Another gorgeous day! Spent some time this evening stripping vines on poles that I had pulled up and put under cover to dry, and they're bone dry now. After an hour the cling of dried, crumbly bean leaf particles to clothing is remarkable! But I got several box flats full of pods ready to be shelled.
This is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in pole beans. I cannot wrap my head around what happened here, both poles in the photos below are network bean
North Carolina. As you can see the top pole is pretty tall and bushy, the bottom one is a bit thin and sparse - it's about 1/2 the height of the big one. The big one is in full sun, whereas the other vine is a location that gets some shade in the early evening
and yet despite being in a less ideal location it has pods top to bottom. Not tons, but there's some. The super tall North Carolina (probably about 10-11 ft) has a total of
3 pods in it's middle. I've never seen such a big pole have no beans on it's middle. You can see at the top there is some flowering & pods are forming now, but almost nothing below.
Inside the tall pole - almost nothing. I wondered earlier in the summer if beans can make mules, I've seen it with a pepper once, a huge plant which produces nothing. Most of the summer it was totally bare of pods despite all the foliage. Beans: mysteries wrapped in enigmas wrapped in a riddle.
I planted 4 Purple Dove seeds the 2nd week of June, which is late for me. But I was impressed that they grew so quickly. I can see now that the bushes are starting to dry that the one plant that was less crowded (I planted 3 of the 4 in the kale row) produced 2x the amount of pods. Just goes to show, space matters. I lost my resolve to not eat the PD beans and stripped 1 plant for supper a month ago (which I didn't regret, they were delicious) and thought awe well, 3 other plants are growing. But golly it set a whole new bunch of beans and is now loaded right up again! So, I'll harvest seed from 4 plants after all. What good luck!
I did find the mostly bush plants grew a bit weird, not really climbing but with a big tendency to flop. Given that they produce better with good spacing I think they need a little stake to be twisted around instead of close planting to prop them up. A very fine fresh eating bean, I sampled an old pod today and it was still tender and tasted great. At least it's flopped over and exposed to sunshine. My experience with bush beans is that some are heavy setters, and some (maybe even many) are, sadly, very scanty. I love to find beans like Purple Dove that are super yielding bushes.
First dry PD seeds!
This is a bean called '
White Beauty'. I have no idea how it really grows, the website indicated a pole, but for me it was a bush, though the seeds are exactly as they should be. Given the wonky year, maybe it will grow as a pole in the future. I planted the entire packet, only one seed sprouted! It was a wee tiny bush too. I hope to increase the seeds next year.
Youdou #2. Kind of an ordinary seed for such a wacko bean! The dried up pods of all Youdou beans are the grungiest, garbage dumpiest looking ones I've seen yet.
Bomba! She didn't give me much, but it sure is a unique colored bean. Has the most unusual color tints in the seedcoat, almost a hint of bluish/lilac/ turquoise.
I need to find a better background to highlight that. All of the pea beans like this I've tried, Hutterite Soup etc, have not been phenomenal producers sadly. Variety or conditions, no idea. But the prettiness of this one outshines them all I think, and Bomba is a keeper.
First
Fesol Afartapobres dry pods!
