Recent content by oxbow farm

There are more rats almost everywhere than you realize. If you are seeing lots of holes then there are more than just two rats. Seeing rats in broad daylight (in my personal experience) usually means that there are so many rats in the burrow system that the smaller, younger rats get bullied...

Wondering about bush dry beans that might show some resistance or tolerance to white mold (Sclerotinia). I really have a problem many years in my bush beans with white mold taking off during prolonged wet periods, which we get at least every other year. I'd like a high yield dry bean that I...

I was noodling around on the internet looking for information on bean crosses and stuff (as one does) and I ran across this article talking about flower morphology and outcrossing in domesticated and wild species of Phaseolus. There were lots of interesting tidbits with links to other articles...

Yes. You unknowingly planted some seeds of F1 Avalon crosses in with your Avalon seeds, so they produced F2 seed. The color patterns, shape, size of the crosses you found might not show up again if you plant some of those F2 seeds. Because the F2s will be segregating and becoming more...

Frost irrigation does work, but there is a limit to how cold it can be and still be protective. I also think that you managed to thread the needle with your pole beans and keep them protected. The big problem with MORE ICE = MORE BETTER idea is that ice is HEAVY. Pole beans probably...

It seems safe to assume that SOME of the Avalon you planted was F1, since you are seeing multiple different colors and shapes. But even in a single pod that contains a cross, it isn't likely that ALL the seeds are necessarily crosses, because the bean would also have been exposed to its own...

In beans, the seedcoat is always maternal tissue, and the size and shape of the seed is controlled by the mother plant as well. So the offspring seed of a cross will look like seed of the parent variety, Avalon in your case. It would technically be F1 hybrid seed. When you plant that seed...

They have the Pretzel Bean Cowpea at the Roughwood Seed Collection too.

I grew Cornplanter Purple this year, it is seed I originally got from someone at a local seed swap. I have grown it once before, but I forgot about it and only remembered it was there when I was weeding an overgrown corner, and harvested the remaining sound dry beans. This year I grew it more...

I've gotten good amounts of seed or dry pods from all the beans I got from you except Hiawatha. I just noticed the first maturing pods on the Hiawatha the other day, but I don't have any harvested yet. It is far enough along that I should get a good amount of seed. There are pleanty of full...

That seems to have happened to me this year, on three trout/cattle pattern beans I bought from Russ's store. Some were more extreme than others. The Jacob's Cattle Amish was supposed to do this very little, and the color/white balance is still pretty good. Not as much white as what I planted...

First 2025 dry bean food of the year for us. Italian Bean Salad with fresh Dolloff beans.

Fresh shelled seed from dry pods of Dolloff and Golden Lima. If they aren't one variety with two names they are so close of sister varieties that they are indistinquishable. Vines and pods are the same, and flower and set dry pods at the same time. Very productive and early for a pole dry...

On that third photo, are those ants digging into the pod between the top two visible beans? I have a few pods of Cornplanter purple that I've noticed something a bit similar, where the pod appears to be splitting open, but not so extreme as in your pictures. The splitting pod on my beans are...

This year I did a small comparison trial between Dolloff pole bean and Golden Lima, Leigh Hurley on her old "Extreme Gardener" blog speculated that they might be descendants of Horticultural Lima, or one or both might BE Horticultural Lima. I planted about 15 row feet of a 50 foot row of...