Finally caught up with the end of the thread! *whew*
If there's something I haven't been behind on this year, I don't know what it is.
I grew out six LEBN varieties this year, with mixed results. Which was pretty disappointing after last year's resounding successes, but... I guess that's a good gardening lesson to learn.
Galloway (Pole): Was my first dry pole bean seed (found the last week of August; which would have been about 14 weeks). And the first set of pods was gorgeous. And then it hit semi-runner height, and just completely gave up.
Frost (Pole): Also grew to only semi-runner height (which apparently was also a problem someone else was having this year?). Almost all of the seed I got was pretty shrunken and absolutely not pretty. Did not even nearly hit my LEBN quota on this one.
Davis (Bush): Got about 15 nice-looking seeds off this. Granted, I only started with like 5 or 6 seeds, but still...
Schoko Flecken (Bush): Please let's not talk about this one. ...Actually, I just opened the envelope, and they're not as awful as I remembered, and slightly more numerous. Score!
Lila Stuart (Bush): Harvested maybe 50 beans total. I had to harvest them all wet, and they dried down okay, but they just look gross.
Ojibwe Black (Semi-Runner): Total crop failure. I blame the triplet baby squirrels in the backyard. They even ended up kicking their own mother out of her tree and banishing her to the front yard. This is what happens when children don't have boundaries. (No evidence to support this bean-destruction theory, but you might as well blame *someone*.) Hopefully Russ had more than what he sent me.
And whoever I promised Benishibori to (I think it was Russ?), they also had to get harvested wet and turned out looking disgusting.
(Cue movie-announcer voice here
THE 2020 PLAN!
Given their horrific appearance and general lack of quantity, I'm just going to keep most of these to grow out next year. I'm also going to be moving at the beginning of the year; while I'm hopeful I'll have a better growing space by the time the 2020 growing seasons starts, we all know how that really goes....
Russ, about the only beans I feel okay sending are the Galloway... do you want me to send those now, or wait and send the results of a second grow-out next year? I guess I could send a few of the others, but the one I have in any sort of quantity are not a quality you'd ever want to send out to anyone else.
