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I’m starting to get so excited about this growing season! I’m going to try winter sowing of a few flowers, but I’m agonizing over which beans to grow out this year. How does one choose, if the age of the beans isn’t an issue? Prettiest? Most useful? Rarest? I’m probably overthinking it, lol...

I got a new bean from Prairie Garden seeds (SK) that I’m excited to try. It’s my very first broad/fava bean (Vicia faba)! Apparently you can roast them as use as a coffee substitute.

I recently put all my squash seeds into my tracking spreadsheet and I have 34 varieties! I have the space but I’d have to bag blossoms if I want to grow more than one of each. Which I might do. If a squash is listed as open pollinated heirloom, I’m guessing it has more stable genetics and is...

I’m inspired to do more diverse seed-saving this year! I’ve always kept seeds from favourite peas, beans, tomatoes, peppers, spinach, herbs. But this year I’m going to branch out into squash and maybe cucumber, perhaps corn if i can get the timing right. Squash has always been a bit daunting but...

I wish everyone a fantastic growing season in 2025, health and happiness!

What little pots do you use in the holes, @Blue-Jay ?

I’ll keep that in mind, @Decoy1 😁 I’m still fairly new so I don’t have quantities to share yet but maybe next year. I’m closing in on 200 varieties but @heirloomgal has me beat by a mile, lol.

Does @Decoy1 have a seed business? In the UK? Always looking for new seed suppliers to support.

I do interplant with loads of other plants, and have lots of bees (when the dandelions bloom you can’t take a step without risk of stepping on a bee!) so maybe that’s why I don’t see crosses. Very interesting! I will keep that up.

We have tons of bees, honeybees as well as many types of native bees. The yard just swarms with them in the spring.

Poll: how far apart do you plant your vulgaris bean varieties to ensure uncrossed seed? I am reading 10-20ft, but I also took a webinar from the Seeds of Diversity group and the bean breeder kept mentioning how difficult it was to cross beans. So what spacing do you use between varieties, and...

@heirloomgal I noticed in one of your pics the vines had no leaves-was that a natural occurrence or did you strip the leaves? I’m just wondering if that helps ripen off the pods. I’m down to the wire to get some ripe pods so anything I can do… We are going down to +4/5 two nights a week now and...

I don’t have anything starting to dry down yet here (overnight temps are still double digits) but the forecast looks like I’ve got a couple of weeks until frost so maybe. A few have nice plump pods so those should be good. Here are some pics of snap pole beans I have growing. Above is Purple...

Wow those are spectacular! I like the bright red. And the speckled ivory, and the blue of course!

I am having a terrible bean year! Planted the last of my Ft. Portal Jade and got only one plant out of 15-ish beans. Our weather was just too cold and windy through the whole of June. And now we’ve got weeks of +30C and hotter with hardly any rain. I think I angered the bean gods when I bragged...

Wow that is early!

Has anyone grown Doukhobor beans? I was sent some to grow out by Seeds of Diversity but I can’t find much info on them. The PEI Seed Alliance has them, listed from the same source but minimal info on them. They are bush and snap/dry both. Pic from PEISeedAlliance

I cannot believe how cold this summer has been! Up until last week our average high temp was around 14C with nighttime temps in the low single digits. It’s taking forever for my direct seeded beans to germinate (I held off planting hoping for warmer temps but…) and it’s almost July so they may...

How did your garden do, heirloomgal? We didn’t freeze here when we had the 2C, but a few plants had some burn on the leaves from the cold and wind combined.

Yes it is nerve-wracking this year. I’ve been waiting to plant my bean starts as it’s been so cold here. We had +2C overnight temps the last two nights with daytime temps under 18C. It’s a cold spring!