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

[meadow]

aha! So this is something I've always wondered -- whether obstructions and distracting plants could be used as barriers.

We have a large number of bees here, and a portion of the back pasture has been allowed to develop into bumblebee habitat (and garter snake refuge! 🥳). I planted borage in the middle of the larger garden last year, and it acted like a bee magnet! The bumbles were still bobbing along through the garden, doing their thing, but otherwise the winter squash was ignored. Which was pretty much the opposite of what I was aiming for! 😅

I'd be curious to know which of your beans survived the PNW heat wave; all of mine did great except Rockwell and Nez Perce. Chester Skunk and Ojo de Cabra were particularly productive; they pulled the poor trellis over!

Chester Skunk and Eye of the Goat are both of interest to me. It was so unusually hot last year; I wonder if they would do well in a typical year.

Hidatsa Red, Annie Jackson, and Haricot Tarbais did well. Hidatsa Shield did very poorly.

 

[flowerbug]

Never tried lima beans -- guess I have too many traumatic memories from frozen lima beans at church potlucks 🤣 Are they good as dry beans?

i've always liked lima beans as either shellies or cooked from dried beans. if you didn't like them as a kid but you eat a lot beans you may like them now.

We do grow plenty of cucurbits of all sorts; sounds like they'd do well as barrier crops for beans? I've heard that it's helpful to time the flowering of barrier crops for the crops you're trying to protect; any idea if cucurbits will do the trick for beans?

i don't think they work as barrier crops as well as perhaps some others might. i grow way too many beans with different flowering times to even think of any single crop as a barrier or distraction for the bees. to me they are all bee fodder and i don't mind if some crosses happen. if i don't like the results i can cull them out and if the results are interesting then i can develop them and eventually give them a name if they become stable enough.

i'm happy to see native bees around and want to encourage them. cosmos and onion flowers are two of the most attractive i've seen so far and i grow some of these as much as i can to give the bees plenty to work with. in the very early spring there are some tiny white flowering plants called Spring Whitlow Grass (which is not a grass at all) and it is so funny to see the bumblebees forage on it because they are so big they knock the flowers right down to the ground but they'll persist for the food they provide.

 

[Ridgerunner]

HI, welcome from Louisiana, glad you joined.

Wow, different varieties even

I don't know how true it is but several years ago I read that some pepper flowers were shaped a little differently than others, different stamen or stigma lengths or shapes. This effected how easily they cross pollinate. I'm not sure if that is how easily the pollinators can pick up pollen or how easily they can deposit it in the right place. Supposedly the hot peppers were more prone to cross. I could see this type of thing applying to different types of beans. And I could see different pollinators having different effects.

All too complicated (and some supposition). I don't see how we could use this in our gardens anyway so, yeah, separation.

 

[flowerbug]

i opened a big can of worms today. the old e-mail program. restored some backed up files and ran the program and imported them. no errors encountered. i really disliked the e-mail program back then and my opinion of it now is even worse. what i want to do is export all the e-mails into a different format and of course there is no easy way to do that as of yet. i'll keep looking.

in the meantime i went and poked around looking for some messages and found one from when i was doing some of my earliest trades for bean seeds and in there was a list of things i had available and sources and the other e-mails i'd been exchanging with people for trades. all good information to have until you come across something which gives rise to a question which you do not have an answer to... oy... so down that rabbit hole i'll have to wander too eventually.

 

[heirloomgal]

Got some bean mail today! Sultan's Golden Crescent. It's one of those (pole) wax beans that grows in a shrimp shape, like Annelino. I really like Annelino so I'm curious to try this one. Yay!

 

[capsicumguy]

I'm dying to know if Beefy Resilient Grex truly tastes like beef as Carol Deppe claims!

OH MY GOSH IT DOES TASTE LIKE BEEF. Similar, anyway -- like stewing beef kinda. Our house is divided though; my bride tasted them and said, "they taste like beans." 🤷‍♂️

They were quite pretty after soaking -- revealed all these colours that weren't visible before. Jade, indigo, etc. I'm not so sure about cooking quality though. I mean, they're fine and beany, but there's so much variability between seeds that some were still pleasantly firm and some were already getting mushy. Our beans mostly just end up in burritos anyway, so no big deal.

Fort Portal, Uganda is actually quite odd, climatically. It's more or less ON the Equator, so the days and nights are more or less equal in terms of length year round. On the other hand, it's also very high up, so the temperatures are actually quite cool. The only other place I can think of that has a climate like it is probably somewhere in the Andes (another zone of problematic plants.)

Oh interesting. Also, how do you know this?! I feel like I've come across this treasure trove of bean knowledge here -- like really deep stuff, history and culture and whatnot.

Curious that you got so much variation in your beans. I'm pretty sure some of the colours I planted from Bantu didn't come up, while a boring wrinkly gray one that I don't remember planting was quite abundant. I got some mustard ones too, but I wasn't quite sure if it was from a neighbouring bean. There was a very fun lemon-yellow one too!

i've always liked lima beans as either shellies or cooked from dried beans. if you didn't like them as a kid but you eat a lot beans you may like them now.

Well, maybe it's time to try something new. There are some beautiful patterns out there!

Thanks to everyone for all the isolation/pollination advice. Sounds like it's wisest just to obey recommended isolation distances.

 

[flowerbug]

OH MY GOSH IT DOES TASTE LIKE BEEF. Similar, anyway -- like stewing beef kinda. Our house is divided though; my bride tasted them and said, "they taste like beans." 🤷‍♂️

They were quite pretty after soaking -- revealed all these colours that weren't visible before. Jade, indigo, etc. I'm not so sure about cooking quality though. I mean, they're fine and beany, but there's so much variability between seeds that some were still pleasantly firm and some were already getting mushy. Our beans mostly just end up in burritos anyway, so no big deal.

haha, i love beans rather plain and never pre-soak them when cooking. Mom normally wants to turn them into other things. we do eat a lot of beans as burritoes. when i cook them i normally make a big enough pot so we can freeze them. i drain the liquid off for that because Mom hates it anyways (i'd eat it myself ) and that gives the beans some air space so they won't crack the quart jars, but if you are freezing them with liquid make sure to provide enough expansion space.

i like them plain or with a bit of butter the best. each bean variety may have it's own distinctions in texture and flavors and i really enjoy that. i also do make blends of many kinds just for something different.

 

[flowerbug]

and while i'm here... those old e-mails... i found some handy utility programs in linux which do exactly what is needed so that's been really good in that i don't need to use the horrible e-mail interface from the older program and i can get the files into my more recent one instead. that's a huge headache i don't have to squint through any longer.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Oh interesting. Also, how do you know this?! I feel like I've come across this treasure trove of bean knowledge here -- like really deep stuff, history and culture and whatnot.

I put Fort Portal into the internet, and got both a geographic and altitude map.

Curious that you got so much variation in your beans. I'm pretty sure some of the colours I planted from Bantu didn't come up, while a boring wrinkly gray one that I don't remember planting was quite abundant. I got some mustard ones too, but I wasn't quite sure if it was from a neighbouring bean. There was a very fun lemon-yellow one too!

Well, someone else who planted out Bantu got a odd mottled skinned bean in their growback (odd in that, like your grey one, it isn't the same shape as the rest.)

As for the Mottled Grey variations (which are really the only ones, as I mentioned the Fort Portal Mixed all came back as one as well) since beans tend to mostly self pollinate, having things come back more or less as they were is pretty much the NORMAL outcome. Joe Simcox probably saw a mix of Fort Portals and the Pebblestone like beans, thought it was all one variable type and offered it as such (a lot of the seed he offers IS the actual seed he collects, no middle grower, so it IS possible.) The other colors are probably just a few odd ones that fell in the pile and went along for the ride.


I think something sort of similar happened in the creation of Owl's Eye (one of my cowpeas) When I got the original mixed bean bags I found them in from the supermarket, there were basically three types, one that was white with a brown eye, one that was mottled all over, and one with a mottled eye (which was the commonest, and what became Owl's eye.) Probably the first two were the original types, and the third was the result of a cross (which then got selected over them). There was also a few red and white yin yang ones, but those again were probably outliers.

And Speckled Eye (another cow pea, and one I can theoretically still get, unlike Owl's) probably has a similar story based on how I find it, a brown eyed pea, a speckled all over pea, and a speckled eye pea.

And there is actually a "lost color" in the Bantu/Fort Portal Jade group. I already mentioned that I found a purple seed in my Fort Portal Jade (and that got planted with, and possibly incorporated into, the Bantu population.) What I DIDN'T mention was that there was also a steel blue one. But I lost that seed before I could plant it.

 

[heirloomgal]

and while i'm here... those old e-mails... i found some handy utility programs in linux which do exactly what is needed so that's been really good in that i don't need to use the horrible e-mail interface from the older program and i can get the files into my more recent one instead. that's a huge headache i don't have to squint through any longer.

...utility programs....linus....interface.....sounds like martian to me...👽 lol