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

[Blue-Jay]

Is it difficult to pull out your stakes at the end of the season @Bluejay ? Or do they dislodge fairly easily? I imagine you probably drive them in over a foot?

It can be difficult to pull them out if they have been driven in the ground to much over a foot deep. I had a fellow from Iowa help me put in a bunch of them this year and most of his were hard to get out. He used one of those post rams. It's like and empty cylinder with handles on the sides. Too heavy for me to use. He got some of the poles driven in about a foot and a third. I drive them in with the flat side of a carpenters hammer and mine go in to about a foot which are much easier to pull out of the soil. It helps if we have had some rain and the soil moistens up. Sometimes the part that is in the soil breaks off when I try to wiggle them side to side a bit to get the pole a little loose to pull out of the ground. When I took out some of his poles I use a shovel to dig around the pole a little to remove some of the soil and that lessened a lot of the resistance of the soil against the pole.

I think I really need to start painting my poles so when they are in the soil they don't absorb moisture and start to decay. That weakens the part of the pole that is in the ground and I think that causes some of them to break off when I try to pull them out of the soil. I think I will probably use a slippery enamel paint. I also put some short screws with rounded heads along the side of the poles and leave them hang out a bit so when the plants climb the poles the vines have something to catch onto and the plants wont slither back down if we get a heavy wind storm or even when the plants are loaded with pods. I had a lima plant that I grew on a pole without the screws this summer and when the plant was loaded with green pods it had enough weight to pile up the plants near the ground. The plants didn't seem to have wound themselves up tightly enough around the pole. So painting the poles will be another winter project in '26.

 

[flowerbug]

i still had some beans to pick but i'm not sure now that they'll be any good with how much rain is in the forecast. yet i will cross those bridges when i get to them...

some of the bean plants are still finishing up. the website for first frost dates puts us down for average on Oct 22nd, but we've had frosts much earlier than that so i usually consider most plants reliable if they can finish by mid-September and then see how it goes.

 

[Triffid]

Mine are all podded except for the few varieties which still need to dry down further. Some are still out there as we’re having a dry autumn with still no frost forecast up to the end of the month. Still lingering are Rose, Panzaredda, Rio Zape, Blue Greasy Grits, Blaue aus Ungarn, Fat Man, Heavenly Gold and Bob & Mary. Fully picked but still drying indoors are Sultan’s Gold Crescent and Jack’s Blue & Green.

How are your Rose pods progressing? All here are picked and pods opened up to dry indoors as the seeds were germinating on the vine. They seem to hold onto moisture for a very long time.

 

[heirloomgal]

Wow these blue and white Bernardo are amazing. If possible I'd like to trade you some of my beans if you were able to share a few of these lovely beans . Let me know if that would be possible

I DM'ed you!

 

[heirloomgal]

Mine are all podded except for the few varieties which still need to dry down further. Some are still out there as we’re having a dry autumn with still no frost forecast up to the end of the month. Still lingering are Rose, Panzaredda, Rio Zape, Blue Greasy Grits, Blaue aus Ungarn, Fat Man, Heavenly Gold and Bob & Mary. Fully picked but still drying indoors are Sultan’s Gold Crescent and Jack’s Blue & Green.

It’s interesting how some varieties dry down quite suddenly and completely. Gialet della Val Belluna is one which was quite late but within a few days dried beautifully and completely. And some manage to dry a pod here and a pod there over a long period and just yield a few each time I do a round. Paul Bunyan Giant and Heavenly Gold have been in that camp. I’m at the stage of picking pods when they’re still leathery or at the thinner floppier stage to hasten the drying indoors.

Like @Blue-Jay i pod as I go, collecting through most of the season in brown paper bags with names on as soon as they are dry, podding during evenings and adding them to their little drying drawers, sometimes just a few at a time. It’s this last stage which is a bit trickier.

I grew Gialet della Val Bellaluna this year too @Decoy1 and had the very same experience with it! Went from not dry to very dry quite quickly.

 

[heirloomgal]

The 2025 beans are nearly all fully dry, just waiting on a small number of stragglers, some of the later formed runner beans in particular. I've shelled a few varieties so far, did Ocean View tonight. That is such a pretty bean, and I got almost no reverts in this batch, a dozen seeds looked like Dapple Grey. The seed does have a faint greenish tinge to them though, sort of odd really. The Ohio Pole looks like the seeds will be fine despite my prematurely opening the pods to get them out.

So far only Badda Nera is not really making the approval list - it's too late for me. I did get some nice bean seeds from it, but lots of them are too small. It is a small seed anyway, so the less well developed seeds are ridiculously tiny, lol. Some of the Italian beans are just too long season for me. I suppose I didn't start them as early as usual this year. But, for the most, part this years lot of beans matured in good time.

 

[ruralmamma]

Harvested a few more dried pods from Coal Camp before the rain started this morning. It survived a light frost without cover but I think Im prepared to sacrifice the last few pods as it seems there's a 50/50 chance that the seed has already germinated and I haven't had much better success taking the greener pods inside to dry. I have sourced seed from a local grower as this variety seems to perform differently than when I grew it in 2020. Could be that it has adapted to the region where it was previously grown or maybe my memory isn't what it used to be.

Otherwise the bean season is over. I'll spend a few mornings pulling the vines from their supports and pile them for shredding. Next month I'll start sorting seed and enjoying the two-month lull until seed-starting season begins.