2021 Little Easy Bean Network - Bean Lovers Come Discover Something New !

[Artorius]

@Artorius,

I ordered the Coon bean for you this morning.

@Bluejay77
Thank you!

 

[flowerbug]

I am trying to build a seed collection, and up until last year I had no soybeans/edamame in there, so I tried some in 2020 - Agate, Sayamusume and Beerfriend. They were all productive, especially Agate. So I've got 3 now, plus this year I grew Hokkaido Black, Gaia, and another black one whose name I can't remember at the moment. Didn't have near as good luck as last year! But it's a start. Because my supply is just beginning I haven't cooked many up yet (but I admit I quite like the taste of raw, fresh edamame seeds) but I've bought frozen edamame and liked them. Plus, the seed companies here are really running low on soybean seed stocks, I'm guessing because the nutrition profile is so good on them, so I thought it might be wise to get some for that reason too.

I just love bean survival stories too @jbosmith ! I was out today in the garden and saw a bunch of beans that must have fallen from plants when I harvested dry pods. I hadn't even seen any open pods, let alone seeds on the ground, yet low and behold, I have a bunch of bean plants starting right now out there, in mid October 🥰 ! Frost will come soon I'm sure, but it amazes me that they sprouted in October and have managed to put out true leaves!

Cha Kura Kake Soy (from @Zeedman) works well for me here (should be a short enough growing season for you too), the hardest thing about growing edamame here is protecting them from the chipmunks or other critters. if i ever figure out how to do a cross-the-border seed swap i'll be sure to include it if you don't pick it up before then.

i have had so many bean sprouts this year because of all the rains we've been having and so many beans were discarded as i picked pods i'd just drop them on the ground knowing later on i'd be burying them as i cleaned up the gardens for winter. worm food is always appreciated..

as for survival stories this picture shows how a bean that was broken off by some heavy winds decided to keep on growing anyways and it developed quite the callous at the site of injury. it looks like a face to me.

 

[flowerbug]

Well, I'm not sure about total yield because the deer nibbled on them quite a bit early on and I had a small planting, but the main problem was the pods. There is ONE TO THREE lentils per pod. Picking them is painfully slow, let alone shelling them! I don't know anything about the following site but there's a picture at the top. The plants are certainly lovely!

How to Grow Lentils in 3 Simple Stages

By the end of this article, you'd not have only learned how to grow lentils, but also some other practical tips you can use in maximizing...

www.hortzone.com

when growing bulk beans and i feel like i want to speed up the shelling process i can usually find a method that works. i've no experience with lentil pods because my one attempt at growing them i had only a few seeds to plant that year and while i did like the foliage i didn't get any pods to set at all (i'm not even sure the plants bloomed).

one method i have used for bulk beans is to put them in a pillow case and then walk on them (when they are fully dried as i don't want to ruin the beans). i did that for soybeans and that worked well. there is some work after that to get all the beans sorted from the chaff and finding any remaining beans in the chaff that i might want but it does speed things up. there are other methods for harvesting too (i've seen boxes built with slats in the bottom where you can walk on the beans to get the pods to break open but the slats help the beans fall down between them so you're not trampling the beans so much). and there is the filling up a sack and beating it with a stick method. etc.

i end up shelling mostly by hand (even the bulk beans) because i have the time plus i want to see each pod open and discover the new things that have happened so i don't mind putting in the time. it's not like i have a ton of things to do here some days (with the rains we've been having i'm getting almost caught up again).

I tried growing cow peas this year and, though I had marginal luck with most varieties, the few pods that I got had more like 10 beans per pod. They're a little bigger too of course, but still pretty small. Still, that many beans per ponds makes them far less time consuming to manage. The two varieties that have done the best for me so far are Fast Lady Northern Southern and Grey Speckled Palapye in case you're interested. They're in my warmest garden though so a surprise comeback by another variety is still possible.

i had a good crop of pods growing but too much rain later in the season meant a lot of pods didn't have dry beans in very good conditions. like the lentils i loved the foliage and habit of the plants and they grew well here. i didn't eat any of the pods at green/fresh stage or even the shelly bean stage but i think those are good eating so they may be worth growing just for those to add to the mix if you feel you need more bean diversity. my own preferences went away from adding them as i have plenty enough going on already...

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Bluejay77 Earlier in the year you mentioned that sometimes growers will send you back extra seed on varieties that did super well for them. There are some varieties where I could send you back extra, but I don't think this would be possible with our shipping arrangement over the border? Or is it? There are even a few network beans on your site that I didn't get from you but I'd be happy to send you some seeds if you'd like, as I happened to grow a few of them this year. I'm not sure what is possible in terms of sending you some extras because I think the return package is counted to the bean exactly. Any ideas?

I was told by one of the government employees in the examing station in New Jersey that if you put in extra seed and that extra seed is over a certain amount of weight they would remove the extra and discard them. I don't remember what the total amount of weight was that they considered extra and I didn't make a note of it. So the best thing to do is probably just stay with the packets that I sent.

I'm very happy that I found my calling in life so to speak and that it has brought much pleasure to gardeners and growers of beans in many places around the world. I guess I'm like a Johnny Appleseed of beans. I spread them to as many people in as many different places as possible so they will have a chance to survive into the future. I hope all the varieties of everything in the garden on farms and seed banks will always have enough people taking an interest in them. To keep and grow them. To make them flourish to the end of the world itself.

 

[baymule]

I was told by one of the government employees in the examing station in New Jersey that if you put in extra seed and that extra seed is over a certain amount of weight they would remove the extra and discard them. I don't remember what the total amount of weight was that they considered extra and I didn't make a note of it. So the best thing to do is probably just stay with the packets that I sent.

I'm very happy that I found my calling in life so to speak and that it has brought much pleasure to gardeners and growers of beans in many places around the world. I guess I'm like a Johnny Appleseed of beans. I spread them to as many people in as many different places as possible so they will have a chance to survive into the future. I hope all the varieties of everything in the garden on farms and seed banks will always have enough people taking an interest in them. To keep and grow them. To make them flourish to the end of the world itself.

You truly did find your calling in life. Just think about all the bean growers out there, not just in the USA, but across the world that you have inspired, sent seeds to and they now are growing beans, to keep alive the many old varieties. You are truly a Blessing on this earth and when that day comes that you meet your maker, he is going to say "Well done."

 

[flowerbug]

the Sacre Blue off types continue. i picked these from the fence yesterday. there might still be some out there yet as i have not picked everything in that area.

with this season running so long i probably could have had a bumper crop of Limas on the fence but gave up on them this year. figures. lol diversity is always a good idea.

 

[jbosmith]

when growing bulk beans and i feel like i want to speed up the shelling process i can usually find a method that works. i've no experience with lentil pods because my one attempt at growing them i had only a few seeds to plant that year and while i did like the foliage i didn't get any pods to set at all (i'm not even sure the plants bloomed).

one method i have used for bulk beans is to put them in a pillow case and then walk on them (when they are fully dried as i don't want to ruin the beans). i did that for soybeans and that worked well. there is some work after that to get all the beans sorted from the chaff and finding any remaining beans in the chaff that i might want but it does speed things up. there are other methods for harvesting too (i've seen boxes built with slats in the bottom where you can walk on the beans to get the pods to break open but the slats help the beans fall down between them so you're not trampling the beans so much). and there is the filling up a sack and beating it with a stick method. etc.

i end up shelling mostly by hand (even the bulk beans) because i have the time plus i want to see each pod open and discover the new things that have happened so i don't mind putting in the time. it's not like i have a ton of things to do here some days (with the rains we've been having i'm getting almost caught up again).




i had a good crop of pods growing but too much rain later in the season meant a lot of pods didn't have dry beans in very good conditions. like the lentils i loved the foliage and habit of the plants and they grew well here. i didn't eat any of the pods at green/fresh stage or even the shelly bean stage but i think those are good eating so they may be worth growing just for those to add to the mix if you feel you need more bean diversity. my own preferences went away from adding them as i have plenty enough going on already...

I clean some beans that way. Ga Ga Hut comes to mind and I suspect Russ' Red Turtles would clean well that way. I also end up shelling most of mine by hand, though, and for similar reasons. I also have the most space in my zone 3 garden but only a 90ish day growing season so I'm always dealing with a lot of shellies there (except during this crazy year!)

With lentils, I think you'd need to dry down the whole plant and treat them more like an amaranth or something. Even just picking all of the tiny pods takes soooo long.

 

[Zeedman]

I tried growing cow peas this year and, though I had marginal luck with most varieties, the few pods that I got had more like 10 beans per pod. They're a little bigger too of course, but still pretty small. Still, that many beans per ponds makes them far less time consuming to manage. The two varieties that have done the best for me so far are Fast Lady Northern Southern and Grey Speckled Palapye in case you're interested. They're in my warmest garden though so a surprise comeback by another variety is still possible.

You might have good results with the two cowpeas developed by the University of Minnesota, MN 13 and MN 150. Both are true bush habit, have very short DTMs, and good productivity. Both are easy to shell too. I am growing MN 13 this year, and it has done fairly well even after being almost drowned out in mid-summer. The photo below shows one day's harvest.

MN 13 cowpea

I have plenty of seed for both MN varieties, if you would like to try them... just send me a PM if interested. You might even be able to grow several slightly-longer DTM cowpea varieties, if you start them as transplants.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I clean some beans that way. Ga Ga Hut comes to mind and I suspect Russ' Red Turtles would clean well that way. I also end up shelling most of mine by hand, though, and for similar reasons. I also have the most space in my zone 3 garden but only a 90ish day growing season so I'm always dealing with a lot of shellies there (except during this crazy year!)

With lentils, I think you'd need to dry down the whole plant and treat them more like an amaranth or something. Even just picking all of the tiny pods takes soooo long.

I think a lot of the smaller legumes must be harvested more like grains that like beans. That is, you collect the whole plant and then thresh them, as opposed to picking pods one by one.

@flowerbug, I think I recall that, once upon a time, it was customary to shell the bean crop by putting it on the floor of the barn, covering it with burlap and then having the community come and dance on it. I think there was even a passage about that in Little Men.

I can mostly speak from my experience with rice beans. I pick them one by one, because I rarely have all that many plants and so have the time. But on a industrial scale, I assume they HAVE to be tilled up and threshed. Not even in China is labor so cheap or abundant that you could find enough people to do it by hand to make it a profitable crop.

It also sort of explains why mottling on the seeds is looked at as a detriment (besides the preference for all red seed). Mottling is an ancestral trait on rice beans, and tends to come with others like smaller seeds and (this is the important one) pod shattering at maturity. A field crop whose pods shatter is more or less useless, as you'd lost most of the crop.

 

[jbosmith]

the Sacre Blue off types continue. i picked these from the fence yesterday. there might still be some out there yet as i have not picked everything in that area.

Ohhh those are beautiful! I'm jealous of these beans.

You might have good results with the two cowpeas developed by the University of Minnesota, MN 13 and MN 150. Both are true bush habit, have very short DTMs, and good productivity. Both are easy to shell too. I am growing MN 13 this year, and it has done fairly well even after being almost drowned out in mid-summer. The photo below shows one day's harvest.

I'd love to try those next year! I even have the perfect spot for a bush variety - the edge of a community garden plot where I shouldn't shade my neighbor with a 7' trellis.

I think a lot of the smaller legumes must be harvested more like grains that like beans. That is, you collect the whole plant and then thresh them, as opposed to picking pods one by one.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say. I was hung up on the fact that I harvest wheat with scissors but cut the whole top off from amaranth with loppers and dry them