plant will root out sideways ok at that depth and from what i've seen of your garden soils i think it will be ok.

 

[ruralmamma]

Had a Wren's Egg plant struggling for the last week and it finally succumbed. Dug around to see if voles were an issue and nada. Thankfully the other plants are flourishing.

 

[heirloomgal]

I had the most incredible success getting my 'Rebhuhnauge' plant out of it's pot today!!!!

At first I didn't think the scissors would cut the thick pot, but in fact they sailed through it like a hot knife in warm butter. I couldn't believe how easy it was to cut down the sides and around the bottom. I had a perfect sized hole ready, the pot just beside as I cut it and I was going with your suggestion @flowerbug to just leave the bottom and slip the sides out, but as I lifted the pot the bottom fell right off because I had cut the sides free of it, so I had the whole plant in the pot, put the pot right in the hole, pulled up and the plastic pot slid right off like nothing. It's like it planted itself. I bet that plant doesn't even know what happened.