Russ
The beans are in the mail and supposed to arrive Thursday. I'm only sending six new beans this year. The first three are segregations from the Will Bonsall beans I grew last year, all three from his #27 packet. I had several others that also produced new segregations but I'm sure you'll understand I didn't get enough where I could send you any significant number and keep a few for myself. Mainly just poor production. I'll grow them again and see if I can get enough to make them worth following up on.
I called the first one Tranquility. I don't know what color it is, sort of a dull metallic brown with purplish hints. It's a relatively small bean too.
I called this one Rising Fawn. It's a segregation from Raspberry Ripple. The difference from Raspberry Ripple is only in flower color. This one is a pure white, the original has a pink blossom.
I called this one Tallulah's Treasure. It's also out of Raspberry Ripple. I had two plants that produced this black bean. Both were pretty productive but the #5 plant by itself produced over 1500 dried beans after sorting so I'm only saving seeds from the #5.
The next three are from that black bean I found in Blue Jay. All three of them were on very vigorous vines and produced well. Al had blossoms similar to Blue Jay, sort of a bluish pink color.
I'm calling this first one Ausmus Holler. The majority of the beans it produced were solid black but I'm selecting for the brown pattern. I think it will be a lot more interesting than just another black bean if it will produce that pattern.
I called this one Voodoo. It's my production winner this year, one plant produced over 2500 beans after sorting. It is solid black but has a purple tint to lt.
I called this last on Midnight at the Oasis. It's solid black. I did not see any hint of any other color than black even if I opened a pod before it was totally dry.
That's what you should see Thursday. I have tracking info if you need it.
My general plans for next year are to regrow what I harvested this year though for space reasons I may have to make some decisions. I want to grow the ones from the Will Bonsall group that repeated, it would be nice to stabilize them. I plan to grow the ones that segregated this year but didn't produce enough to send you, that's a fairly high priority. Find out one way or another about them. And of course grow some of these above.
I have one area that isn't suited to growing out these beans as I don't know if they will be pole or bush. That caused me some anguish this year. The pole beans just get way too jumbled to know what is what when I harvest them unless I really spread them out which would mean three plats at most. I think the area would be better suited to getting a couple of pole beans from you that need renewing. I'll look at your website next spring after you update the grown-by dates and probably ask you to send me a couple.
It's been fun, looking forward to next season.
