2018 Little Easy Bean Network - Join Us In Saving Amazing Heirloom Beans

[VA_LongBean]

I finally got my stakes set up last week. Fortunately the soil was still very soft and most could be dug into place with only a couple of them that needed to be hammered in for the final couple of inches so not much pain from that. There are 7 rows of 5 stakes set on 4 foot centers each side.

Beans and cowpeas are staggered to help minimize crossing, but I may still get some.

The pole beans, cowpeas, and a pole pea are all planted. Still not ready to plant bush beans yet. I have two goals this year. 1. to taste everything properly and decide what to keep and what to give away. 2. Maximize production of pods and dry beans for winter storage.

The list (4 feet of space unless noted): 16 ft King of the Garden Lima
Striped Hull Greasy Cutshort
Ozark Raxorback Cowpea
Solwezi Pole
Jim Su's longbean
African Cowpea (hard name to spell so I cheated here)
Piet Special pole bean
store bought blackeyed (green?) cowpeas
Kentucky Wonder brown seed pole bean
Headrick Greasy Cutshort
Pinkeye cowpea
Trionfo Violetto pole
Black Crowder cowpea
Tohono O'odham cowpea
Insuk Wang Kong runner bean (if the weather keeps getting colder we may need to switch to runner beans locally)
Galante longbean
Rattlesnake pole bean
Romano Pole
Blue Goose cowpea
Store bought black beans
Sierra Madre cowpea
and
16 feel Blue podded pole pea

 

[flowerbug]

http://bean.css.msu.edu/\/_pdf/Story_of_Bean_Breeding_in_the_US.pdf



Some reading for my Bean friends. Most of which was Greek to me.

morning read is queued up. thanks!

years ago i was googling around and found a reference to an old bean book and i sure wish i had written it down or saved the bookmark because i've not been able to find it since. wanted to read it. most older books i can request through library and i save the winter months for that kind of reading/studies.

 

[Ridgerunner]

http://bean.css.msu.edu/\/_pdf/Story_of_Bean_Breeding_in_the_US.pdf

Some reading for my Bean friends. Most of which was Greek to me.

I'll admit I did not read every word of that, some sections seemed to lend themseles to skimming, but it is an interesting article. Other than it saying beans aren't at their best inn a warm humid climate like I'm moving to, two things were really interesting to me.

Traits are either qualitatively (controlled by single or few genes) or quantitatively (multigenic) inherited.

This explains why flower color can be set relatively easily (though recessives can stay hidden a long time) since it is a single gene pair that controls it. There have to be other genes that modify shade, that's the only way I can explain all the various shades of pink or maybe where yellow comes in. Since yield is controlled by several genes that explains why I can get such a huge variety of yield from one plant to another of the same bean even if they are planted next to each other. That means it helps to only save seeds from the most productive plants.

Beans are cleistogamous which means that they are already self-pollinated when the flower bud opens.

There have to be exceptions to this but this explains why beans so often breed true. It makes those occasional cross-pollinations we see even more marvelous. What is involved in purposely cross-pollinating beans convinced me to not even consider trying to cross-pollinating any myself. With my eyesight and clumsy fingers I could never do something that delicate.

That helped me understand how early in the cross-pollination/segregation process those Will Bonsall beans I got from Russ had to be for me to get 25 different beans with no repeats out of the initial 4 crosses I planted. It makes me think that some of those that I thought were segregating well may still contain some big surprises. Time will tell.

All in all a fun read even if I don't understand a lot of it. Thanks for posting.

 

[HmooseK]

@VA_LongBean

Hey that's a good mix of beans and cowpeas!

Have you grown the Sierra Madre yard long before? My internet buddy @Zeedman gave me my start of them several years ago. I'm going on memory, but I think his resource was East-West seed company.

Anyways, I'm glad you're growing it!

 

[aftermidnight]

@HmooseK , the beans Sherry sent you, would they be the bush bean Woods Mountain Crazy bean ?

Very prolific, good fresh and great for canning.

Annette

 

[HmooseK]

@aftermidnight

I'm not sure. From your picture, it's a good possibility. Here they are.

 

[flowerbug]

...
Beans are cleistogamous which means that they are already self-pollinated when the flower bud opens.

There have to be exceptions to this but this explains why beans so often breed true. It makes those occasional cross-pollinations we see even more marvelous. What is involved in purposely cross-pollinating beans convinced me to not even consider trying to cross-pollinating any myself. With my eyesight and clumsy fingers I could never do something that delicate.

That helped me understand how early in the cross-pollination/segregation process those Will Bonsall beans I got from Russ had to be for me to get 25 different beans with no repeats out of the initial 4 crosses I planted. It makes me think that some of those that I thought were segregating well may still contain some big surprises. Time will tell.

All in all a fun read even if I don't understand a lot of it. Thanks for posting.

i'm pretty sure that crosses do happen because most of the beans i grow here i've had for a number of years and haven't added any new ones from outside at least three years maybe even five or more (i'd have to check my records). unless these are previous ones still segregating from crosses that happened before i got them. i wouldn't be able to tell without genetic testing each and every bean planted. i don't have the $ for that for sure...

however, with the number and variety of bees we have here i'm quite sure they are doing some later pollinating and it does seem to take in some cases. i get enough crosses each season showing up that it can't all be from previous beans.

like you, i say enjoy it all, i sure do. a few of those words i had to look up too.

 

[aftermidnight]

@aftermidnight

I'm not sure. From your picture, it's a good possibility. Here they are.

Sure looks like them, Sherry's screen name is Mawma look up the thread Woods Mountain Crazy beans on GW, George also has a thread on them on GCSS.

 

[reedy]

For a long time I believed the notion that beans don't cross but in my garden it is very far from true. Bumblebees are the culprits. They often don't even wait for the flower to open, they chew or pry it open, I'v watched them do it.

I'm sure if I wanted to cross specific beans all I would have to do is plant say, five seeds on the same pole. One variety A and the other four variety B. I don't know what the exact breakdown would be but a high % of the seeds on A and some on B would be crossed. Then just grow out the seeds from A for a couple generations and find the new beans.

I have a large tan bean from a cross between KY Wonder and a black bean called Ideal Market. I think last year was the F4 and I'v been planting just the large tan seeds but I still got most of the original segregation in last years crop. So, what I don't know is how long it would take to stabilize for a specific new kind.

 

[VA_LongBean]

@VA_LongBean

Hey that's a good mix of beans and cowpeas!

Have you grown the Sierra Madre yard long before? My internet buddy @Zeedman gave me my start of them several years ago. I'm going on memory, but I think his resource was East-West seed company.

Anyways, I'm glad you're growing it!

Yes, Zeedman was my source, both times. I grew the variety around 2008 and my family (parents, brothers, grandmother) loved them so much we saved almost no seeds at all!Those seeds succumbed to a cold and wet spring.

My new stock was acquired a couple of years ago and seems to do well here.

The Tohono beans are sprouting!