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

[colcol]

Network bean Mother Earth ( Pole-dry)
Am seeing a few pods like this but not many. Still has alot of blooms on it, so hoping many many more will develop over the next month.

 

[Oxford]

Another nice variety has pods: Grah Rovicak. A pole bean originally from Croatia, seeds received from Austria.
The pods are yellow, flat, and red-speckled of about 15-18 cm / 6-7 inch. Seed are purple.

 

[P Suckling]

For the first time this year I am growing Succotash pole bean. I've had the seed before, maybe more than once from seed trades etc, but this is the first time I've ever actually planted it. I planted in early June with most of my beans, I'm not sure the exact date, but all the pole beans got planted within a week of each other.

For all the other beans I'm growing this year, they've all been flowering for weeks now, and have set pods. A few varieties of bush beans and half-runners like Mary Ison's Little Brown Bunch already have nearly mature pods, turning soft and pale.

The Succotash are huge plants, long, highly branched vines, very healthy looking, but they have not flowered and don't look like they are going to anytime soon.

I wonder if this variety has a daylength/photoperiod requirement?

I've seen speculation that the variety is mis-attributed as a Native American variety from the Narragansett people in Rhode Island and Succotash is more likely a recent South American import from the Andes/Equatorial region.

It definitely doesn't seem to flower properly in my lattitude.

Yes Succotash is a bit of a difficult one and very late. A botanist in my German bean gardening group has found evidence to suggest that it is actually not a phaseolus vulgaris, but a Lima bean, a phaseolus lunatus. I have not heard this from any other source (yet), but it would explain why it isn't easy to grow. When we lived in England, it really only thrived in the greenhouse, here in southern Germany it is a very late bean, but does ok outside.

 

[P Suckling]

I also heard that it is late-flowering. However, they are always mid-late flowering in my garden and I have already some small pods.

I have varieties that bloom much later, such as the blue-white of Bernarda, Schwarze Kugelbohne (literally translated as Black Ball Bean), San Michele Rosso, and the Tuvagliedda Marrone and Tuvagliedda Rossa.

Interesting. Blau Weiße von Bernada here is definitely earlier than Succotash. And it did not need greenhouse protection in England either.