2015 Little Easy Bean Network - Old Beans Should Never Die !

Hi @teamneu,

If you sent your seed Monday it has not arrived yet. Do not send seed in regular letter envelopes. Seed sent this way gets run through canceling machines. Often most of the seed get crushed. Sometimes seed will be squirted out through the envelopes as it develops a hole in it from the seed being forced out of the envelope. Then sometimes the rest of the seed can be lost through that hole.

Best way to send seed is a small box or plastic air bubble lined envelope. Also first class is a decent and inexpensive way to send seeds. Extremely inexpensive shipping causes packages to stay in transit longer, and my experience is that the longer a package stays in transit the larger amount of time there is for something to go wrong.
 
Agreed. Those bubble wrap envelopes they have at post offices are good. They come small, medium, and large. It works best to write the address on it before packing the envelopes into it.
 
last year, dh & i were selling some of my seeds online (garlic bulbils & corn). so we bought a bunch of the smallest padded envelopes we could find. i still have about 100 or so of those envelopes left for this year. they seem to work the best for sending seeds and i have yet to get a complaint from anyone i shipped to. plus i receive a lot of seeds from others in the same envelopes and i have yet to have an issue with their seeds this way.
 
Russ I have almost nothing but bad news this year. It was a much wetter than normal year but everything was looking really good, not just your beans but the whole garden. Then I got the floods on top of wet ground. Over 7" of rain over three days then it turned hot. The whole garden either melted or drowned, tomatoes, cauliflower, beans, potatoes, practically everything. My garden is set up for my normally dry weather, the rows gently slope toward the middle to conserve water.

I had the Feijao in a separate raised bed and in kind of a sheltered location. It did great, a prolific bush bean. I have plenty to send you. The other bean varieties went in my main garden.

I had 30 seeds from you of the Imbotyi Imswi and planted them all in two separate places. That was a mistake I should have held some back for next year since I had so many. Practically all of them sprouted and were looking really strong. Then the floods hit. Most of the plants drowned and the few that were left were really stunted. Instead of big strong bush beans that looked like they were going to be the surviving plants are small. Those few that are left are just now producing a very few small dried pods. I'll have some to send back to you, not the full 25, and will keep a few to try them again next year. Some of the dried beans I do have are smaller than the ones I planted but I think they will grow next year. Some of them are more of a yellow than the dark brown they should be too. Still the genetics ought to be there if they will grow.

I lost the rest. The Lohrey's Special and Zambezi #3 are totally gone. I still have one Star 2000 plant still alive but it is only about 2" high and setting no pods. I'll leave it until frost kills it but I really have no hope. These were supposedly the last seeds you had of these varieties. And they looked so promising in early summer.

I'll wait until the Imbotyi Imswi totally dry and send you the two varieties I have. I've read of some of the trouble you and others have had this year. That doesn't really make me feel any better, just sorry for others that went through this.
 
Piet Special #8 pole bean and Solwezi #64 pole bean are in the mail and should get back to you mid week Russ. Ultimately both produced a large enough amount of seed to send you double the requested amount and keep a lot to try growing for snaps next year. These beans survived a semi-flooded garden a couple of times this summer as well as 2 periods of significant dry weather so they are tough plants.

I still have a couple original seeds from Piet and Solwezi (saved to help confirm identity). I wish I'd been as conservative when starting Admire Shnitbonen and Mammoth Golden Cluster; a lesson for the future. Let me know when the seeds arrive and if they are what you need.

Is it too soon to sign up for 2016?
 
Hi Ridge,

Well things do happen. I have more Lohrey's Special here, and I'll check the seed inventory to see if there might be more Zambezi #3 here still. When it comes to the weather we take the good with the bad and do the best we can. Next year will be another year.

My little stunted plants did produced small pods near the ground but the deer made meals on all that too. I had planted some beans I got from Joseph Simcox, and planted all of some of the varieties he gave me, and I lost them. I should know better as long as I have been gardening. The old saying says. "Never plant all of your seed".

I put new ads in our local paper for renting a new location to garden on and I got several nice offers and I took two of them. Will see what happens next year.

The weather was not favoring a lot of us this year.
 
Hi Ridge,

Well things do happen. I have more Lohrey's Special here, and I'll check the seed inventory to see if there might be more Zambezi #3 here still. When it comes to the weather we take the good with the bad and do the best we can. Next year will be another year.

My little stunted plants did produced small pods near the ground but the deer made meals on all that too. I had planted some beans I got from Joseph Simcox, and planted all of some of the varieties he gave me, and I lost them. I should know better as long as I have been gardening. The old saying says. "Never plant all of your seed".

I put new ads in our local paper for renting a new location to garden on and I got several nice offers and I took two of them. Will see what happens next year.

The weather was not favoring a lot of us this year.
 
End of the year and time for my bean report (I know I'm not technically a member of the Network, and will not be any time soon, but since it is in my plans to share my seed when and if I ever get enough to share, I suppose a running report is probably a good idea.)

As with previous years, the Mottled grey results can be described in one word...frustrating. As of this point I have harvested a grand total of ONE seed this year (and that one is about half the normal size and rather thin. read "far from good" (the only reason I know it is actually ripe is that the seed coat is fully colored; at that size an immature seed would have been white.)

As an ironic twist, now that it is almost October, and the season is winding down, ALL of the remaining Mottled Grey plants are developing blossoms now. The same thing happened last year. This has got to be the most difficult bean on EARTH! So long season that it (usually) won't blossom until around now; so sensitive to heat that summer weather kills it (which means that it won't work for someone with a warm climate like flowerweavers either; the moment it gets at all warm, the plants begin to suffer like crazy. While I CAN extend the time by bringing the pot in over the winter should more pods form (that's another point, the pod from flower set is lousy) but out of nine or so plants still alive, only one or two look big and healthy enough to make survival beyond one pod at all likely (the rest are in that "death mode" appearance, with just enough leaf mass left to maybe keep a single pod alive to maturity, then guaranteed death. The one saving grace, I suppose it that I only have to go through one more year of this. After that, all of the original seed I got will be used up and I will be down to those seeds I did get back, which will presumably be those that are short enough season or heat tolerant enough to be usable.

Fort Portal Violet progressed better (but that of course is by now wholly decended from seed I have grown myself, so any non performers are long since winnowed out of the population. Not a great crop, the heat we had mid July and August took it's toll. Plus recently I've gotten a problem I haven't had any year before. Much as some year my dill and parsley get infested with black swallowtail caterpillars, this year a lot of my FPV pods recently have been devoured by caterpillars that are either from a Blue or a Hairstreak butterfly (and the attendant ants) Apparently they'll eat rice beans too, as they have also taken the last of the pods of that; after a deer came in and devoured all but one of the pods of one of the only other two that made flowers. I went from about twenty pods to one overnight (the third plant made it through unscathed but that one only made two pods)

The bright side is that it looks like at least ONE of the FPV plants that made it though is the larger podded FPVS (I'll have to remember that for next year, FPVS is quite a bit later season than normal FPV.)
 
Hi @Pulsegleaner,

So your Mottled Grey bean started blooming last year about this time also. This is the time of the year when we are at about 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark. I wonder if you have a photo period sensitive bean. When the plants become fairly mature earlier in the season like late July or early August. Try putting some sort of cover over it after the sun has been on it for 12 hours. It might bloom earlier and produce pods before it gets too cold outside. This might also tell you weather you do have a 12 hour light sensitive variety. Just a thought.
 
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