2026 Little Easy Bean Network – Plant A Garden, Water Your Soul, Join Our Family

[Blue-Jay]

Russ's 2025 Big Bean Show Day 30​

Inca Pea - Pole Dry. My website says Inca Pea produces large amounts of beans. It didn't do that. Another bean from the Joe Simocox collection.

Michigan Indian Mound - Pole Dry. I have another bean with this same exact name that I had in my collection long before I got this bean from a former Seed Savers Exchange member. This grower lives in Michigan so I decided to differentiate the two beans by adding Michigan to this beans name. This bean is nicely productive. I got over a pound (524 g) of beans from 8 plants. No history was given for this bean by the SSE grower.


Inca Pea - Pole dry..................................................Michigan Indian Mound - Pole Dry

 

[heirloomgal]

One more question on the crossing. I'm going to be growing some runner beans this year which I've never grown. Does it make sense to try to keep them separate from my pole beans? I was under the impression, mistakenly it now seems, that they wouldn't cross with regular beans because they're different species. My initial thought had been to grow them on the same trellis...I may need to rethink that.

Runner beans and pole beans can't cross pollinate, thankfully, the problem tends to be that while regular pole beans have low to medium attractive flowers for bees, runner beans are a very high level attraction for bees. The bees in my yard tend to be all over the runners and then start looking for other places to go nearby afterward. That's where the trouble can come in. I had in single Candy bean plant in 2021 and in a 2024 Purple Dove plant that were both crossed - and even though those plants were grown in very different spaces, in different years, they had one thing in common - both of them had been grown within a few feet of runner beans.

That isn't to say your'e guaranteed a cross between regular beans if you have runners nearby, it just increases the chance. Bean flowers are technically clesitogamous, so they often pollinate themselves before they even open.

 

[flowerbug]

...
Michigan Indian Mound - Pole Dry

Russ, that looks very much like a possible parent of Monster... i can't quite tell from the color of your picture but from what i can tell it's similar to what came to me via those Dapple Gray seeds.

 

[flowerbug]

Runner beans and pole beans can't cross pollinate, thankfully, the problem tends to be that while regular pole beans have low to medium attractive flowers for bees, runner beans are a very high level attraction for bees. The bees in my yard tend to be all over the runners and then start looking for other places to go nearby afterward. That's where the trouble can come in. I had in single Candy bean plant in 2021 and in a 2024 Purple Dove plant that were both crossed - and even though those plants were grown in very different spaces, in different years, they had one thing in common - both of them had been grown within a few feet of runner beans.

Purple Dove bean outcrosses!!!

it took me four years to get those to show up in any way that i wanted to see.

i'm curious if you got a lot of seeds and kept them or discarded them or any description you might have of them?

i have posted some pics of some outcrosses in last year's bean thread and have a bunch more to post some time but i've been distracted quite a bit this past fall and winter by other things and i'm finally getting back to my list of bean tasks.

That isn't to say your'e guaranteed a cross between regular beans if you have runners nearby, it just increases the chance. Bean flowers are technically clesitogamous, so they often pollinate themselves before they even open.

yes, it's interesting how nature can work and i'm always interested listening to the experts, but once in a while i also have been known to get something right when some experts told me otherwise.

 

[Blue-Jay]

5 Big Bean Show Day 30​

Russ, that looks very much like a possible parent of Monster... i can't quite tell from the color of your picture but from what i can tell it's similar to what came to me via those Dapple Gray seeds.

The beans in the photo are pretty true to what the color is actually, brown.

 

[heirloomgal]

Purple Dove bean outcrosses!!!

it took me four years to get those to show up in any way that i wanted to see.

i'm curious if you got a lot of seeds and kept them or discarded them or any description you might have of them?

i have posted some pics of some outcrosses in last year's bean thread and have a bunch more to post some time but i've been distracted quite a bit this past fall and winter by other things and i'm finally getting back to my list of bean tasks.




yes, it's interesting how nature can work and i'm always interested listening to the experts, but once in a while i also have been known to get something right when some experts told me otherwise.

Actually, I may be remembering that a little incorrrectly...I think maybe it was Zimbabwe Stones that crossed with Purple Dove, and I could see the Purple Dove influence in the Zimbabwe Stones seed. It was those 2 that were growing very close to the runner bean trellis in 2024. And I think it was @Decoy1 that wound up with one of those crossed seeds.

 

[flowerbug]

The beans in the photo are pretty true to what the color is actually, brown.

i see a range of browns there some of the lighter ones are toned towards what i would call olive and then the ones in the middle are darker.

 

[flowerbug]

Actually, I may be remembering that a little incorrrectly...I think maybe it was Zimbabwe Stones that crossed with Purple Dove, and I could see the Purple Dove influence in the Zimbabwe Stones seed. It was those 2 that were growing very close to the runner bean trellis in 2024. And I think it was @Decoy1 that wound up with one of those crossed seeds.

just to make things clearer to me, this was the 2nd year you grew Purple Dove that you saw the seeds come out differently?