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

[Ladyreneer]

Wow I wished I had my bean gardens at my fingertips on my own land but I don't. One garden is 3 miles away and the other is 9 miles. Where do you live. Land around here has gotten to be all kinds of crazy prices. Can go for $30,000 an acre to $90,000 an acre.

Wow! Bluejay, you are very dedicated to gardening then so I commend you!
I live in ooltewah, TN and the land here is very expensive as well. We purchased the new land with my daughter, so we are actually splitting it.
My side has a pond (!😍!) from a freshwater spring that we're going to try to pump to my future garden. I'm so excited about that!
So many people are moving to our community, that even though we have 5 acres here between my daughter and me now, we are feeling the crunch due to traffic, etc. Lovely area though!
This doesn't show the size of the pond, but you can see that we'll need to clean out the fallen trees and limbs.

 

[nune]

Soaking these African cave beans before planting them in a container outside. (I can bring the container inside when it's cold.)

 

[nune]

They swelled up.

 

[Ladyreneer]

@Bluejay77
Hello! I emailed you on April 7th regarding the Network beans and a small bean order. Did you have a chance to look it over yet by any chance?
If I still have time I'd like to change one of the extra beans. It turns out that a friend already has that selection. 🫘

 

[saritabee]

I’ve been regrowing my bean network beans every year since the Terrible Bean Summer of 2019, and slowly getting at least a couple off the backlog every year. I was down to Lila Stuart, Davis, and Frost for 2022 – and the first two grew a decent amount of great-looking seed this year, so that was a weight off. Frost was still basically a loss – I got just enough seed to be able to try again in 2023, so hopefully Artorius had much better luck! I’ll have to go back after this and find his bean report. Lila Stuart below – more on Davis later.

View attachment 56252

*

Russ’s version of Blue Shaxamaxon was one of the first beans I ever ordered because the pattern reminded me of the blue-speckled camping enamelware. I got two interesting outcrosses from the seeds I planted in 2018, both of which I really like and I’ve continued to work on – but nothing like the original! I finally planted the last of the originals I had, and almost all of them were eaten – but one plant survived, and it had the blue-speckled-enamel coloring!

View attachment 56247

*

Kroatische Stange is one of my favorite beans, and I planted it this year because I was mainly only planting beans I had a ton of and that I knew would grow well. When I grew it in 2018 I got 4oz off of 4 plants. But for whatever reason – even though the seed was from 2018, and looked beautiful – only 3 seeds of the entire batch germinated. I didn’t get a lot of seed this year, but I at least got enough to try again another year.

View attachment 56248

*

I had attempted Devil’s Finn in 2019, but got zero beans, and thought my line was defunct. As I was unpacking boxes the winter before last, I found three seeds tucked away in a separate tiny baggie. Two of those survived to maturity in 2021, and the seeds from those did well again this year, to the point that I now have a comfortable amount of seed.

View attachment 56250

*

Blau-weisse von Bernarda was another of the previously-successful beans I planted to fill in the ranks this year, but thankfully it (unlike Kroatische Stange) continued to grow like crazy and was definitely my winner for the year. (This is only the final harvest; I got almost a pound of seed off 5 or 6 plants.)

View attachment 56251

*

This was one skimpy plant’s worth of Harriet’s Black Hook, lol. (It was stunted by the cold weather, only grew half the height of the previous time I grew it, and still had a ton of green pods in November.) When I grew it for the Network in 2018, I got a pound of seed off two plants, and they grew almost 15’ tall… This thing makes a *lot* of beans.

*

I also had a few fun outcrosses I’m excited about:

This came from a single plant's worth of seed I got in 2021, out of a semi-runner called Petit Gris; I planted that outcross this year, and it threw these new outcrosses (all pole). I find the drastic difference between the matte beans and the shiny beans really interesting.
View attachment 56243
View attachment 56244View attachment 56245
View attachment 56246


This was a gorgeous outcross out of a bag of Rancho Gordo Good Mother Stallards.

View attachment 56249

@flowerbug, you are totally right, that's got to be what I did. You are always so good with the tech tips!

I updated the pictures, and will attach the Davis pictures separately since we're limited to 10 pics.
I've never used Google Photos before so it's been a learning experience... my phone stopped charging, and the only thing that ended up being able to charge it (luckily!) was one single cable at the repair shop. They deemed it unrepairable and I couldn't take it back home, but they let me sit in the store for a whole very boring evening, manually transferring all my photos over to Google Drive. It's been an adventure trying to get them all off again, lol.

 

[saritabee]

to me if i get seeds back i'm happy. more seeds than i planted mean happier, but i'm also ok with moderate results because i do know that not every year or every variety is going to do as well as some others.

last year was my final attempt with what were left of the Galopka seeds and none of them sprouted.

That's a really good way to look at it... it always feels like such a failure when a variety does poorly (or doesn't make it), but it really is logistically impossible that every variety will always sprout and grow perfectly.

 

[saritabee]

Hi Saritabee,

Glad your back. I wouldn't send your package until I get home from Florida which will be April 2nd. If you mail a package now. By the time it gets here I will be on my way to Illinois. Sometimes the local postman here will leave a package on his hot truck for a month before he hands it over to the local resident here.

I don't know what you put on your post for photos of your beans you talked about. They look like super long links to something. That data doesn't work for me to find a photo. You need to put your bean photos on your local drive on your computer and use the Attach Files button at the bottom of the window in which you are creating a post. Would love to see the beans and outcrosses you spoke of.

Also you need to teach me how to post a photo of a bean on Bohen-Atlas. Send me specific instructions on how it's done. Email me those instructions.

I acquired Davis from a SSE member awhile back. Probably 10 years ago at least. The bean looks like Top Notch Golden Wax. Plump short rounded seed with a brown eye patch. I found the original description of Davis in the book "Beans Of New York" and the desciption doesn't fit the one I acquired from the SSE member. I have often thought of dropping this brown eyed version. The SSE member I acquired it from is now also deceased. So there is no chance of acquiring a new start of the bean from that member.

Everything went off the rails again, but I have them ready to go with a USPS package pickup request for tomorrow. I just put a variety of the Davis in, separated by plant, in case you want to keep them and/or work with them.

That's what was throwing me the most -- the plants and green beans (well, yellow beans -- they do look just like Top Notch Golden Wax) all looked and performed identically; it was just the somewhat differing patterns around the eye. Especially because the patterns sometimes varied within a given plant (as you can see in the last two pictures).
And I think some beans patterns are just like that? But no way to know, I suppose, if this is one of them.


I haven't been on Bohnen-Atlas in a while, but I have new beans to add, so I'll write up a walk-through for you while I add one, to make sure I don't miss a step!

 

[nune]

I have planted 3 beans each in two containers after soaking them.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Bluejay77
Hello! I emailed you on April 7th regarding the Network beans and a small bean order. Did you have a chance to look it over yet by any chance?
If I still have time I'd like to change one of the extra beans. It turns out that a friend already has that selection. 🫘

I'm not sure I found an order for you. I don't know if you used your screen name you are using here on the EG or if you used your real name. Email me your order again. Yesterday I mailed out 26 packages. Took me all last week to get all those orders packed.

 

[flowerbug]

Everything went off the rails again, but I have them ready to go with a USPS package pickup request for tomorrow. I just put a variety of the Davis in, separated by plant, in case you want to keep them and/or work with them.

That's what was throwing me the most -- the plants and green beans (well, yellow beans -- they do look just like Top Notch Golden Wax) all looked and performed identically; it was just the somewhat differing patterns around the eye. Especially because the patterns sometimes varied within a given plant (as you can see in the last two pictures).
And I think some beans patterns are just like that? But no way to know, I suppose, if this is one of them.

...

from my experience that kind of variation within that pattern would be normal, i eat the ones that go way off either end but i've seen so many variations from nearly all white (one spot, two spots, small lines, spotted...) to almost completely covered with the soldier marking.