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

[heirloomgal]

@heirloomgal you are absolutely correct about saying beans are more difficult to bring to a safe and quality harvest than tomatoes. I have always known that. The variety in colors and patterns of it's seeds has always held the strongest grip on me than anything else. It has always been worth the effort but also can be very frustrating when nature gives you a difficult growing season. Tomato seed is surrounded in a gel and liquid and the tomato plant manufactures a chemical that keeps germination at bay. All you got to do is pick the mature fruit and wash off the gel and liquid. Dry them and presto you have your top quality tomato seed every single time and season. You can have great tomato seed even if the fruits sit the rain for a number of days.

Yes! Bean seeds are so varied and beautiful, they're like little flowers waiting inside the dried pods. I love that about them too. The species though is fragile to the environment, extremely hot and extremely wet conditions especially. And animals like them a lot too. But maybe there is something rewarding about growing them because of that. Especially when you grow rare beans!

 

[Blue-Jay]

@heirloomgal,

You made a comment one time about how straight I got my rows. I planted a row of bush snap beans today so I thought I would take a couple of photos to show you the process of making straight rows.


The row is 24 feet long and I have a thin rope attached to two metal stakes long enough to span the width of the garden space. I drive the metal stakes into the soil with a hammer and keep enough tension on the stakes pulling on the rope to keep the rope straight.

So then I will take a piece of wood about a little over 4 feet long that I have cut a point on and I will make my seed furrow in the soil by following the rope and make the furrow under the straight rope.

I then have taken away the stakes and planted the seed in the furrow before covering the seeds with soil. Hope you can see the seed forming a straight line in the seed furrow. I will have to take another photo of the row when enough of the bean seedlings have emerged from the soil in the row. Will see how straight the row of bean plants looks then. So that is how I make straight rows of beans.

 

[heirloomgal]

I starting reading through some of the older bean threads last night, starting with 2015. Wow, those older threads are definitely worth looking through, lots of super great information and discussions in those pages.

I was so surprised to read in there @Bluejay77 you mentioning average heights for the various bean growth types; how semi-runners can go from 4 to 6 feet & I think you had said 8-12 feet or higher for poles. That totally makes sense to me now, being fairly new to growing pole beans in larger amounts - I always thought geesh these pole beans are HUGE, because for some reason I had this '6 feet' figure stuck in my mind as being about average height for them. I have no idea where I got that 6 feet from. So it's actually normal for pole beans to get so tall! And same thing with semi-runners - I always looked at them as bush beans with little reachy branches but those also typically got quite a bit taller than I was expecting. Network beans for this year Crevette Kidney and Mangetout Pleine Panier are both considerably taller than the supports I gave them, much like my semi-runners last year too. I've got the wrong idea in my mind as to what they need! Well, learning this will certainly help me in future grow outs!! Gosh, I can't believe how obtuse I was about growth type heights, no wonder my supports always seemed to run short. Well, better late than never to get it figured out!

I also realized in reading earlier threads just how many pretty outcrosses you've worked with. There was also a number of beans in the bean shows I'd never seen before. I always wondered if everything on your website is mostly the totality of all that you've ever grown. I'm familiar with many of the beans on there after the last few years of network bean selections, but I could see after last night's reading that your website is only some of the beans you've grown. There are many more beans that have been in your gardens! It's pretty amazing that you've grown such an incredible number of beans, with many of them being so very rare.

eta: I'm not sure if you recall a bean outcross you were working with in 2017 called 'Flamboyant' but that was a really lovely bean. I guess it never did stabilize? Shortwave Sunshine was a real nice one too.

 

[flowerbug]

there are two other growth habits i've seen for beans along with: bush, semi-runner and pole. i call them sprawl and fuzzy.

sprawl is much more common than fuzzy. a bean plant that sprawls is not a semi-runner. the plant will not climb it just flops all over the place.

the rarely seen fuzzy is just a very small plant with a lot of stems, but very few leaves. i don't think this is anything other than a very rare mutation and i don't think any seeds i got from the plant that did this ever grew. i wonder if i still have any of those seed left, hmm... they'd be in my Yellow Eye collection if i did have them.

 

[Blue-Jay]

eta: I'm not sure if you recall a bean outcross you were working with in 2017 called 'Flamboyant' but that was a really lovely bean. I guess it never did stabilize? Shortwave Sunshine was a real nice one too.

I still have seed in the freezer of both beans. Flamboyant is a small 2 x 3 inch packet and then a small jar of that seed. Shortwave Sunshine has sixteen 2 x 3 inch packets in years of 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017 2018. I don't remember how many different color shadings there are of Shortwave Sunshine which is a true bush type. Flamboyant is a semi runner.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I took photos of my early started limas. The ones I grew in styro cups. I was amazed most of them are in blossom already. The ones in blossom must be at least a month ahead of their usual time. There are six varieties. 4 are outcrosses related to Ping Zebra. Two of them are not yet in blossom. I tried growing 4 plants of each of the limas. I planted two at each pole. Libra is the only one of the limas that I would up with only one plant.

Romance - This lima comes from a fellow in Iowa who has a lima collection

Seed Of Romance

Libra - One of the outcrosses I found in Ping Zebra in 2020 and regrew again in 2021. This bean is not in blossom yet.

Seed Of Libra

Zeta Reticuli - Another of the Ping Zebra outcrosses. This bean is in blossom.

Seed Of Zeta Reticuli

Illinois Giant - Originally an outcross of some lima with Christmas and listed by an Illinois lister in the Seed Savers Exchange yearbook in the 1980's. Illinois Giant is blossoming.

Seed Of Illinois Giant

Scorpio - Also related to Ping Zebra. Named after the sign of the Zodiac. This one is in blossom.

Seed Of Scorpio

 

[Blue-Jay]

Two more early started limas.

Working title for now is Deep Red Ping Zebra. This one is definitely a much deeper red than Ping. This one is not yet in blossom.

Seed Of Deep Red Ping Zebra

Pinwheel X Ping Zebra. This one comes from my lima collector acquaintance in Iowa. It is an unnamed bean and I believe he said I could come up with a name for it if I wanted to. This one is also starting to blossom growing in the south flowerbed of my house.

Seed Of Pinwheel X Ping Zebra

 

[flowerbug]

this year's planting list - i cut way back on number of different varieties as i didn't plant the front outside the fence garden and i still wanted more bulk bean production so those were moved inside the fenced gardens. i had to trade off how many projects i was planting this season for more fresh eating and bulk beans. also i wanted more melon and squash plants inside the fence and so lost a garden and a half of space to those. will gain some space back next year as i'm turning under the strawberries and taking out the daylilies which expanded from a single row of plants to cover 200sq ft - we sure don't need all those back there...

- Adzuki beans (two varieties)
    - Takara Early
    - Commercial
  - Andikove
  - Atwater
  - Half Whites (three selections)
    - reddish
    - brownish
    - lighter tan
  - Hendersons Bush Lima
  - Lavender (three selections)
    - Original color
    - Pale
    - White
  - Montville
  - Painted Pony
  - Purple Dove
  - Purple Dove Odds (seven selections)
    - Spot
    - Lines
    - Bland
    - Splotch
    - Top Mark
    - Bluish
    - Spotty Bluish
  - Purple Potato Beans (temporary working name)
  - Red Ryder
  - Shelleasy x Soldier
  - Striped Bunch
  - Tinker's Fire
  - Venda
  - Victoria Brown Eyes
  - Yellow Eye

 

[Michael Lusk]

I took photos of my early started limas. The ones I grew in styro cups. I was amazed most of them are in blossom already. The ones in blossom must be at least a month ahead of their usual time. There are six varieties. 4 are outcrosses related to Ping Zebra. Two of them are not yet in blossom. I tried growing 4 plants of each of the limas. I planted two at each pole. Libra is the only one of the limas that I would up with only one plant.

Romance - This lima comes from a fellow in Iowa who has a lima collection
View attachment 58599

Seed Of Romance
View attachment 58600

Libra - One of the outcrosses I found in Ping Zebra in 2020 and regrew again in 2021. This bean is not in blossom yet.
View attachment 58601

Seed Of Libra
View attachment 58602

Zeta Reticuli - Another of the Ping Zebra outcrosses. This bean is in blossom.
View attachment 58603

Seed Of Zeta Reticuli
View attachment 58604

Illinois Giant - Originally an outcross of some lima with Christmas and listed by an Illinois lister in the Seed Savers Exchange yearbook in the 1980's. Illinois Giant is blossoming.
View attachment 58605

Seed Of Illinois Giant
View attachment 58606

Scorpio - Also related to Ping Zebra. Named after the sign of the Zodiac. This one is in blossom.
View attachment 58608

Seed Of Scorpio
View attachment 58607

Seed of Scorpio is one very, very cool looking bean!

 

[flowerbug]

I just love it when both of those items stay intact inside the pod and all I get is beautiful clean beans. 😁

the other thing that happens to beans that will rule a variety out for me is when the seeds get too easily marked up by moisture - it may not ruin the seed for replanting but it sure doesn't look good.