2019 Little Easy Bean Network - Come And Reawaken The Thrill Of Discovery

Pulsegleaner said:

More troubling news on the Ice Cream Sandwich. Whatever else it is, it is NOT powdery mildew resistant. The top third of the plants (the part above the railing) is fine but the bottoms are beginning to get that yellowy leafless look a lot of my beans do around this time of year (it is hardly unusual for the plant at the end to be just a pod or two attached to a near to totally leafless stalk). At first I thought something had just been nibbling at the leaves on the wall but then I saw the drift of dead leaflets at the base.

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Sometimes you can't have everything. Simcox has probably brought beans into the country that he had no idea how they would perform in every single climate, and delt the bean out to a number of people. Ice Cream Sandwich just might me one of those bean varieties sensitive to moister climates. The bean might do better in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona or California at a time of the year when there is not so much rain.

possibly, though Vilacabama averaged about 30 inches of rain a year, or only slightly less than ours.

Pulsegleaner said:

possibly, though Vilacabama averaged about 30 inches of rain a year, or only slightly less than ours.

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Is that where the bean originates from?

As far as I can tell, As I said, I went through Joe's blog and there is a photo that includes beans that look like ICS sandwiched between two of Vilicambamba.

It looks like I'm going to manage to get a full return of my five of my network beans this year. The Munacheda Pale FINALLY has some full size pods and I think there's enough time left for them to run their course. The more mature pods on the plant are transitioning to a striped dark red and look really cool...


The crazy productive variety this year is Nuambili - these plants were amazingly productive and I'm still pulling dried pods every couple of days. The others performed decently and I'll have enough seed for the return and to hopefully continue with the varieties.

Clockwise from top left: Dragon's Tongue, Trebulino di Domenico*, Nuambili* (plate 2), Fisole Rassacher Kipfler*, and the 3-plate: Algarve (white), Fort Portal Jade (green) and Solwezi*.


*Network Beans

Michael Lusk said:

It looks like I'm going to manage to get a full return of my five of my network beans this year. The Munacheda Pale FINALLY has some full size pods and I think there's enough time left for them to run their course. The more mature pods on the plant are transitioning to a striped dark red and look really cool...
View attachment 33096

The crazy productive variety this year is Nuambili - these plants were amazingly productive and I'm still pulling dried pods every couple of days. The others performed decently and I'll have enough seed for the return and to hopefully continue with the varieties.

Clockwise from top left: Dragon's Tongue, Trebulino di Domenico*, Nuambili* (plate 2), Fisole Rassacher Kipfler*, and the 3-plate: Algarve (white), Fort Portal Jade (green) and Solwezi*.

View attachment 33095
*Network Beans

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Mike your seed looks great. It's really fun to find a bean that is really productive like the Nwambili. Did you try any of the Nwambili as a snap bean? I bet your first frost date is probably not until about the 20th of October or later. I can usually count on first frost date here about Octber 5th to the 10th. I think last year we had a warm October and didn't get our first frost until about the 25th of October. I hope that happens again this year. Long range forcast though is for slightly below average for October.

Bluejay77 said:

Mike your seed looks great. It's really fun to find a bean that is really productive like the Nwambili. Did you try any of the Nwambili as a snap bean? I bet your first frost date is probably not until about the 20th of October or later. I can usually count on first frost date here about Octber 5th to the 10th. I think last year we had a warm October and didn't get our first frost until about the 25th of October. I hope that happens again this year. Long range forcast though is for slightly below average for October.

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@Bluejay77, I'm hoping for a later frost here too. Not just for the beans but I've got a bunch of tomatoes still needing some time. I didn't taste test the Nwambili but I'm certainly going to grow it again given how well it does here.

i'm just kinda rambling on here in no particular order.

trying to get all the bean gardens picked through before rains return. three down, four to go, should be able to get two more done today.

Mom is helping to pick the lima beans. so we will be having those for dinner later. a lot of green shellies will be sacrificed for the cause of happy tummies.

i have started to find some pods of the longer ripening beans finally get ready. so i have a few seeds of Hidatsa and Blaugraue finally. i always worry a frost is going to come along and ruin these later running beans so i'm happy if i can get just a few seeds to start with at least then i know i have something.

after the rocky start with some of the Victoria Brown Eyes i can say that they are a fine bean for here. they've done pretty well. the ones that didn't do well at first were those planted in the more clay soil in one garden, but i replanted and those did ok and the seeds i put in a sandier garden did just fine. i have no idea how they might work as shellies, but the beans that come out at the shelly stage are nice big and easily removed from the pods - like they fall right out.

i was also happy today to have the last of the beans on the lone Early Warwick plant which survived picked and a dozen or two of the beans being perfectly formed. i wasn't even going to grow them again after last year, but decided to try a few out in different soil just to see if they would finish well or not.

Monster beans that i planted did pretty well, almost every plant was true to the Monster name. i'm getting some fun variations and even a few which reverted back to Dappled Grey. i think. i haven't shelled them out yet, but that is what my first impression is...

of the fence beans i took most of the purple podded beans yesterday and shelled them last night. the beans are a off-white/pink/pale color to start with, i think they get darker as they age, but one of the plants gave me black/dark seeds. i don't really want black seeds so we'll eat those when they're dried (i'll keep a few dozen to give away in case someone wants them).

Bomba, i have a few tiny seeds from them so far and a few little larger seeds, but not really finished yet. i'm hoping another week or two will be enough to give me some other larger seeds.

i have all the parts of Dappled Grey. a solid grey/blue speckled pattern, a splotched eye pattern with brown/tan markings (Hidatsa sheild figurish) and then some variations on brown solid. so that line of beans was stable for however long those beans were grown and then decided to revert to parental types or somehow became unstable or recrossed with something else which started it to give out other segregations. fun!

happiness is: a rainy day and all of the most important garden's pods picked and ready to be shelled. a project we were going to go work on has been cancelled so it is like an extra bonus day too...

yesterday i shelled out some of the beans i call Sunset, and they are showing to be a pretty resilient bean. not perfect of course, but the pods were looking kinda grim but a lot of the seeds were just fine. i still haven't grown enough all at once to see how they are as a dried bean, but perhaps next year...

with all the box tops and containers here in my room i'm figuring that about 50 different beans is a bit too many for me to work with, especially when some of them i keep the early selections apart from the later ripening beans and then selections within some of those too. heh...

it would really help me to plant some beans in larger blocks so when they are ready they are not smothered or overgrown by neighboring plants. sometimes i find plants later on which were ready and they're dried and somewhat rotting because they've been overgrown and i didn't see them hiding under there.

also when trying to work with a new bean that hasn't fully been evened out some of the plants may finish earlier and if i don't have an entire block devoted to those plants i may not catch those earlier finishing beans in time. and those are ones i'm most interested in (early is good for us here).