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

[Boilergardener]

i'm pretty sure i've never seen the sort of damage done by cornseed maggots.

most of my gardens are fairly heavy clay soils and i'm not sure if that makes a difference or not for them.

maybe because i do very little cool weather planting but also perhaps because for the most part when i'm done with a garden all of the garden debris is usually buried down at least four to six inches. rarely is anything left on the surface. it actually is not due to a preference of mine as i would much rather leave some mulches on the surface but Mom considers it untidy looking so for her a cleaned up garden in the fall looks bare dirt with nary a twig or leave to be seen.

i have had some plantings not make it due to poor seed quality or predation from various critters but nothing like the pictures i've just been looking at.

i don't use any mulches, ashes or coffee grounds when planting and rarely have green manures available or any other things. what i do tend to use for fertilizer is the worms and worm compost but that is usually buried 4 to 6 inches deep or more (and i've found that the beans don't sometimes do well with it the first season so it works better when the beans are rotated into a garden where the worm compost was used the previous few years).

Seedcorn maggots I had this May. You are correct on emergence speed. I plant May15 weekend every year and this year it was a cooler weather for that weekend. They didn't emerge as quickly as normal years. I havent really had issues until about 2 years ago. And that garden has been around for years. Weird stuff.

 

[heirloomgal]

On your Nematode idea I'm sort of confused? My understanding of soybean cyst nematodes is they are bad for row crop production soybeans, and other crops too

I don't know much about nematodes outside of this application, but my guess is that there are lots of different types of them. Some of them are beneficial, my local garden supply sells a container of them in sprinkle on form but it's expensive - about $36.00 for a smallish bottle. Apparently they already exist in everyone's soil, just not in sufficient numbers usually.

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I do think the weather is a wild card though, wet and cold spells is where they thrive. I think the only thing that can help in that situation is really, really fresh seed that sprouts in record time. Delayed germination is where they seem to be most active. My main angle is transplants, and after that to try and cover the smell of the germinating beans as much as possible. I don't know what the ashes do, but I imagine the pH is inhospitable to them.

I tried sevin in like a granule form one time that is spread and it didn't work for seedcorn maggots for me.

As far as I know these bean seed flies/seed corn maggots are much like carrot rust flies, there is no biological control for them, not even in industry. They both have to be managed by cultural practice. I keep the carrot flies away with the coffee grinds too. They both hunt by smell so that is how I try to throw them off.

 

[heirloomgal]

i'm pretty sure i've never seen the sort of damage done by cornseed maggots.

most of my gardens are fairly heavy clay soils and i'm not sure if that makes a difference or not for them.

maybe because i do very little cool weather planting but also perhaps because for the most part when i'm done with a garden all of the garden debris is usually buried down at least four to six inches. rarely is anything left on the surface. it actually is not due to a preference of mine as i would much rather leave some mulches on the surface but Mom considers it untidy looking so for her a cleaned up garden in the fall looks bare dirt with nary a twig or leave to be seen.

i have had some plantings not make it due to poor seed quality or predation from various critters but nothing like the pictures i've just been looking at.

i don't use any mulches, ashes or coffee grounds when planting and rarely have green manures available or any other things. what i do tend to use for fertilizer is the worms and worm compost but that is usually buried 4 to 6 inches deep or more (and i've found that the beans don't sometimes do well with it the first season so it works better when the beans are rotated into a garden where the worm compost was used the previous few years).

The tricky thing with these flies is that they are often unseen. Damage to bean seeds can be seen if you dig up the seed or see the seedling sprout with damaged cotyledons but they can cause issue at later stages - 3 to 5 generation are born in a season. The lifecycle is fast, so they are usually gone by the time you notice a problem and the damage is done. They will nibble at the roots of your bean plants and not kill them, just make them not grow well and reduce productivity. When they are attacking your plant at the growing stage as opposed to the germinating stage you'll never see them. I would guess that a lot of what people think is damage or stunting done by heat or other weather factors, is actually bean seed fly damage. People don't see the flies, so they don't think they're there, but they are. It is a ubiquitous pest across the globe, everyone has them to some degree. It seems like the last 3 years the populations have peaked a little though, they might have cyclical booms and busts.

 

[Ladyreneer]

Cannellini malato seems to be unstable. I received my seed from the same donor in Valpiano who supplied Russ with his. My seed was, I’d say, more simply dark brown and white than the more tri-coloured bean on Russ’s network picture or the ones you received .I grew it this year and my resulting seeds were fairly similar to the ones I planted but again just brown and white without the black flecking.

Russ also shows a segregation on Bean Collector’s Window so I’m not quite sure what’s going on with this variety. My strain behaved in quite a stable way but is unlike some of the other versions.


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Your Bean is definitely different from mine and different from the picture online in LEBN. However, the beans that grew from your samples are really beautiful.
I'm going to try and grow these out again. I was going to try to grow them out in my basement grow room but we have 2 B2B cruises coming up in a week or two.
When I do grow mine out, I'd be willing to trade seeds, if you'd like. ❤️

 

[Blue-Jay]

Your Bean is definitely different from mine and different from the picture online in LEBN. However, the beans that grew from your samples are really beautiful.
I'm going to try and grow these out again. I was going to try to grow them out in my basement grow room but we have 2 B2B cruises coming up in a week or two.
When I do grow mine out, I'd be willing to trade seeds, if you'd like. ❤️

I had gotten this bean from a fellow in a trade who lived in Valpiano, Italy. The first time I grew it out it gave me enough different seed coats that I had realized it was an outcross. So what growers are getting each time they grow it out with different colored beans is they are seeing the bean, is still unstable bean. It is still creating new gene pairs which are giving you the new seed coats you are seeing each season. When two different growers get different results in the same season it's just that they are getting different gene pairs from what the other growers are getting. It's very possible that this bean might or might not ever settle down and become stable.

 

[flowerbug]

a few more bean pictures...


another likely Lavender outcross. the shades of greens even went towards blues in spots.

one of many that looked like a gray bean with various shades of reddish. these were from the Purple Dove outcross patch...

and more beans from the Purple Dove outcross patch...

i refreshed some of my half white beans that were getting older. the pale version on the left was a surprise.

 

[Ladyreneer]

a few more bean pictures...


another likely Lavender outcross. the shades of greens even went towards blues in spots.

one of many that looked like a gray bean with various shades of reddish. these were from the Purple Dove outcross patch...

and more beans from the Purple Dove outcross patch...

i refreshed some of my half white beans that were getting older. the pale version on the left was a surprise.

These 5 different beans on the last picture is what I have now.

 

[Triffid]

Happy New Year to the LEBN! Here's to a productive and pleasant 2024. Wishing you all (and your beans) good health and happiness for the coming season.

 

[flowerbug]

These 5 different beans on the last picture is what I have now.

and a bunch more!

 

[flowerbug]

unless i find some other beans while sorting these are the last pictures from last season's beans. well, ok, a few of the pictures aren't as sharp as i'd like and i may come back sometime to redo them... maybe...

these aren't all of the beans i grew out (bulk beans and others i've not had great luck with growing plus some other outcrosses that aren't very interesting to me i haven't taken pictures of them this season).

Two of the Painted Pony outcrosses. The one on the left that is black with lighter markings was edible and a very nice plant so I’m excited to see if that repeats this coming season. I don’t know about the lighter colored bean on the right yet, but I will plant it again to see what it does.

Two Purple Dove outcrosses. I do not know if either of them are edible yet.

Another Painted Pony outcross (might be more than one if the color difference holds through a replanting and grow out). The patterns and colors of this one are interesting.

Two of the solid color outcrosses. The more orange and round bean on the right is one I would like to grow again.

Various White outcrosses. I’ve never had the light olive colored beans repeat their color when replanted - I wonder if either of these will be the first. The white beans that almost look like Pheasant are pretty tiny. Brown eye beans I’ve also seen before and they too don’t seem to repeat when I replant them.

The mixed bag of what was left. Mostly what catches my eye are the Purple Dove beans in the middle with the various markings and lines.