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

[heirloomgal]

Well, I always planned to write a legume-based version of the movie No Blade of Grass called "A Hill of Beans".

Did you watch No Blade of Grass? I read a synopsis, yikes! Same genre as Soylent Green. Given how much beans I eat, a legume version of that scenario would feel utterly cataclysmic.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Did you watch No Blade of Grass? I read a synopsis, yikes! Same genre as Soylent Green. Given how much beans I eat, a legume version of that scenario would feel utterly cataclysmic.

Yes I have seen the movie once, when it was on TCM.

And I would say the situation in Soylent Green is much. much more dire than it is in No Blade of Grass. Yes, the world there is in deep trouble, and there will undoubtedly be some pretty severe famines and a lot of social upheaval. But, with time, humanity WOULD adapt. Grasses make up the bulk of our starch supply but they don't make up ALL of it. Even in the movie, the goal of their trek is a rumor of a supply of potatoes. With time, that is what would happen in the world; we'd switch over to things like potatoes and quinoa.

Likewise, we very well might be able to adapt to a world without legumes (though it would probably become a major hurdle for many vegetarians and vegans. It'd be a lot harder on the lower classes of the world (since legumes make up an awful lot of the protein of those who are too poor to afford much meat or dairy.) And we might have to work in a world where we HAVE to add nitrogen fertilizer to soil to make it fertile (since no legumes might mean a lot less of a home for nitrogen fixing bacteria to live in) but we'd probably pull through.

Soylent Green, however, is a world that is pretty much circling the drain with no way out. They're not recycling people because they are cruel, they're recycling them because there literally isn't anything else LEFT. That's why the end of the movie is actually a lot bleaker than it even appears. So the hero has told everyone Soylent Green is people. So what do they do now? They can rise up against the rich who still get actual food, but there clearly isn't enough of that to go round. If everything is gone, it's literally keep eating people or starve to death. About the only major change would be that, with it out in the open, there are going to be people who decide that going through the trouble of waiting for people to reach termination age or be processed is not worth it, and will go for the more direct approach. All the protagonist has done in essence is potentially start people actively killing each other to cannibalize them.

And they're STILL all going to starve to death in the end. There are people who worked out the caloric rates of cannibalism, and one average person only had enough meat to provide the bare minimum of protein for sixty people for one DAY. That means that, in a year, a group of people need a little bit more than six times their population to get enough protein to survive. That's why no society has ever tried to rely on cannibalism as their sole source or food, or even of meat. It's always in either extreme survival scenarios (which tend to involve fairly limited numbers of people and for fairly limited amounts of time,) or for ritual reasons. If all you have to eat is each other, then pretty soon you won't have anything to eat AT ALL.

 

[Decoy1]

Mini- Bean Show
#5 Cannellino Malato (Network)
This bean is gorgeous, but my grow outs were not at all like the originals. I'd consider this one a fail. 🥺 I will try again this coming year, but I'm not too hopeful to get grow outs like the original beans that are shown in the top left of the picture. I'm so sorry, but I'm not sure what changed them. Anybody?

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.

 

[flowerbug]

I hadn't heard of it either, until I checked to see what came up for that name! Now I feel determined that if I ever get a bean cross that can be eaten as a snap, I'm gonna call it 'Soylent Green'. 🤪

haha! it is exciting when it happens. i'm hoping the one that showed up last season in my Painted Pony plantings turns out to be stable and edible. from my sample this season it was edible. so i'm hoping it repeats. i've already sent samples of it to three people to try out next spring.

i think it will be the first one in 13 yrs.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@flowerbug,

Do you remember what the growth habit of Striped Bunch was when you grew it this year? I have it listed as a Bush snap but I'm not sure that is correct. BTW the beans you sent were beautiful. Thanks again.

 

[Zeedman]

I hadn't heard of it either, until I checked to see what came up for that name! Now I feel determined that if I ever get a bean cross that can be eaten as a snap, I'm gonna call it 'Soylent Green'. 🤪

I contest that. It is pretty self evident that only an edamame soybean can be given that name. (Or a lentil - but names are meant for people, and who actually grows lentils in their garden? )

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I contest that. It is pretty self evident that only an edamame soybean can be given that name. (Or a lentil - but names are meant for people, and who actually grows lentils in their garden? )

I've done it, if only by accident (it's sometimes hard to tell a small, fat lentil from a vetch seed so a few lentils stayed IN when I took the vetches out to plant.)

 

[Decoy1]

@flowerbug,

Do you remember what the growth habit of Striped Bunch was when you grew it this year? I have it listed as a Bush snap but I'm not sure that is correct. BTW the beans you sent were beautiful. Thanks again.

I grew Striped Bunch this year as a semi-runner. It was about four feet tall.

 

[flowerbug]

I grew Striped Bunch this year as a semi-runner. It was about four feet tall.

sounds about right to me, but i'm not 100% because they were somewhat interplanted and also in between some other sprawly beans so they were all over each other in the end.

 

[flowerbug]

@flowerbug,

... BTW the beans you sent were beautiful. Thanks again.

i was glad that i had some decent results at last from Shelleasy x Soldier. with the long dry spell we had i managed to keep them watered evenly enough that they were able to finish.

Montville and Andikove i am not sure i will ever be able to get a decent crop from them, the remaining seeds i have left are of limited quality and quantity and i don't think i want to get more seeds for them when i'm not getting very good results. so this coming season will likely be my last attempt for them both. i know i've sent some seeds back already to replace what i got, but i don't think i ever had a full amount to refresh your stocks (hopefully someone else will have had better luck with them).