2025 Little Easy Bean Network - Growers Of The Future Will Be Glad We Saved

[Vanalpaca]

I put my first and only beans straight into the ground today, the Sakaguchi Kang Wong runner bean seeds. I overplanted just in case, and I have quite a lot of seed now so I can manage that luxury of overplanting. The weather has been pretty decent at night, going mostly as low as 14C/52F. Of course, now now that I planted the seeds tonight we drop to 5C/41F, lol. My hope is that runner beans are more tolerant of that kind of cold dip. But I also started some in pots, just in case.

I am about 1/3 done with getting saplings for the beans, it's been very mosquito rich in the forest so the trips have been fairly brief. I've been wearing my puffy winter coat and DS who has been helping haul the birch poles out, has his on too with a balaclava. I'd wear gloves if it didn't make holding the cutter slippery, my hands get bitten. But the garden beds are all ready, and all the beans have been planted in pots in the sunroom. Tonight I put a heater on for them. I am loving this potting mix, it's so light and airy. The beans will germinate well in it, and there is very little chance of oversaturation. My new sprayer is working great to moderate water application too.

So now...I sit on a pin and wait to see sprouts!

Oh! Also! If anyone knows the growth habit of these beans, please share. I received them in a trade and there is no growth habit listed on the packages, and they are rare enough to not get any google hits. So I'm trying to figure out where to put them relative to their growth type.

*Cranberry Onondaga
*Tennessee Indian Purple Pod
*Brown Eyed Bobby
*Black Snake (P. vulgaris type)

What is the potting mix??

 

[Vanalpaca]

Wow ! Where did you get Brown Eyed Bobby. I got that bean from a Tennessee woman in 2018 at the seed swap in Livingston, Tennessee. I still have it in my freezer and still haven't grown it. This woman tells me it's a Bush Snap Bean. I don't know why she called it Brown Eyed Bobby because the bean doesn't seem to have an eye patch, but is a mottled patterned bean like Tendergreen.

I found a seed seller called "Seeds Of Plenty". They sell a bean called Snake Bean - Black Seeded. I wonder if that would be your Black Snake Bean.

I asked in my bean group on Facebook if anyone has heard of the Tennesse and Cranberry beans you mention.

Name of bean group on fb?? Thanks...

 

[Blue-Jay]

Name of bean group on fb?? Thanks...

Heirloom Bean Addicts Anonymous

 

[SusanneinHastings]

How did it get to be the end of May already?? Well, the first batch of Frost and Andikove are up, but I have decided to put them each in a giant driveway pot as a reserve. Just in case the second wave in the ground gets eaten by rabbits or cutworms or whatever found its way inside one of the garden fences to eat up a row of peas. The ones in the ground will go inside the Supermax double fence.

P.s. I was sorting out my beans to plant and rediscovered a packet from this spring’s seed swap of “Hidatsa black pole beans.” Has anyone heard of these? I will plant and report, I only know the Hidatsa shield beans and the red and yellow Arikara.

 

[Vanalpaca]

How did it get to be the end of May already?? Well, the first batch of Frost and Andikove are up, but I have decided to put them each in a giant driveway pot as a reserve. Just in case the second wave in the ground gets eaten by rabbits or cutworms or whatever found its way inside one of the garden fences to eat up a row of peas. The ones in the ground will go inside the Supermax double fence.

P.s. I was sorting out my beans to plant and rediscovered a packet from this spring’s seed swap of “Hidatsa black pole beans.” Has anyone heard of these? I will plant and report, I only know the Hidatsa shield beans and the red and yellow Arikara.

Cannot answer the bean question. On the bunnies, reminds me I have gotta get the brick in place under the garden gates so the bigger ones cannot get in!!! Thanks!!

 

[heirloomgal]

Wow ! Where did you get Brown Eyed Bobby. I got that bean from a Tennessee woman in 2018 at the seed swap in Livingston, Tennessee. I still have it in my freezer and still haven't grown it. This woman tells me it's a Bush Snap Bean. I don't know why she called it Brown Eyed Bobby because the bean doesn't seem to have an eye patch, but is a mottled patterned bean like Tendergreen.

I found a seed seller called "Seeds Of Plenty". They sell a bean called Snake Bean - Black Seeded. I wonder if that would be your Black Snake Bean.

I asked in my bean group on Facebook if anyone has heard of the Tennesse and Cranberry beans you mention.

I got it in a trade with a fellow who found me on instagram! Yes, my seeds look exactly as you describe, brown and mottled. I'll check out Seeds of Plenty, I hope this may be the one! This trader sort of specializes in rare American heirlooms from Appalachia, I'm guessing this is one of those. Thank you for the help with investigative work @Blue-Jay! I've already made an oopsy because I double planted the Brown Eyed Bobbies in starter cups the way I do for poles, the bush beans I do one seed per pot.

 

[heirloomgal]

What is the potting mix??

 

[heirloomgal]

Ok, checked Seeds of Plenty and that doesn't look like a P. vulgaris bean so I don't think that's it.

 

[heirloomgal]

So the towering challenge to full-day sunlight for my pole beans has finally been defeated. And it feels magnificent.

Didn't measure it, but this stump several feet across. Second photo, stump is just behind the far rhubarb - that whole area was taken by the giant spruce, which shaded a lot of the garden on that side. Now we get a great view into the neighbour's garage. I may plant something low there at some point, like a hydrangea, once the huge surface roots start to rot.

I plan to grow at least one or two pole beans in the front yard, hopefully more in seasons to come. These cedar beasts need to be pulled up/dug out before I can properly expand. We spent part of last week getting the Line Locate service to come and mark off where all underground lines were. Wouldn't you know it, the original home builders planted all these right on the gas line. So, can't use a truck to pull them out. Front view and back view. DH started pressure washing the roots today to see where we can start cutting, and luckily the one closest to the house is very shallowly rooted. One plus about cedars, most roots are close to the surface.

 

[Decoy1]

Hello!

Just discovered this forum recently after reading about it on flowerbug's Anthive blog. I've been planning a slightly larger dry bean grow-out this season and had actually purchased several beans from Blue-Jay on the Bean Collector's Window site. I was looking specifically to find seed for Golden Lima (which I purchased from Blue-Jay) and Octarora Cornfield which unfortunately he didn't have.

I used to grow Octarora Cornfield a lot, but for some reason didn't freeze a sample and my jar of unfrozen seed gave me 0% germination when I did a test.

Fortunately I got an ounce from Krista Rome at Resilient Seeds. I had sent her some many years ago and she sometimes offers it for sale.

I used to be a SSE member and many years ago I started growing Dolloff. It is one of my favorite eating beans, and now its available from a couple of seed companies, especially Fedco. On Leigh Hurley's Extreme Gardener blog she mentioned her speculation that Dolloff was possibly related to Horticultural Lima, a bean described in Beans of New York. She also speculated that it was a close relative of Golden Lima, since the pictures she'd seen of Golden Lima were nearly identical to Dolloff. Both beans easily match the description of Horticultural Lima in Beans of New York, supposedly.

I have grown Dolloff many years and it is a great and productive pole dry bean, and I got weirdly curious about Golden Lima and wanted to compare them. So after finding it on Blue-Jay's page, I bought it and planted an entire 50 foot row of both, with some runner beans as a spacer between them so I don't get them mixed.

After recieving the Golden Lima from Blue-Jay and looking at them side by side with Dolloff, they look practically identical. MAYBE Golden Lima is a little paler and with more contrast between the two colors of the tan mottling? But that could easily be because they grew on different soils.

I'm curious if there are any differences between them grown on the same soil and planted out on the same day, or if they are just the same bean with different names? Probably no one else wants to know the aswer to this, but I was curious.

As of this morning, a couple of the Golden Lima have just poked their hooks out of the ground. Nothing from Dolloff yet.

An interesting post. I’m intrigued by these varieties with Lima in the name. There’s a discussion in Beans of New York to the effect that some growers had previously thought that a cross between P. vulgaris and P. lunatus had produced such Lima lookalikes but that at the time of writing this was no longer thought to be the case. I hadn’t realised that there are vulgaris varieties with Lima in the name. I’m assuming that those you mention are vulgaris varieties?

It will be interesting to see whether Golden Lima does in fact turn out to be similar in all its parts to Dolloff. Do you value Dolloff mainly as a shelled bean? And is Horticultural Lima a specific variety which is still available?