2023 Little Easy Bean Network - Beans Beyond The Colors Of A Rainbow

[Pulsegleaner]

Although I usually think of 'shucking' in reference to corn, I guess it still applies to beans. It certainly beats 'awww, hull'.

removing beans from their pods is usually called "shelling" so you could say you are "gone to shell!"

 

[flowerbug]

removing beans from their pods is usually called "shelling" so you could say you are "gone to shell!"

and when not quite awake yet for sorting it can be sorta sorting and if you had a bee with heart issues it could be aorta bee sorting... ok, sorry, that was horrible, but i'm not awake enough yet so it it is still sort of funny.

 

[Zeedman]

and when not quite awake yet for sorting it can be sorta sorting and if you had a bee with heart issues it could be aorta bee sorting... ok, sorry, that was horrible, but i'm not awake enough yet so it it is still sort of funny.

Sleepily, somewhat sightlessly, semi-sentiently sorta-sorting seeds. I think I've been there, done that.

 

[heirloomgal]

Hemelvaartboontje
This poor bean had stiff competition growing~there were crosses in some plants that were super vigorous and hogged up the space on the pole. There wasn’t much left for the true to type plant. Of all the pole beans, I collected the least amount from these, a handful. But that was enough for a 60 seed return and some leftover to try again. 2024 will be round two.

The slowest bean of close to 90 varieties - Facciosa. But the pods are finally drying up indoors, and look to be in good shape! There is almost a green tinge to the faint stripes on them. This pole bean needs about 150 days, at least. Transplants saved me with this one.

Echte Kipfler. Not the funnest bean to shell! Hard little crescent shaped purple pods that tend to break a lot when shelled. It seems like a popular bean in Europe, from Southeast Austria I read, I’m curious to try it as a snap but some descriptions of it say to eat them with partially formed seeds within.

Lusaka network bean. A marvellous producer! Excellent yield and early. Most of the beans I’ve tried with this colouring are rather poor yielders, but these were totally different. Fabulous semi runner.

Cyrus Gray bush bean. Seems like beans with this seedcoat are very productive and this one is no exception. Been wanting this one since 2021! Awesome variety.

Achersleben Meisterwerk pole bean. This was an early Romano type snap bean, and it was very, very early. One of the first poles to totally dry down too. I was super impressed with this bean, it was really high quality all the way around. A masterpiece indeed.

The last semi runner to dry down, network bean Cape Sugar. Such a great bean, beautiful little raspberry flecked seeds. Considerably later maturity than its friend, Gabarone Sugar.

Sansavastre pole bean - big beans looking similar to Khabarovsk but in a different shape. I‘d describe it as a mid season maturity bean. I need to do some research on this one to see how it’s used.

Harwig’s Belgium Heirloom. One of several white beans for dry use I grew this year. This was a very early variety, small little suction pods. Production was good but not outstanding. I like the looks of this one more that the white Petit Carre de Caen, which is more square and less smooth looking.

 

[Artorius]

@heirloomgal, you collected beautiful seeds.
I'll probably start taking photos of my bush beans this weekend. I shelled all the pods. The seeds were already dry enough to freeze briefly. I always do this and that's why I don't know what a bean weevil is.

 

[flowerbug]

@heirloomgal, you collected beautiful seeds.
I'll probably start taking photos of my bush beans this weekend. I shelled all the pods.

! ! !

The seeds were already dry enough to freeze briefly. I always do this and that's why I don't know what a bean weevil is.

i have seen some holes in beans that i've purchased from some places but i've never seen bean weevil holes in beans that i've grown. at least i've not seen any of the larger holes. i have seen some signs of some bugs eating beans inside the pods when i shell them out but i never see the bugs themselves. i see much more damage from fungi, mice and other creatures.

it's funny when i just did a search for seeing what they look like one of the selections was for buying bean weevils... someone would want to do that?! yikes!

 

[Branching Out]

The bean weevils that I saw walking across the fireplace hearth last year may have carpooled to our place with a friend, who brought me saved seed from her garden. From now on gifts of dried legume seed will be quarantined briefly, rather than immediately placing them alongside my collected seeds. This year I plan to freeze my beans for several days before I store them, but I also want to make sure that I don't introduce moisture that could damage them. So far my plan is to freeze them for a week or so in glass jars, and then let them come back to room temperature before opening the jars. My freezer held lots of beans in glass jars over the winter, and I did not notice any condensation on them when I brought them out to room temperature. 🤔

 

[heirloomgal]

@heirloomgal, you collected beautiful seeds.
I'll probably start taking photos of my bush beans this weekend. I shelled all the pods. The seeds were already dry enough to freeze briefly. I always do this and that's why I don't know what a bean weevil is.

I'm TERRIFIED of bean weevils. I've never heard of anyone around here having those, and I can only pray that I've never come across them because our winters, being so bitterly cold, kill them off.

 

[Zeedman]

The bean weevils that I saw walking across the fireplace hearth last year may have carpooled to our place with a friend, who brought me saved seed from her garden. From now on gifts of dried legume seed will be quarantined briefly, rather than immediately placing them alongside my collected seeds. This year I plan to freeze my beans for several days before I store them, but I also want to make sure that I don't introduce moisture that could damage them. So far my plan is to freeze them for a week or so in glass jars, and then let them come back to room temperature before opening the jars. My freezer held lots of beans in glass jars over the winter, and I did not notice any condensation on them when I brought them out to room temperature. 🤔

So far, I haven't had bean weevils - and obviously don't want them ever. But I have received them twice in new acquisitions: once from a trade, and once from a fairly well known seed company. Because I quarantine all new beans or corns in freezer bags, the bugs never escaped to infect anything else. The bean ("Canon City") was a total loss, and had to be reacquired from SSE itself. The cowpea (which in addition to the bugs was also mislabeled as a rice bean) was salvageable after freezing to kill the bugs... but I later dropped it in favor of better varieties.

 

[Blue-Jay]

So far, I haven't had bean weevils - and obviously don't want them ever.

I feel very lucky. I am able to allow beans sit at room temperature all year long and no bean weevils hatch out of my seed. So I have determinded that there are probably no bean weevils in the county. I do definitely know what these creatures look like and the perfectly round holes they make in the seed when they eat their way out of the seed. When I lived in the county west of here in the mid 1970's and early 1980's I experienced weevils in beans I grew there. My first experience came about by accident just a little before Christmas 1975 when I was going to fill a seed request. I opened a container of beans and saw a few holes in a couple of beans. I poured out the beans in the container and at the bottom I saw the live weevils moving around. I instantly knew what to do. I said to myself freezing kills bugs. So all the containers went into the freezer which was running at about -25 below zero F. -31 C for three days. I had later read that a temperature of 0 F -17 C for about three days is a successfull treatment for bean weels to keep them from hatching out of your bean seed. So each year after that all the beans went into the freezer at around the third week of November.

These days all the bean seed stocks here are kept frozen anyway for seed viabilty longevity the year round. I allow seed to dry until after the middle of November before packing them away in the freezer.

I have on one occassion received seed from someone in Europe that looked perfectly normal. Within about a week about two or three beans began to hatch out weevils. I put the ziploc packet in the freezer for about 5 days. Planted the seed that didn't have holes the following season and all was well. I got a nice crop of seed from that bean that summer.