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

[Blue-Jay]

@journey11

That's so neat you had such great success with these two beans. Those two beans are both absolutely beautiful. You've done an incredible job with them.

It seemed like once the state of Texas got all pretty much wetted down again with lots of rain this spring. The moisture spread north and east all over the country east of the Rockies. I hear that same story again and again where gardeners are having their gardens under perform because of so much rain this summer. Large parts of eastern Texas is now back into moderate to extreme drought again. I suppose that could be the drying effect of the summer heat. After the middle of July it got really dry here again for awhile. Recent rain has wetted us down again and greened up everyones lawns.

 

[journey11]

Yeah, it was unfortunately too much of a good thing, but knowing what everyone on the other side in drought has gone through, I have no room to complain. Except for tomatoes and melons, the second half of the summer turned out productive.

 

[VA_LongBean]

Solwezi Variant has finally produced mature seed. So far I have 15 seeds that reached complete maturity and 4 from a pod that I picked too soon. The mature ones are (to my eyes) pinkish grey, with a dark hilum and are a puffy ovoid shape. The immature ones are much lighter in color, but the hilum has already colored up. I suspect that these might be a bean for dried beans, but I probably will have to wait for 2016 to try it.

These sprouted in April and went into the ground some time in May. So they took about 120 days + from sprouting to mature seed for me. Hopefully they will grow more rapidly planted in ground. Either way, this one is not for the short season gardener.

 

[flowerweaver]

The Cowpeas are starting to harvest. The second half of our summer has been dry and hot so they are doing well, however the fire ants have begun eating them so I'm getting stung on my hands. Soon the field mice will begin.

The Lima beans could have used a 20 foot trellis and are pulling the two 10 foot trellises together with their brute strength! There are numerous flowers and the bumblebees are working 22 varieties so no telling what might grow out next year.

So far there have been a lot of immature Limas in the early pods so I am thinking now they need more irrigation? I have not had this issue before, am irrigating as much as usual.

The pole beans are harvested, I'm just trying to find time to write the report. In general they fared better than the bush beans in the excessive rain, some did better than others. Molley's Zebra was definitely one of the winners.

Still, there was only enough of everything for seed saving, and none for eating. It's pretty sad when you grow 115 kinds of beans and didn't get to taste one!

Okra and summer squash are setting. I have hundreds of brassica starts waiting for cooler temps to be planted out. Keeping busy!

 

[journey11]

@flowerweaver , those Molley's Zebra will always be one of my favorites too. I can see them doing really well at the farmer's market.

 

[flowerweaver]

Had a nice surprise shelling cowpeas this afternoon. It appears to be a cross between Dolicho and Tetapeche Grey Mottled.

 

[897tgigvib]

That's wonderful Sage! Make sure you grow plenty of those next year and find out how they segregate.
They look like TRICOLOR Cowpeas. How rare is that? I see grey, white, and beige mottled in the grey. Actually, maybe even quadricolor because of the black ring around the hilum.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

the color almost looks like the granite stone we have here in New England! they are beautiful!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

That's wonderful Sage! Make sure you grow plenty of those next year and find out how they segregate.
They look like TRICOLOR Cowpeas. How rare is that? I see grey, white, and beige mottled in the grey. Actually, maybe even quadricolor because of the black ring around the hilum.

I'm not sure it actually is all that rare. The cowpea I mostly grew this year (which since I don't know it's real name, I made one up, and call Owl's Eye.) is technically four colored, if not possibly five or six. the base is white, the outer "eye" is mottled brick red and medium tan there's a solid red ring inside that, and nearest the hilum it sort of orange, or in some cases, green (though whether it is actually green, or those are ones that didn't ripen as much. I have no way of knowing.) And while that pattern was certainly rather unusual (which is why I planted it) it WAS the majority type in the bags I was working with, so it couldn't have been that obscure on it's home turf. And it actually wasn't the first time I had even seen that color mixture; some years before I ever found those bags , I pulled a few identical looking cowpeas out of a bin of black eyed ones in Flushing (which were probably the same type) and there are at least two other cowpea seeds in my test collection with that pattern, one also from china (bigger seeds, bigger, more splash like eye, no inner ring) and one from presumably Volta in Africa (that one was an off type in a packet of Tsenebawu cowpeas I bought from Ricters, so it presumably came from where the rest of the packet did)

 

[PhilaGardener]

Very pretty, @flowerweaver ! It will be interesting to see if they are stable when you grow them out next year.