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

[jbrobin09]

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.
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Is it a dry bean? It’s beautiful.

 

[flowerbug]

i've been worried that the bunny rampages in the fenced gardens meant that the network beans weren't going to produce anything but so far i have some seeds from four of the five beans picked (with more pods filled but still too green for me to want to pick them) and hope that the one that is running late will have enough time to fill some pods before the frosts come along. had i not planted them in two gardens i may have had worse results.

yesterday the danged wabbit was bold enough to start chewing on some flowers of a bean plant about 5ft from where i was weeding with my knife - i didn't have my air rifle so i threw my knife at it and bonked it with the handle but didn't do any damage. it ran away and i tried to chase it out of the garden and had it cornered behind some butterfly bushes but those things are so spikey that i couldn't get through them to get at the wabby. hope it was scared enough to have figured out that life outside the fence might be a good thing after all... did not see it today at all.

 

[heirloomgal]

@heirloomgal
Have you been pulling weeds around those dying beans?

Not really, maybe a little hoeing but that's it. I saw some vole holes today so I'm wondering if they've made some tunnels into the rows that I can't see. These are the tiny voles, the size of field mice.

 

[heirloomgal]

'Pink Tenders' is a delight! On youngish pods I've only ever seen this pink hue on 'Red Swan'. Rare!


As far as I'm aware, 'Ryder's Top O'the Pole' is supposed to be green

Thanks for letting me know @Triffid! This week I noticed that there are green pods mixed in with the purple ones, so it looks like at least one plant is coming true. I had no idea what color it was supposed to be, mostly because I grow way too many beans, lol. Can't keep track of it all!

That Pink Tenders bean is amazing, I've never seen anything like it. It's one of my favorite beans for sure this year, and a network bean. And wouldn't you know it, I had the utterly dreadful luck that right out of the blue the entire plant just died right out on me. The stems seemed to dry up. I assumed this was some mysterious failing syndrome, but the next door neighbour beans are suspiciously failing too with the same look, wilting, yellowing etc. - characteristic of vole damage. I'm extremely disappointed and hope I have some seeds left, because I REALLY want to have this bean and return seeds to @Blue-Jay. Only 5 pods on the whole plant had seed bumps, so holding my breath there are seeds in there for 2026.

 

[Artorius]

Not really, maybe a little hoeing but that's it. I saw some vole holes today so I'm wondering if they've made some tunnels into the rows that I can't see. These are the tiny voles, the size of field mice.

I'm asking because I've noticed that the plants whose roots I damaged while removing weeds and those heavily undermined by moles are dying. It appears that common beans are very sensitive to root damage at a certain stage of their growth. However, runner beans and limas never died out.

 

[P Suckling]

This is how my Succotash currently looks like. I also had a completely dry pod today.
I checked quickly in my list and this year I sowed both on exactly the same day. But also in previous years, Succotash was earlier.
They are also in the same area of the garden, so they have the same soil and microclimate.
So, it's very interesting why they show this different behavior in my garden...
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And you have 5 seeds in a pod, is this usual for you or an exception? Mine tend to have 4 only by and large. There must be something that makes your garden particularly suited to them. I harvested pods at this stage in early October, not in mid August. The seeds look identical.

 

[Triffid]

Has anyone documented the flower colours of the 'Rose' bean? aka Rose Family and Raccoon.

I'm growing 20 plants for the Heritage Seed Library this season; they supplied the seed. Growing fantasically thank goodness. However, there are two flower colours, some plants have white blooms and others have an unusual lilac/white bicolour pattern.

Is it usual for there to be a mix? Or is one colour 'true-to-type'?