2017 Little Easy Bean Network – Everything Beans, Post It Here & Join The Fun

@Bluejay77
That is certainly helpful!
So far I've been gathering seeds in paper bags and buckets. But then I have maybe 2 kinds of beans along with seeds from other plants and am able to tell them apart till I get to the house. When i get inside I put the beans in flat cardboard boxes or on a newspaper and add a printed label of which kind it is. The other seeds I leave in the bags or also in a box or on paper but with a label.

So finally the weather has returned so some summer temperatures this week although the forecast is that next week it gonna rain daily. I hope my Lima's are gonna produce at least some seeds but I'm afraid I've seeded them too late.

Limas are always a gamble for me. If we get a long Fall, I can get great yields; in other years with early frosts, nothing.

Well, better late than never, right?

I read through all the previous bean network threads last winter, and enjoyed the heck out of them! I am a bean fiend but had never tried to grow beans for seed before, so I started out small (1 variety from the growout last year: Cleopatra).

I was SUPER excited to get started (I’m still super excited!), but between the nonstop rain this spring through the end of May (my peas didn’t even start producing until July!), re-roofing our house, and then being gone nearly every weekend between the end of June and now, my Cleopatras have gone from looking like this:



to looking like this:



Lol! I guess that’s what you get for going out of town for 10 days in the depths of summer. Lucky I’m growing those beans for seed, because I’m not going to be able to get into that bed ‘til I tear everything out in the fall. (There are also some British Pop runner beans from Adaptive Seeds to separate the Cleopatras a bit from the other Phaseolus vulgaris in the garden.)

It was 107 degrees here while we were gone… thank goodness for drip watering and electrical timers. Not gonna lie, when I heard about the disgustingly high temps, my first thought might have been worrying about the bean network beans while only my second thought was worrying about the cat.

I’ve really enjoyed reading about everyone’s bean projects so far, and I’ve loved the garden layout photos! Some great ideas to implement next year.

The Cleopatras are my only bean network bean this year, but I got the bean-growout fever from reading all the LEBN threads, so I started a few other projects from seeds I already had, which were getting old and had to get grown out or else. And those have been pretty interesting, too!

I grew out a number of bush beans from 2013 and 2014 seed: Arikara Yellow, Blue Lake, Contender, Provider, Purple Queen, Roma II, and Royal Burgundy (and Eastman bush limas from Sand Hill). The Arikara Yellows and the Romas killed it this year: from approximately a 10-foot row of each, I got ample seeds for both saving and cooking… score! This makes me a bit more confident I can reliably grow for the bean network next year.

I also had a 20-foot bed along the northern side of the house… i.e. a lot of filtered sun, but basically 0% direct sun. I was intending to test which beans would do best in a growing-up-a-cornstalk environment next year, so I planted one of every kind of pole bean I had in stock at the time. It equaled out to exactly 40 types, which was perfect, and I saw that as a good sign. I also wasn’t able to hook that bed up to the drip system, so they’ve been basically unirrigated through an extremely dry Oregon summer (and through the 107 degree heat wave.) Turns out… they hated it a LOT. They all hated it. Boy, did they ever hate it.

I was totally ready to give up the experiment for good, and plant lettuce there next year, but yesterday I realized a few of them had still set seed and dried down pods (Little Brown Cat from Russ via Robert Lobitz; O’odham Vayos from Native Seeds/SEARCH; Oregon Giant from Adaptive Seeds, and Spanish Música from Renee’s Garden). It was only one or two pods per plant, but still. Really, I thought, this could be the start of a new breeding program, for non-irrigated beans that grow in 100% filtered shade. On the other hand, do I really want to waste years of low-to-no yields for the potential of a good non-irrigated shade bean? Hrm.

So that’s the Oregon bean story so far this summer. /novel. *grin*

Thank you all for sharing your bean stories!

Welcome @saritabee,

Yes better late than never, and a big bean pod welcome to you. Sounds like you will be joining us beany people in 2018. This year you had some very hot weather in the PNW. How do beans do in a more usual Oregon summer?

Your beans like a minumum of about six hours of direct sunlight. 8 hours or more is even better. You can grow root crops like carrots with as little as 4 hours of direct sunlight a day.

I think they'd probably do better in a "normal" Oregon summer, honestly... it seemed like there was a LOT of blossom drop while we were gone (during the worst of the heat, luckily). I've only been in Oregon for two other growing seasons, though (and they've both been extremely dry; I'm from northern Washington, which doesn't get nearly so dry).

My neighbor grows such prolific beans he actually rips the plants out when his wife gets tired of canning beans! (Sacrilege!!) He's been growing in the same garden since 1965, though, so that probably has something to do with it.

I've got a couple "real" bean beds in decent locations in the yard... the experimental shady bean bed was more "I've got some extra lumber, and I hate weed-whacking this close to the house... I'm gonna whip some raised beds together and see what happens!" It was a massacre, though. I knew that location would be bad, but even I was a bit surprised by how much the beans hated it. ...Oh, well! Science! *grin* Carrots are a good idea. I've also got some gooseberries and currants that need to be permanently planted, and I hear those do pretty well with shade.

I built 40 feet of raised beds out along the street this spring, and that's where the primary beans are going next year.. I have tomatoes (and all the bush beans) out there this year, and they love that extra heat reflecting up off the asphalt.

Today I harvested the first big batch of the Black Coco and some of the Prelude's. The Black Coco had some slug damage on the pods unfortunately. Kenearly has still very green pods, but beans inside. Saw the first tiny pods on my Lima's. The first pole beans are gonna turn yellow in one or two weeks time, there are lots of pods on them.

The bean harvest has begun. I have harvested so far very small amounts from 35 vareities. First pod was harvested on August 17 and some first dry pods of some varieties were picked yesterday.

After the seed harvest is done I will put on my annual Big Bean Show.

@Hal,

I wonder if you still read this thread from time to time? I have been growing the Tostado bean you sent several years ago. I have had four of them growing in flower pots since early June. Would you believe none of them have even begun to bloom yet and this is August 27th. Have you ever grown the Tostado yourself? Is this bean daylength sensitive? It is a true bush bush and most of them stand about 20 inches tall. Most of my beans began blooming around the 10th of July. All the other beans I have growing in flower pots have all bloomed and produced pods and one has even given me a couple dry pods.

Russ, I've started getting a few dry pods here too but it's too early for photos. As you predicted some of the beans are stabilizing but I'll also have some new ones to name. So far it looks like Jas, Miss T, Valley View, and Tartan will carry on the name for another year, but some of those will also have new varieties named. I'm probably a couple of weeks away from getting dried pods from most of mine, and some of those are going to be very productive. The excitement is just beginning.

Bean harvesting has begun in my garden! These are my dry Bubblegum beans. For the most part the beans look the same as last year. Most of the vines produced pink bean pods like last year, except two vines produced solid green pods.

Untitled by Tricia Rosamilia, on Flickr
Pink Pods

Untitled by Tricia Rosamilia, on Flickr
Green Pods

Untitled by Tricia Rosamilia, on Flickr
Green Pods

Untitled by Tricia Rosamilia, on Flickr
This one surprised me and unfortunately I don't know the pod color.