2016 Little Easy Bean Network - Gardeners Keeping Heirloom Beans From Extinction

Yeah, I learned some lessons this year too.

@Hal , Sorry it took me so long to post these. They were taken a few days ago, at night. Backs of the leaves... I expected I would find mites or aphids. Found 4 different bugs, but only one of each, lol. That first one looks like a tiny beetle larva to me, one caterpillar of course, and I'm unsure of the last 2.



This plant did go on to bear quite a few beans, despite how terrible it looked. (#49 outcross, only 1 plant)

Here's how the #47's are doing. If I had it to do over, I wish I had separated all 4 plants so I could distinguish them better. Two had green vines, two had red. Of the two with green vines, I believe I have two different pod colors even there.

#47-A (green vines), first snap beans around Aug. 15th, of the two plants I had some made plain green pods and some were speckled, pods have strings, 4-5" long pods.


Dry seed...


Now here is #47-B (red vines), quite a difference! They began bearing snap beans more than 2 weeks later, on Aug. 29th. Beautiful fushia blooms and the bean pods are sprayed with dark purple. These pods are tougher than the A's, also have strings, their flavor is unremarkable. It has been really dry. We need rain, so I don't know if that might have something to do with it.

#48 shows much promise as a productive, compact bush, stringless snap bean with good flavor. Pods are 4-5" long and some have purple spotches. First snap beans appeared around Aug. 22nd. I found the first dry beans today, and what a surprise!


These were from 4 different pods off of one plant. I have two other plants besides. Can't wait to open the rest!

Here's a pic of how loaded the plants are...

And here's a few other random beans...

First dry beans from Aunt Jean's. This is the one I had to pull 3 plants that looked diseased. The remaining two were fine. If I had failed on any, it would have been this one, so breathing a sigh of relief to have gotten so many dry beans from them. There's more out there too.


Solwezi #2, no pic, but I wanted to report that the flavor on them is outstanding! They are sweet, juicy and tender; reminds me a little of how a sugar snap pea tastes. Pods do have strings.

One of my Appalachian grow-outs for this year, Otis Stewart, turned out to be a 3-4 foot half-runner and very productive. Nice full and bumpy 4" pods. Looks to be a greasy cut-short.


Blooming Prairie (dry bean) is a real beauty queen... I gave them a bamboo teepee, but they had no inclination to climb.


@marshallsmyth , look at the huge leaves on these Weaver!


And Black Neptune Lima too...


Super long racemes on these Colored Willow Leaf Limas. Can you imagine if every bloom becomes a pod!


That's just some of the exciting things going on in my bean patch.

Hi @journey11, None of your images from your posts are showing up. Did you save your images as .jpg images or something else? Also have you named your photos in lower case? I know this makes a difference when I put images on my website.

Bluejay77 said:

Hi @journey11, None of your images from your posts are showing up. Did you save your images as .jpg images or something else? Also have you named your photos in lower case? I know this makes a difference when I put images on my website.

Click to expand...

I linked them from my Google photos. Maybe that was not a good idea. Let me go back and upload them directly...

journey11 said:

@Hal , Sorry it took me so long to post these. They were taken a few days ago, at night. Backs of the leaves... I expected I would find mites or aphids. Found 4 different bugs, but only one of each, lol. That first one looks like a tiny beetle larva to me, one caterpillar of course, and I'm unsure of the last 2.

View attachment 16179 View attachment 16180 View attachment 16181 View attachment 16182 View attachment 16183

This plant did go on to bear quite a few beans, despite how terrible it looked. (#49 outcross, only 1 plant)

Click to expand...

If those few little holes are the worst of your insect damage you have gotten by very well. You should see what Japnese beetles do to some of my bean leaves here. They totally skelatonize some of the leaves on some of the plants, and that's not as bad as what they used to do when they first showed up here 5 years ago.

Anyway all the photos are showing up nicely now.

Bluejay77 said:

If those few little holes are the worst of your insect damage you have gotten by very well. You should see what Japnese beetles do to some of my bean leaves here. They totally skelatonize some of the leaves on some of the plants, and that's not as bad as what they used to do when they first showed up here 5 years ago.

Anyway all the photos are showing up nicely now.

Click to expand...

This is that bean plant that was oddly mottled yellow on top the leaves. Those little guys surely didn't cause that I figure.

I saw only a handful of Japanese beetles around here this year. Last year they were on everything. I drowned them by the bucketful. I am seeing a lot of brown marmorated stink bugs in the bean patch though, especially at night. They suck the juices out of things. Can't tell that they've done much to the beans, but they sure can make a tomato skin look unpalatable.

journey11 said:

I am seeing a lot of brown marmorated stink bugs in the bean patch though, especially at night. They suck the juices out of things. Can't tell that they've done much to the beans, but they sure can make a tomato skin look unpalatable.

Click to expand...

They will leave a brown scar on the bean pods too, and if it happens early enough the pod gets a bend/kink in it because it can't grow around the damaged site. I am seeing a lot of these pop up in my garden this year too