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Very interesting, @Blue-Jay. Do you keep track of the germination success rate to see if it has dropped off for any of the varieties over the years? Are the numbers for this year only, or an average over the years? What is your standard sample size?

I got a package of beans from @Blue-Jay yesterday and I am so excited! This year, I will be growing for the network: Beurre Dore Malathini Natal Coffee Deuil Fin Precoce Grune Aus Den Karpaten Kitoba Looking forward to a great growing season!

I have what appears to be an outcross of Nigel from last year's planting. One plant in the row had purple coloring on the leaves and pods, so I marked the plant and harvested the pods separately. I was thrilled to see a purple Nigel bean as the outcome. Nigel outcross (top) growing in Nigel...

That Kitoba is quite nice! We grew Pale Grey Lavender a couple years ago and really liked it. Such nice beans and such good photos!

Trying my first soil blocking this year!

Has anyone else grown Mugungi? I think it was more of a bronzy-gray when we grew it in 2022, but 2023's batch has a steely-blue color. I'm wondering if this is a common color variation.

I would love to send you some Viola, sure! I'll PM you and work out the details. I think we could do a trade. We do eat a lot of beans each year. Dry beans are just great, because we have the flexibility of processing them throughout the winter rather than all the fresh vegetables in the...

I'm not sure what the exact dimensions are. In the picture below, the darker plants in the foreground are Viola and the lighter plants in the background are Tongues of Fire. We shelled 43 lbs of dried beans from Tongues of Fire. The photo is cropped from a panorama, so the perspective is a...

We have grown Viola for a few years now. Got our first seed from @Blue-Jay (thank you!). Each year we grow a little more since it has been such a good bean for us. We haven't finished shelling out our 2023 beans but I'm guessing we'll end up with around 40 lbs.

We found quite a few red-ish black beans among last year's Viola as we were shelling them out recently. The pods were identical and we didn't grow any other black beans in the same garden, so I'm thinking these could be an outcross, right? Some of our 2023 Viola (top) with all of the black...

The tidy Little Greenseed patch has exploded with growth and is threatening a hostile takeover of the adjacent garden rows. It's been a struggle to track each flower to the proper plant, but we are now up to 20 hand pollinated pumpkins and many more naturally pollinated. It's looking to be a...

I'm taking note of the growth habit of each Little Greenseed selection. Some are vining considerably and some are bush-like. I've also noticed at least one type that has a tendency to throw double and triple flowers. If the production and other factors are comparable, I will probably choose...

And now for 2023: We seem to have a strong crop this year. I have 4-6 plants each of the seed collected in 2021 from 2021-02, -03, -04, -08, and -09. I did not replant any from my 2022 grow-out. So far, the plants have put out vigorous growth and there are several naturally-pollinated...

An update on my 2022 (yes) grow-out: As I had mentioned previously, we had a pretty poor harvest which I think is mostly due to insufficient water throughout the season and because they were planted too late. I ended up with a few pumpkins which I stored on our unheated basement floor for the...

Gimp also runs well on Windows 😁. And I have recently started using a program called RawTherapee which complements Gimp and seems to be a very good photo editor. Both free / open-source.

You're right, @BeanieQueen - those do not look like mine. I haven't noticed any significant yellowing, but this is the first year I have grown them. You can see in the photo below of the seed I planted and the seed I harvested - there does not seem to be much difference in color. Has anyone...

Welcome @Dahlia! I have grown sprouts many times (usually from a purchased mix) and there are often mung beans mixed in. Typically the cotyledon of the seed will get used up by the sprout and the seed coat rinsed away before you eat the sprouts. You can certainly sprout common beans also, but...

Happy New Year @Artorius! Amazing photos of great beans - wow! Do you polish your beans? They look so good.

Thank you @meadow! It was probably Fedco that I read about Marfax making a good baked bean. Thanks for sharing your experience with the bean, too. I'm excited to try it.

Thank you @heirloomgal - very informative. According to the article, Fukuryu Chunaga was expected to be replaced by Fuku-uzura, though I don't see much mention of that bean online either. Interestingly, one of the distinguishing features of that plant was determinant dwarf (bush?) vs...