Agreed, variety seems to play a central role. Probably some mysterious combination of variety and how it reacts with heat or lack thereof, soil composition, mineral presence, etc. Beans are pretty sensitive to micronutrients the agronomists tell me, so that may be a factor too. Then the individual genetics in each seed too.
An interesting experiment would be to see how far down you can go with a bean seed. I've done it with potatoes. I read that the deeper you go the more potatoes you get, so I went 3+ feet, and hilled a little bit. Yup, that made for lots of potatoes. Too many actually, lol.today while weeding there was this bean plant growing that was not likely to do much as it was overgrown by several feet of beans around it. i removed it and noticed that it had a good 6+ inches of white blanched stem which means it had managed to sprout and come up through that much garden soil (somewhat heavy but not as bad as our worst gardens).
even after all these years plants can still surprise me.
I do good until I hear the coyotes howl and then I suddenly remember that I can't run as fast as I could a year ago.Plus, being outside all alone in the middle of the night with only a flashlight, I admit, it freaked me out a little. That's a lot of bush back there, creaking trees, snapping twigs, 'mystery noises' and the bush extends back there for kilometers.
