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

[heirloomgal]

new shingles? perhaps a bit of a concern at first but after they've been on for a while and through some rains that doesn't bother me. i'm sure we get a lot more contamination from things brought in on the winds (dusts from farm fields and various sprays).

If there had been a long hot and dry spell and you took the rain off the roof and put that in the rain barrels instead of letting it bypass it could be an issue, but with older shingles that have been weathered enough it would not concern me at all. bird poo is fertilizer they provide it all the time very directly in the gardens here. the water rejecting gadgets are more for people who use their roof runoff for drinking water (which i don't think is very common in the USoA).

No, they've been there for a decade I think. But what got me thinking about the rain barrels was a few years ago I noticed by chance, and at a certain angle that characteristic 'rainbow' sheen of drop of gas on water in one of them. And I mentioned to DH that maybe the barrels got contaminated somehow? And it was he that mentioned the shingles and the runoff. It wasn't much, and you couldn't even really see the sheen if the sun wasn't catching it just the right way, but for small plants I wonder if there may be an influence from something like that.

 

[heirloomgal]

Will do a photo dump of the network beans so you can see how they're all doing. This is a mixture of the 2024 ones that were fails as well as the 2025 ones. Might take a couple days to get through them all. The variation in heights is a bit mind boggling! Most of them are just starting to climb, and there are a couple way out in the margins that are either super tall or still looking pokey.

The rabbit ate most of my Stibitz plants. But I have 2 left.

Blue & White of Bernardo

Barry Island, corner plant, 5 feet!

 

[flowerbug]

No, they've been there for a decade I think. But what got me thinking about the rain barrels was a few years ago I noticed by chance, and at a certain angle that characteristic 'rainbow' sheen of drop of gas on water in one of them. And I mentioned to DH that maybe the barrels got contaminated somehow? And it was he that mentioned the shingles and the runoff. It wasn't much, and you couldn't even really see the sheen if the sun wasn't catching it just the right way, but for small plants I wonder if there may be an influence from something like that.

wow, i've never seen that here on any of the puddles around the house after a rain. two sets of shingles (so far).

any roof leaks that needed patching? source of barrels? mosquito dunks or mosquito sprays? skin lotions?

still i think a small bit like that won't be enough to really harm plants.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Will do a photo dump of the network beans so you can see how they're all doing. This is a mixture of the 2024 ones that were fails as well as the 2025 ones. Might take a couple days to get through them all. The variation in heights is a bit mind boggling! Most of them are just starting to climb, and there are a couple way out in the margins that are either super tall or still looking pokey.

The rabbit ate most of my Stibitz plants. But I have 2 left.

All your photos look like normal healthy bean plants. Very nice !

 

[Ridgerunner]

And it was he that mentioned the shingles and the runoff.

Growing up in East Tennessee we got our drinking water from a cistern that captured the run-off from our house. It was a tin roof, not shingles. We used coal for heat so it put out a lot of black suet. When the rain started it would wash that black suet off.

We had a bypass set up so the first rain bypassed the cistern and went straight to the ground. After the roof was washed off we switched the flow into the cistern. If we failed to bypass that first water after we had been burning coal the cistern water was black for a few days, before the suet settled out.

Shingles could collect pollution between rain showers. Do you have any coal or petroleum burning plants around you? New shingles could easily bleed out products if they are asphalt especially. After 10 years I'd expect that runoff to be pretty minor and would not expect it to hurt your crops. But do you have pollution falling from the sky?