2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[meadow]

I had no idea that Lazy Wife was considered a later maturing bean!

Burpee: "They are late to mature but are valuable to extend the season. We recommend every one to plant Creaseback for early and Lazy Wife's for late, and we are sure that none will regret following this advice."

 

[jbosmith]

Leaving old plant roots in the ground | Easy Guide - Eco Family Life

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I only skimmed this but it felt like it spent more time talking about all the things to dig up rather than what to leave. I don't personally dig up anything except root crops and weeds with rhizomes like quack grass and bishops weed. Everything else gets cut off at ground level. The beans I cut down today still had signs of last year's tomato stumps beneath them!

 

[flowerbug]

I only skimmed this but it felt like it spent more time talking about all the things to dig up rather than what to leave. I don't personally dig up anything except root crops and weeds with rhizomes like quack grass and bishops weed. Everything else gets cut off at ground level. The beans I cut down today still had signs of last year's tomato stumps beneath them!

very similar to me, except i do dig trenches and bury garden debris so i'm not tilling entire gardens. just parts of them and i rotate through the space so i'm not disturbing the whole garden very often at one time. very rarely do i have to be that extreme. mainly when i've been injured and have let a garden get away from me and i have to rescue it. fallow gardens are pretty fertile after a year or two of weeds growing in them...

 

[flowerbug]

i got all the gardens gone through again checking for dry pods as i'm not too likely to get back out there for several days. nice full box of Purple Dove and Yellow Eye beans and then another half a box from the fenced gardens - a mix of things, it will be fun to shell those out (yes, i'll do those first ), but not tonight...

 

[heirloomgal]

No bean photo's being taken lately, mostly due to just being too busy with life. But even more so my device has a charging issue so it's been impossible, but today I finally got a new charger that will at least allow me to take pictures again until I get a new device. Yay! I'd like to post a picture of the Forelle Fleiderfarben × Tarahumara Purple Star cross. I find it so unique because you can see both bean varieties clearly expressed in it.

So many great beans I've found this year, thanks to @Bluejay77 and some great bean trading partners!!
Does anyone have favourites from this year that they've tried? I have loved the incredible production of Lippoldsberger, Fissole Rassacher, Green Savage, Quedlinberger Speck and Armenian Giant Black. Greek Cypriot was pretty amazing too for 3 plants. Dove's Breast and Tamila as well. For beauty, Roteebeebohne and Bis I've really liked. Mooreskonigin, Ntingi, Uzice Speckled Wax, Solwezi, Vulkan and Kartoffelbohne have all been so pretty too. So many lovely beans in the world!

Ugandan Bantu threw lots of odd colours, I found some pods with beans I can only describe as a completely electric purple. What an odd variety! I think next year I'm going to separate out the individual colours to plant and see what happens.

Disappointments? Any disappointments tied to growing beans is usually weather related for me, but, that said, for all the rave reviews of Nez Perce production I found it lacklustre. Yellow Indian Woman, same. Could just be the year. Maria Zeller is turning out to be, sadly, much later than I expected. All in all though, the net gain has been awesome!

 

[Decoy1]

That is very interesting! I was under the impression that the Housewife name came in with the change in shape in the 1980's, although I do not recall what makes me think that. After seeing your post, I did a search and found that Burpee currently lists the round version as Lazy Housewife! Which begs the question: At what point does a name change become the name?

I would be willing to bet there was a clerical error at some point since the current Burpee listing says: "True heirloom ‘Lazy Housewife’ pole bean was originally introduced by W. Atlee Burpee Co. in 1885."

Since digital copies of the 1885-1953 Burpee catalogues are available online, we can confirm that it was never listed as Lazy Housewife during those years. The bean does not appear in 1958 (the next available catalog) and I don't know when they began carrying it again. Comparison between 1953 and 1958 show that Lazy Wife's was not replaced by another variety. Perhaps there was a crop failure, or it could be that customer interest waned after the introduction of Kentucky Wonder and Blue Lake.

That is also very interesting! Thank you for carrying on the research. Curiouser and curiouser.
I’ve seen it suggested that the change occurred because of some kind of social sensitivity. I’m not sure that lazy housewife is any more socially sensitive than lazy wife though!

 

[jbosmith]

It was 44F yesterday from an incoming cold front, but with a steady 20-25mph wind from a nearby hurricane sucking all the air up. Weird weather. There was no wind when I left home, so I was unprepared and had to keep taking breaks to get feeling back in my hands. My 'cold gardens' are living up to their name! Still, the beans were all picked ahead of last night's frost, and are now shelled.

The pintos are some stragglers that I found after the Seneca Allegheny lost their leaves. The pinks are the rest of Red Turtle that were picked somewhere between shelly and ripe stages.

I also picked the rest of my cow peas as green beans, which I'll blanch and eat/freeze, and my one Bei 77-6177 soybean plant, which was about half dry pods.

I have a couple of stragglers in the community garden that have little chance of ripening anything, but otherwise the garden portion of my bean season is about done.

 

[flowerbug]

@heirloomgal

pleasant surprises this year have been Lavender and the new crosses that look interesting. my grow out of Sunrise showed me that it is very much like Sunset or Red Ryder (pretty much as expected), but they're a pretty bean when first shelled. the pink cross hasn't faded as quickly as i expected - i'm leaving some of them out to see how they go as they oxidize and age more in less than forgiving conditions. if i can get a pink bean that will stay pink in even poor conditions i think that would be fun (every pink bean i've seen so far turns tan to light brown eventually).

disappointments, which i should know better are some larger beans that i'd hope to get a nice crop from as i did plant them in better soil but the mid-summer heat really made for mostly empty pods when i harvested them last week. i have a few beans of each but they're not working here as nice as they may look.

the other disappointment was that of all the Santa beans i planted only one looks to have given any return at all - the rest i put into the North Garden where the deer ate or trampled them all. next season i'll have to put them inside the fenced gardens.

i'm waiting on a few of the longer season beans to finish up.

 

[heirloomgal]

View attachment 52230

It was 44F yesterday from an incoming cold front, but with a steady 20-25mph wind from a nearby hurricane sucking all the air up. Weird weather. There was no wind when I left home, so I was unprepared and had to keep taking breaks to get feeling back in my hands. My 'cold gardens' are living up to their name! Still, the beans were all picked ahead of last night's frost, and are now shelled.

The pintos are some stragglers that I found after the Seneca Allegheny lost their leaves. The pinks are the rest of Red Turtle that were picked somewhere between shelly and ripe stages.

View attachment 52231

I also picked the rest of my cow peas as green beans, which I'll blanch and eat/freeze, and my one Bei 77-6177 soybean plant, which was about half dry pods.

I have a couple of stragglers in the community garden that have little chance of ripening anything, but otherwise the garden portion of my bean season is about done.

Did Fiona have any influence your way?

 

[heirloomgal]

@heirloomgal

pleasant surprises this year have been Lavender and the new crosses that look interesting. my grow out of Sunrise showed me that it is very much like Sunset or Red Ryder (pretty much as expected), but they're a pretty bean when first shelled. the pink cross hasn't faded as quickly as i expected - i'm leaving some of them out to see how they go as they oxidize and age more in less than forgiving conditions. if i can get a pink bean that will stay pink in even poor conditions i think that would be fun (every pink bean i've seen so far turns tan to light brown eventually).

disappointments, which i should know better are some larger beans that i'd hope to get a nice crop from as i did plant them in better soil but the mid-summer heat really made for mostly empty pods when i harvested them last week. i have a few beans of each but they're not working here as nice as they may look.

the other disappointment was that of all the Santa beans i planted only one looks to have given any return at all - the rest i put into the North Garden where the deer ate or trampled them all. next season i'll have to put them inside the fenced gardens.

i'm waiting on a few of the longer season beans to finish up.

Isn't Lavender such a unique colour? I grew it as a network bean last year and liked it.

Pink beans do tend to turn tan over time don't they. I think Tamila is one that is a barbie level of pink, but eventually I guess as the years go on even they do get a bronze look to them.

I do quite like the angles you use to name your beans flowerbug, though I've never seen the show Seinfeld so Huey is lost on me, lol. But Sunrise and Sunset have a nice ring to them, especially if related.