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

[ruralmamma]

Had an inch of rain yesterday and went out this morning and grabbed any spongy pods before the rain started again. Been leaving the ceiling fan on 24/7 and also have a small fan blowing directly on the pods. Have had a few issues with staining on the beans I brought in before the rains but that was to be expected and actually not as bad as I feared it might be. Rose has dried great considering the pods were really fleshy and unless I find an issue when I do the final sort, I should be able to return seed. Managed to harvest four Rio Zape seeds so far but even if every pod produces perfect seed, there just won't be enough to return.

I did have a happy moment this morning as I shelled a single pod of the black-speckled Ground Squirrel seed that resembles what I planted. Could still be a matter of reverse coloration, but will definitely plant those six seeds next year just to see what happens.

 

[heirloomgal]

Thank you! I have a tendency to make my supports a little too perfect but I love this idea! Also helps if my hubby has a visual too.

I find some varieties climb the metal trellises and fishing line just fine and others need a little help at first. I have two varieties that were so vigorous that they spread to the supports two plants away. The Avalon off-type had no problem climbing and eventually pulling down the tomato plants in the same bed and creeping out and climbing the fence a few feet away.

I don't find they have trouble so much climbing, as it's the yields that don't seem quite the same. But that could be my imagination, and also a variety related thing as well. Some of the vigor you're observing in the Avalon off-type is hybrid vigor, a unique expression that takes place when two separate varieties cross. Some hybrids are wildly productive! They can be quite like ligers.

 

[heirloomgal]

I was bad today and opened a few of the 'Ukrainian' pods. They were dry, but not super crispy dry which is what I was waiting for, but I just couldn't wait anymore to see what they look like. Oooh, I like these. I wondered if they'd be like 'Lilascheke', which I've grown a few times, but no the varieties are definitely not the same. This bean is actually much, much more productive too. It's a bit on the late side, but well worth the wait.

 

[flowerbug]

making progress on my Purple Dove project. you can see many beans in these pictures that look like variations of Purple Dove but do not have the yellow ring around the eye. what i need to continue to do is to keep growing these out and noting the habit, flower color, pods and seed coats and also hope for more crosses to continue getting more PD genes back to these seed lines (i suspect there are several based upon seed coat pattern, shape, etc.).

 

[heirloomgal]

It feels like Christmastime for this bean collector! I've been really sticking to my resolve with not opening pods yet, and waiting until things are crispy dry. And even if they are dry the air right now is pretty humid and the pods soften when that happens so I'm still waiting anyway. That said though I again couldn't help myself when I saw that a few of the 'Bela Putersnica' pods were quite dried. Another one that has me starry eyed! It's actually amazing how much the color is like that of 'Blue & White of Bernardo', though these seeds are considerably more elongated.

Another of the day's thrillers; last year I received the bush bean 'Nigel' from a seed saver in Germany and one plant in the lot grew very long and climbed. It was quite late really, but in the end I managed to get the pods to dry down. To my surprise they looked nearly identical to Nigel. I don't know why but I decided to replant a few of those seeds this year. I've never actually grown an outcross before, and I was expecting I'd probably not find a repeat of that coloring given the odds in a hybrid. I didn't plant much more than 6 plants, and one was killed by frost in a pot, but I found dried pods on 2 different plants today and - again - could not wait to see what was in there!

I can't believe it, the 2 plants gave me back exactly the same seedcoats as the ones I planted!!!!

 

[heirloomgal]

The last stragglers of 2025. 'Badda Nera', 'Gialet' and 'Custodia' (bottom). The only ones left in the ground in the main garden. Gialet will be fine I'm sure, the pods are fairly well advanced and some are even close to dry. Really it could come out by now, we just have no frost for the next few days so why not leave it in the ground til then. Badda Nera and Custodia are questionable, with Custodia seemingly having the least hope. At least Badda has some bumps. Beans from Spain either grow like gangbusters or they are super long season varieties. Luckily for me most have fallen in the first category, but a teeny few like the Ganxets just won't mature here. I felt some of the Custodia pods and they were empty. I can't complain, most of the beans from Spain have been absolutely marvelous. If I can get even a few seeds from these vines I will try again, next time with a 4 week head start. This year they got about a week, and that wasn't enough.

Hard to believe this is how far along we are in the season now!

 

[oxbow farm]

I was noodling around on the internet looking for information on bean crosses and stuff (as one does) and I ran across this article talking about flower morphology and outcrossing in domesticated and wild species of Phaseolus.

There were lots of interesting tidbits with links to other articles specific to them.

• as far as is currently known, all wild and domesticated Phaseolus sp DO NOT have any forms of self incompatibility.
• Tripping Phaseolus flowers by pollinators increases total seed yield. This is due (at least for some wild Phaseolus sp.) to the tripping action breaking a cuticle covering the stigmatic surface and therefore increasing its receptiveness to pollen. So the action of bees pushing down on the wings of the bean flower makes more beans per pod. It didn't say if any domesticated beans have such a cuticle.
• Phaseolus flowers are all left handed, and the keel curls to the left. UV pigments on Phaseolus flowers in many species direct pollinator attention towards landing on the left wing petal so that pollen gets brushed on their heads. (Mostly for bees, butterflies and hummingbirds maybe not so well fitted to do this?)
• There is a timing lag between when pollen begins to shed on the stigma internally and when the stigma undergoes fertilization, which gives a chance for pollen from bee visits an oportunity to be deposited and catch up with self pollen, but the crossed seeds are "FREQUENTLY located in the stylar part of the pod". So look for your crossed beans on the tip end.
• It says that Runner Beans are pollinated by hummingbirds as bees cannot see red wavelengths and are unattracted to the flowers, but that isn't true in my experience. I see bumblebees on Scarlet Runner all the time. And they land on the wings in the normal way. Maybe in Central America they don't with all the jungle flowers blossoming? Weird.
• Domesticated Phaseolus have much larger stigmas and stigmatic surfaces receptive to pollen than wild Phaseolus of the same species. This is thought to correlate with selection for larger pod size and larger seed size. It means more potential for outcrosses due to more surface area for pollen from a bee to attach to. Domestic bean flowers are also larger than wild flowers of the same species.
• Crossing between domesticated and wild forms of Phaseolus still occurs in Central and South America wherever they overlap. Gene flow occurs in both directions, but more from domestic to wild vs the other way, because domestic beans with larger flowers and more pollen and nectar are seemingly more attractive to pollinators than wild beans. Makes flow of transgenic genes into wild populations likely in the event of overlap.
• The two main ecotypes of common bean (Mesoamerican and Andean) derive from separate domestication of wild beans in both locations. There are slight genetic incompatibility between the two, but hybridization does occur. This happened multiple times across the world after beans were introduced worldwide after European contact with the New World (1493) Discussion about the higher yield potential of Mesoamerican varieties and the larger seed size of Andean varieties, and a desire for a bean that combines both.
• Phaseolus dumosas is a 2 million yo species that resulted from the hybridization of vulgaris and coccineus and backcrossing, then speciated in a higher altitude wet forest habitat that neither parent species could survive in due to fungal diseases etc.

Pretty interesting stuff.

 

[flowerbug]

The last stragglers of 2025. 'Badda Nera', 'Gialet' and 'Custodia' (bottom). The only ones left in the ground. Gialet will be fine I'm sure, the pods are fairly well advanced and some are even close to dry.

...

i'm picking some (the rarer beans) pods as soon as they start turning color so i can dry them inside under less dewy conditions - we have so much fog here some mornings it takes an hour or two after the fog lifts before the pods are not wet on the outside but it also makes it easier to protect pods from other things like mice and chipmunks. the problem inside though is that i do have a small room with other things in it besides beans so running out of space to stack flats does become an issue.

 

[SusanneinHastings]

So, normally I would be pulling out dead plants and starting to prep beds for spring this time of year. But we have temperatures in the high 70s and 80s forecast for the next week, and I am bringing 15 lb of tomatoes to the food shelf still every week. The gigantes beans love it and are still blooming and producing new pods. The weather forecaster says this might be our new normal. But I don’t know where I am gonna put the garlic in.

 

[ruralmamma]

the problem inside though is that i do have a small room with other things in it besides beans so running out of space to stack flats does become an issue.

I'm pretty much doing the same. Not so much fog as heavy dew most mornings and a few days of rain lately. I am finding the combination of the ceiling fan and a box fan to be beneficial, especially with Rose as it has a thick pod. I'm down to around a dozen flats now as the majority of seed has been transferred to large mushroom containers on an upper shelf until I feel they are thoroughly dried.

Anyone else finding Coal Camp to be a late producer? I've managed to harvest one pod so far as the others are still solid. A seller I occasionally buy seed from has it listed as producing early. I know when I tried it before I didn't receive the seed until mid-June but it still managed to produce a few pods. It's actually the only bean that still has lush green vines in that garden. Autumn Zebra (non Network) is also a late producer but I they did go out about two weeks later than everything else. Rio Zape is producing a new flush of tiny beans but doubtful they'll have time to mature.