2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[flowerbug]

🙄Some beany thoughts this evening 🙄

Lima beans. Should I ever grow them again? This year would be my 4th try. And the results were meager, just like ever other time. Jackson Wonder, Christmas and Ping. None produced enough to make the space they took up worthwhile. I've heard it all when it comes to these limas; a friend down south says her season is too short, another friend down south says they do great for her, another friend way North says her summers are too hot for them to prosper.

the bush kinds i've grown have done ok most years, this year was not great because they were planted too late and didn't have enough time to finish. i harvested a few but not enough to eat. the bush brown lima beans i've planted before were easy and early enough other than they shatter easily so they need to be picked often enough before they dry down that far. also some red lima pole beans were plenty productive here but i am avoiding pole beans these days (my fence is iffy and i don't want pole bean genes getting into all my bush and semi-runner plantings). almost all the rest of the times i've planted lima pole beans they've been really productive but very late harvest and it was too much work cleaning up after them when i was so busy with other things that it just wasn't working.

Cowpeas, two tries, modest results as well. I wonder how many trials does a variety require before you can really say I gave it a shot.

two to three times as the weather can have such an influence one season and also which gardens i have them planted in.

I can't complain, but my production was down this year compared to last year. I think I need to not be so quick to stick plants & seeds in the ground in late May. It can actually work against me. Gonna need self discipline to not fall for that late May reliable hot spell next year.

late May here is normally when i start planting out the beans - i go by soil warmth and when i start seeing volunteer beans popping up.

i also plant some early beans and hope i can get some earlier harvest and that has been working out ok, but i've not been planting large patches because i don't want to risk losing that much space or plantings (and i'm normally pretty busy just trying to get things weeded or ready or involved in other projects - arg! ).

BUT I did some counting tonight and saw that I added 81 new varieties of beans to my collection this year! It isn't tons of seed for each, but it's a start! Now I'm curious to see how many I have altogether!

i no longer count them.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Recipe book for Beans, peas, and lintels https://archive.org/details/beanspeaslentils00cana/page/14/mode/2up

Didn't realize the link I grabbed started at page 14. My bad.

Did you mean lentils, or did you actually mean lintils, because that is a vegetable as well (it's a kind of very coarse turnip, usually reserved for animal feed.)

 

[ducks4you]

🙄Some beany thoughts this evening 🙄

Lima beans. Should I ever grow them again? This year would be my 4th try. And the results were meager, just like ever other time. Jackson Wonder, Christmas and Ping. None produced enough to make the space they took up worthwhile. I've heard it all when it comes to these limas; a friend down south says her season is too short, another friend down south says they do great for her, another friend way North says her summers are too hot for them to prosper.



Cowpeas, two tries, modest results as well. I wonder how many trials does a variety require before you can really say I gave it a shot. I can't complain, but my production was down this year compared to last year. I think I need to not be so quick to stick plants & seeds in the ground in late May. It can actually work against me. Gonna need self discipline to not fall for that late May reliable hot spell next year.

I am wondering if lima beans should be classified as tropical? I was reading that they don't do well if it's too cold.
Maybe black plastic gardening cloth underneath them next try?
SOMETIMES I think about tropical like vegetables like keeping parakeets, which I did growing up. A stiff and cold breeze can kill them. Yet, tiny chickadees, adapted for winters, do just fine.
I think our tomatoes have been adapted to do well in temperate climates. Not sure about lima beans, but here is my initial search. Hope this helps!

Bean Seeds - Early Thorogreen Bush Lima | Heirloom Vegetable Seeds | True Leaf Market Seed Company

Earliest producing of all the limas, it is a baby lima with a sweet buttery taste. A mildew resistant bush type growing 18 inches tall, it tolerates a s...

www.trueleafmarket.com

Lima Bean, King of the Garden

90 days. Large 8-10 foot vines yield very LARGE white lima beans and give huge yields over a long season. An heirloom from 1883, introduced by Frank S. Platt. An old-fashioned favorite, excellent for home gardeners. 8-12 hours of Sun Sprouts in 5-8 Days Ideal Temperature: 70-90 Degrees F Seed...

www.rareseeds.com

Lima Bean, Henderson's Bush

70 days. One of Peter Henderson & Co.’s most famous varieties, introduced in 1888, and still popular today. In 1888 Henderson offered $100 cash for plants bearing the most pods and proclaimed it “A VEGETABLE WONDER!!!” “Can and should be grown in every garden,” and also said “of all the...

www.rareseeds.com

 

[Jack Holloway]

Did you mean lentils, or did you actually mean lintils, because that is a vegetable as well (it's a kind of very coarse turnip, usually reserved for animal feed.)

I'm not sure if I've mention, I'm a horrible speller. And spell check doesn't mark a mispelled word when it is correctly spelled, but the wrong word. And it is lentils. I'll go correct my post, if I can. Thank you for pointing this out.

 

[Jack Holloway]

Did you mean lentils, or did you actually mean lintils, because that is a vegetable as well (it's a kind of very coarse turnip, usually reserved for animal feed.)

I'm not sure if I've mention, I'm a horrible speller. And spell check doesn't mark a mispelled word when it is correctly spelled, but the wrong word. And it is lentils. I'll go correct my post, if I can. Thank you for pointing this out.

 

[jbosmith]

Wow, it actually has recipes for soybeans! I've got to try those.

I was eying that soybean chowder!

 

[jbosmith]

@heirloomgal , I can't remember if I sent you the two Minnesota varieties? "MN 13" and "MN 150" should both mature where you are. Both are true bush habit, so they don't waste time or energy growing vines. I used to grow an heirloom, "Fagiolino Dolico Veneto", that was a black eyed pea with a very short DTM... but so many other SSE members were growing it, I bumped it down in priority, and haven't grown it since 2012. Not sure I'll ever get back to it now. I'll do a germination test, and could send you some seed if good... if not, its into the bean pot.

For what it's worth, I've grown Fagiolino Dolico Veneto and my email says I got it from Victory. I should see if I still have those, but I had much better luck here with MN-150.

 

[heirloomgal]

You might have better luck with different varieties. "Sieva" (a.k.a. "Carolina") is a short-season pole lima. It is the only pole lima I can direct seed with a reasonable chance of success. Started as transplants, it might make it in your climate... and in my garden, it tolerated cool weather. Small white seeds in huge numbers. "Henderson" bush lima is another short-season lima. I grow a black-seeded bush lima, "Cave Dweller Black", which had a DTM of 82 days here.

@heirloomgal , I can't remember if I sent you the two Minnesota varieties? "MN 13" and "MN 150" should both mature where you are. Both are true bush habit, so they don't waste time or energy growing vines. I used to grow an heirloom, "Fagiolino Dolico Veneto", that was a black eyed pea with a very short DTM... but so many other SSE members were growing it, I bumped it down in priority, and haven't grown it since 2012. Not sure I'll ever get back to it now. I'll do a germination test, and could send you some seed if good... if not, its into the bean pot.

I managed to get my grubby little mitts on some MN 150 recently.

Part of why I tried limas again this year was because a seed exchange pal sent me a bunch of nice ones, and Ping was in there. I didn't try the others, I posted pics of them in my thread this spring, one was a fat black one, Black Jungle I believe. Do I recall you saying you liked that quality? If you're interested I could send you the few others she sent me. Seems a waste to have them languish as orphans here. She didn't send many seeds of each, just a few, but if you want them let me know.

She also sent me a super high protein soybean which I found last night and am curious to try next year. I think the name is either 2216/2218 or Ugara something or other, I need to look at the packet. I sent her I think 9 seeds of the marbled soybeans this spring because she just fell in LOVE with them. Oh boy, did she like those beans. It was funny because she researched them to find out more about them (I had forgotten the name) and sent me a picture of them exclaiming "I think I found something about them!"
Guess which picture she sent?
The picture of your tray.
I had never mentioned from where I got them other than in a trade. I laughed and wrote to her that this was indeed the bean. Literally. 🤣 and she wrote back, "you know Zeedman!?" Small world - she had gotten beans from you at some point.

 

[heirloomgal]

A bean sent to me this spring. Anyone grow it?

 

[Zeedman]

She also sent me a super high protein soybean which I found last night and am curious to try next year. I think the name is either 2216/2218 or Ugara something or other, I need to look at the packet.

You may have mentioned that name previously. The 2216 is probably "GL 2216/84", which to my knowledge is only grown by me, or those I've sent seed. It was originally collected in North Korea, and transferred from Gatersleben to the USDA (my source) As I recall, a seed company (Victory?) was carrying them with a corrupted name, and I contacted the company to correct it.

Ugara may also be a corrupted name, for a brown-seeded soybean that I grow, "Ugra Saja".