2017 Little Easy Bean Network – Everything Beans, Post It Here & Join The Fun

flowerbug

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@rdback i did that as soon as i could when i first joined because i got here via Russ's bean webpages and wanted to see what everyone had been up to for all the years i missed out.
 

Beanfan

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@rdback- Welcome to the group, I haven't been a member long and read through all the posts as well. It's fun to connect with other bean fanatics. I've been organizing my beans, though I can't plant them until May. I could plant peas soon here, but many of the cool season root vegetables like Black Spanish Radishes and Asian Radishes won't form good roots planted in spring here, I have to plant them in July then get great crops and big roots in fall.

Nancy
 

Blue-Jay

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Hey welcome @rdback. Nice to have more bean people joining us.

I made it to my home winter nesting grounds yesterday evening January 10th in Kissimmee, Florida. Will be here until about the 5th of April by that time I will be raring to dig in the dirt.

For those of you who like to do good photos of beans. I will tell you what my set up is. I have an old 4 pixel Canon camera bought about 2003 that has 14 zoom postions so I can get really close and personal with the bean. You really get to seed the colors and patterns of the beans really well with a zoom feature. I went on ebay several years ago and found a tripod that the dealer said the camera would attach to. I got that setup on a plastic 2 foot x 4 foot folding table that I bought from Office Max. The table sits in my basement under a 200 watt incandescant light Bulb with the camera on the table with the camera attached. As you can see by my website photos I have the beans sitting on a light gray background that is printed on regular copy paper using a ancient piece of software called. Adobe photo shop Business edition 1.0.

I once went to an estate sale about 20 years ago and they were selling the left over light bulbs and I picked up about eight 200 watt light bulbs. There isn't a manufacturer I don't think that even makes a light bulb that large for public consumption anymore. Maybe a 100 watt light bulb would work fine too. Anyway that is my bean photo taking setup.
 

Zeedman

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@aftermidnight , I saw your post on that forum, but haven't heard anything new. Quite honestly, after having their existence dangled in front of my face for years, I'm really frustrated... and have pretty much given up on ever growing them. All my inquiries to people who have seed went unanswered. If they ever become available, I'll probably try some; but my interests have since moved on to other projects.

Oh, and let me add my welcome to @rdback - good to see you here!:frow
 

flowerbug

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my issues with picture taking are that the camera doesn't have options for manual control of light levels. i can post-process some images and get them to appear ok, but the results are usually poor.

being hand held doesn't help either.

my LED lights are bright and should be equivalent or more than a 200watt bulb, which is another source of frustration as the camera seems to be auto correcting and making the pictures darker.

i'm not going to bother worrying about this any more for now. i'll still post some snaps once in a while, but until i get a new camera i'm not going to fret that i can't get what i want captured.
 

flowerbug

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i had some sunlight yesterday and these pictures pic up some of the hints i'm trying to capture, but still not showing what i see.

i just like pictures of beans... :)


you can see the hints of red along the edges and at the ends. wish you all could see these in person they are so purty...

p1140010_Red_Hints_thm.jpg



again you can see the hints of yellow, it is a very bright yellow. it will be interesting to see how far i can select for this to strengthen the color.

p1140015_Yellow_Hints_thm.jpg



the lavender color faded on most of the beans, but for some reason these selected ones didn't fade as much.

p1140016_Lavender_thm.jpg



i've never seen this light olive on anything i've grown before.

p1140019_Light_Olive_thm.jpg



i just like the patterns and colors of these.

p1140022_Red_Purple_White_thm.jpg
 

flowerbug

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@Bluejay77 i am guessing that they should be either bush or only fairly short runners if any. i do grow some pole/climbers but not too many.

i can't really be sure because all of these are first selections that i haven't grown out and noted habit for yet. the olive colored ones, i only have the four seeds. will be curious if they even grow. i've not had very great luck with most of my "eye" beans other than the yellow eye.

last year i planted a lot of one-off beans and could not even begin to track all of them for habit or production. which actually was probably a good thing since most of them didn't produce any results at all.

this coming year i'll keep notes on all my plantings because i've never really done it before and it would be good for me to up my observational skills.

if you have tips for what to look for (or links to articles on the topic)? i do recall a past bean thread conversation about bush, runner, half-runner and such, so i'll go digging for that before planting season starts...

if you or anyone else wants any of the beans i've ever posted here let me know, some i have enough of to send samples.

in #818 i have enough of all of those to send some beans of each except for the olive.

i do primarily grow bush or non-climbers, but if some of the greasy beans cross with anything all bets are off as to what they'll do. i'm not really sure yet what i'll do for the coming season when it comes to climbers other than a few scarlet runner beans. the greasy beans need a few week longer season and a dryer fall would be nice too from what i can tell.

when it gets to be the next bean network season i'll be interested to see what you'll want to grow out for climbers. i can reserve 20ft of fence space.
 
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