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

[Marie2020]

Oh I may have misunderstood you Marie, if you were referring to people growing drying beans in particular. If that's the case, I concur; I also know of very few that grow them for that purpose outside of seed-saving groups! But goodness knows why not, as it is indeed very possible. Folk normally end up with a glut of runner beans, but I've never known anyone to leave some to mature for the dry beans 🤷‍♀️

If you want white haricot types exclusively, Real Seeds in Pembrokeshire stock Lazy Housewife and its sub-variety Coco Sophie. For butterbeans, they have the runners Czar and Gigantes.

In Vilmorin's The Vegetable Garden, the former are given the following descriptions:


Thanks to a generous soul on the Continent, this year I'm growing the Dutch equivalent to Gigantes, known as Boerentenen - it's coping well with the non-summer we're experiencing. I believe a few people on this forum grow Piękny Jaś, which appears similar. You may be able to find some at your local Polish shop.

The Dutch have a number of landrace dwarf drying beans that are resistant to cold rains and winds. Blokkerder, Wieringer, Friese Woudboon, Groninger Strogele, etc.. Lekatt is from a recent cross with Wieringer, and it's the first bean to flower this year.

For outstanding flavour I must recommend Carol Deppe's Beefy Resilient Grex. Remarkably delicious umami and quick to ripen, taking less than 3 months here in Sussex. 🐮

Thanks Triffid

I really appreciate your help..
I've kept their number on my phone.

 

[Artorius]

Interesting, had no idea czar had this meaning in Polish! The Czar runner bean was introduced by Laxton in 1885, and was named for Czar/Tsar Alexander III.

Real Seeds won't ship to the EU anymore thanks to Brexit. If you don't already have a UK intermediary, I could help with shipping. I'm also interested in the Rhondda Blacks

All clear. In this case, in Polish it would be the word Car, which in English has a completely different meaning. I love such language puns.

Thank you for your offer to help me buy the seeds. I will remind you about it in the fall. So far, I have had no problem with online shopping in the UK. Once again, damn politics make people's lives difficult.

 

[Artorius]

Fusariosis or verticillosis also appeared in my garden. It seems to me that I managed to contain the disease on a few plants, but lost a few. Unfortunately, network beans such as Fox Family Greasy and Mother Earth were also among them. Hopefully I can harvest enough seeds from these surviving plants. So far, I have not completely lost any of the variety.

I looked closely at the wilted Fox Family Greasy leaves and didn't notice any changes characteristic of these diseases. It is possible that the plants have withered due to an imbalance between the underground and the ground parts. Some of the roots may have been damaged by too much water. When adding heat above 30 C, there were problems with transpiration. Wilting occurred only on large, grown pole beans and half-runners. All the bush beans are fine, nothing wrong with them.
Perhaps there is still a chance that the damaged plants that I considered lost will regenerate.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I've had a problem with fungus in our warm very humid climate. It's like damping off. The stem right at the soil line dies so the plant dies. It turns dark and woody. I treat the soil when planting with a fungicide with the active ingredient Trichoderma harzianum strain T-22. It's a biological, pretty expensive and I can only find it in relatively large quantities, at least as far as my needs.

One recommendation was, if you mulch, do not mulch right at the plant stem so it can stay drier. I think you would have noticed the dead plant stem at the soil line if this were your problem, but the plant acts as you describe. It wilts and dies fairly quickly once it starts.

 

[Triffid]

I hope they recover Artorius. Maybe a shade cloth would help?
Beginning to wonder whether slugs and snails are a vector for fusarium. A patch of pea plants that had many more snails present has been completely wiped out by this disease, or something similar.

 

[flowerbug]

I did cut the tops and put them on the compost, while the stubble and roots were loosely chopped with a spade and turned under. The bed did get about a month of rest before I transplanted the beans, but it rained throughout so perhaps much of the N was washed away.

i don't think leeching away would be that huge of a problem if the root clumps were big enough and the soil not too sandy. any way the remaining roots and nodules would take some time to be digested (years even if the roots were big enough) so those parts would also be gradually releasing some N.

 

[Marie2020]

All clear. In this case, in Polish it would be the word Car, which in English has a completely different meaning. I love such language puns.

Thank you for your offer to help me buy the seeds. I will remind you about it in the fall. So far, I have had no problem with online shopping in the UK. Once again, damn politics make people's lives difficult.

I try to block politics from my thoughts but at times the subject drills into your head with all the difficulty that's created for us all.

 

[flowerbug]

I try to block politics from my thoughts but at times the subject drills into your head with all the difficulty that's created for us all.

part of the reason i grow beans is that nobody craves them nearly as much as they do things like gold, cigs, alcohol, chocolate and drugs. having filling solid food for the harder times put by is also always a good idea.

also i don't think anyone would think to rustling my worms...

most people would see my bean collection and think they're shoes as i have them in shoe boxes.

at one time i tried to come up with a price per pound but the size of beans varies enough that it's not that easy a calculation to make. if i rate my labor at minimum wage it's purely a labor of love because i can buy bulk beans at the store for so much less. but what i can't buy at the store is all the rest of the positive things that happen for me and knowing that none of these beans had anything sprayed on them and that for the most part they're grown much the same way they'd have been grown hundreds of years ago. if i add entertainment value and joy that happens during harvest and shelling and seeing what is happening with my various projects well that too is also priceless.

the government, all they can do is try to make things more difficult but if they get to be too obnoxious what happens is what normally happens when laws or regulations become so rediculous that you just shake your head and get on with things. much like speed limits. some people obey them strictly and others just take them as guidelines and are willing to pay a ticket if they get caught.

as one example. in construction zones i'm pretty careful about keeping within the limits, but on a sunny day and the open road is clear and things are otherwise fine i see no reason to stick to 30mph around a corner when i can easily do 40-50mph (especially if i know the road). 30 is for winter or rainy days or in the night when i can't see what's up as well.

ok, that all aside, i can say that sometimes i do transport beans (inside or outside of my tummy) at 5-7mph over the speed limit.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

part of the reason i grow beans is that nobody craves them nearly as much as they do things like gold, cigs, alcohol, chocolate and drugs. having filling solid food for the harder times put by is also always a good idea.

also i don't think anyone would think to rustling my worms...

most people would see my bean collection and think they're shoes as i have them in shoe boxes.

at one time i tried to come up with a price per pound but the size of beans varies enough that it's not that easy a calculation to make. if i rate my labor at minimum wage it's purely a labor of love because i can buy bulk beans at the store for so much less. but what i can't buy at the store is all the rest of the positive things that happen for me and knowing that none of these beans had anything sprayed on them and that for the most part they're grown much the same way they'd have been grown hundreds of years ago. if i add entertainment value and joy that happens during harvest and shelling and seeing what is happening with my various projects well that too is also priceless.

the government, all they can do is try to make things more difficult but if they get to be too obnoxious what happens is what normally happens when laws or regulations become so rediculous that you just shake your head and get on with things. much like speed limits. some people obey them strictly and others just take them as guidelines and are willing to pay a ticket if they get caught.

as one example. in construction zones i'm pretty careful about keeping within the limits, but on a sunny day and the open road is clear and things are otherwise fine i see no reason to stick to 30mph around a corner when i can easily do 40-50mph (especially if i know the road). 30 is for winter or rainy days or in the night when i can't see what's up as well.

ok, that all aside, i can say that sometimes i do transport beans (inside or outside of my tummy) at 5-7mph over the speed limit.

There is also the fact that, if the beads you are growing are rare, you can take pride in saving them from extinction (or if you are like me, let the onus of preserving them drive you insane)

I suppose laws morph like that or not depending on what the ultimate goal of those laws is. If the goal shifts from protecting the public to obtaining revenue then you get things like that (my mom told me yesterday that local cops have started ticketing cars even if they have broken no laws to keep up their quotas, and they now keep a spotter in the municipal lot to ticket the MOMENT a car goes over it's permitted time.

And of course they is law designed to make the public perfect obedient and subservient to authority, to try and get to the old concept of "Everything that is not mandatory is prohibited."

In my case there is also the complications of dealing with my mead production. It's perfectly legal for me to make all the mead I want at home. But since I don't actually DRINK it there is the problem of getting rid of it. I can't sell it publicly , because I don't have a liquor selling license ( and my process in incompatible with getting one) I can't take anything from those who I give it to because that would count as selling (so no to the idea of say accepting raw material [honey] for finished product. I only meet my consuming relatives twice a year so that doesn't let me get rid of much. And you can't mail glass bottles.

 

[Zeedman]

ok, that all aside, i can say that sometimes i do transport beans (inside or outside of my tummy) at 5-7mph over the speed limit.

But do you buckle them in? Hmmm?