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

[flowerbug]

I believe it is called 'inverse' but reversal is perfectly understandable and it is caused by the way the bean seedcoat is formed, which is in layers. A seedsaving friend asked OSU years ago on my behalf, when I first discovered this with a cranberry type of bean. If the seedcoat starts to develop with the 'wrong' colouring, then there are then only one (or two) other colours available to form the rest of the seed coat. It develops in layers apparently. When conditions are not favourable, there is a slight increase in this happening. And of course inversed beans will grow into normally coloured beans again (with only a small percentage inversed). Pods with both types of seeds are rarer, but do happen, just like yours.

A blurry photo (sorry) of Gramma Walters is attached, which shows one normal seed (bottom right), 4 fully inverted, one half inverted and one partially inverted seed, ie where only a part of the seedcoat is inverted. Full inversion is the most common form, but with some beans partial inversions are possible.

oh, thanks for the information!

 

[heirloomgal]

Tonight I start to work at all the paper bags full of dried pods!

 

[Blue-Jay]

Today I finished shelling the last pods I have harvested. I will photo all of this years grown beans and start packing them in a freezer when I return home from Florida about the 18th of December. Still lots of work to do.

 

[heirloomgal]

Today I finished shelling the last pods I have harvested. I will photo all of this years grown beans and start packing them in a freezer when I return home from Florida about the 18th of December. Still lots of work to do.

You're done shelling all the 2025 pods @Bluejay?

 

[Blue-Jay]

You're done shelling all the 2025 pods @Bluejay?

Yes all done. I started shelling pods back in about middle of August and kept at it steadily when I wasn't doing something else. The whole harvest from 4,700 square feet 438 square meters gardening ground, I'll do my bean 2025 show in January,

 

[Blue-Jay]

The End Of A Bean Season



The Vines are now all bare


The Supports Are Now Bare Without Vines.


The Supports Are All Coming Down


The Empty Pods Are Ready For Shredding


The Vines Are Ready For Shredding


The Vines Have Now Met The Lawnmower


The Pods Are Now Just Little Pieces


The Remains Will Soon Become The Soils Organic Matter To Feed Another Summers Beans.

 

[heirloomgal]

Is it difficult to pull out your stakes at the end of the season @Bluejay ? Or do they dislodge fairly easily? I imagine you probably drive them in over a foot?

I'm wondering if the time is coming for me to switch to stakes like you have, instead of my trees. It is so much work to cut them all down, do all the trimming, prepare holes. Removing them this year was quite difficult even after the tilling around them. (Mind you, DH says I need to get the scaling bar down 2 feet before putting a tree in, so that might be a bit overkill.)

Growing pole beans would be much simpler if I reused my supports. The lumber sold at the size I would need though is all finger jointed, and so has weakness issues. Most of my other wire trellis's were framed with that kind of lumber and none of those joints aged well.

 

[flowerbug]

Tonight I start to work at all the paper bags full of dried pods!

i know it is wonderful to get going on shelling beans. i've not had as much time in recent weeks as i would normally have but here or there i squeeze in a few because it really is my favorite time of the year.

today i spent at least a whole hour (maybe two since time can go by so quickly) shelling beans.

 

[Decoy1]

Mine are all podded except for the few varieties which still need to dry down further. Some are still out there as we’re having a dry autumn with still no frost forecast up to the end of the month. Still lingering are Rose, Panzaredda, Rio Zape, Blue Greasy Grits, Blaue aus Ungarn, Fat Man, Heavenly Gold and Bob & Mary. Fully picked but still drying indoors are Sultan’s Gold Crescent and Jack’s Blue & Green.

It’s interesting how some varieties dry down quite suddenly and completely. Gialet della Val Belluna is one which was quite late but within a few days dried beautifully and completely. And some manage to dry a pod here and a pod there over a long period and just yield a few each time I do a round. Paul Bunyan Giant and Heavenly Gold have been in that camp. I’m at the stage of picking pods when they’re still leathery or at the thinner floppier stage to hasten the drying indoors.

Like @Blue-Jay i pod as I go, collecting through most of the season in brown paper bags with names on as soon as they are dry, podding during evenings and adding them to their little drying drawers, sometimes just a few at a time. It’s this last stage which is a bit trickier.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Is it difficult to pull out your stakes at the end of the season @Bluejay ? Or do they dislodge fairly easily? I imagine you probably drive them in over a foot?

It can be difficult to pull them out if they have been driven in the ground to much over a foot deep. I had a fellow from Iowa help me put in a bunch of them this year and most of his were hard to get out. He used one of those post rams. It's like and empty cylinder with handles on the sides. Too heavy for me to use. He got some of the poles driven in about a foot and a third. I drive them in with the flat side of a carpenters hammer and mine go in to about a foot which are much easier to pull out of the soil. It helps if we have had some rain and the soil moistens up. Sometimes the part that is in the soil breaks off when I try to wiggle them side to side a bit to get the pole a little loose to pull out of the ground. When I took out some of his poles I use a shovel to dig around the pole a little to remove some of the soil and that lessened a lot of the resistance of the soil against the pole.

I think I really need to start painting my poles so when they are in the soil they don't absorb moisture and start to decay. That weakens the part of the pole that is in the ground and I think that causes some of them to break off when I try to pull them out of the soil. I think I will probably use a slippery enamel paint. I also put some short screws with rounded heads along the side of the poles and leave them hang out a bit so when the plants climb the poles the vines have something to catch onto and the plants wont slither back down if we get a heavy wind storm or even when the plants are loaded with pods. I had a lima plant that I grew on a pole without the screws this summer and when the plant was loaded with green pods it had enough weight to pile up the plants near the ground. The plants didn't seem to have wound themselves up tightly enough around the pole. So painting the poles will be another winter project in '26.