The 2014 Little Easy Bean Network - Get New Beans On The Cheap

[Ridgerunner]

Somebody recently posted a map that shows current average soil temperatures. Seems like it was either Steve or Marshall but I can't remember for sure. I think this is it. They also had a chart that showed what the ground temperature needed to be for different things to germinate. I think beans were in the 60 degree range, but that's just my foggy memory.

http://www.greencastonline.com/tools/soiltempmaps.aspx

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I suppose that is as valid a point as any. And I am certainly no better sometimes. My own "pet" bean projects (well the two that are the most marginally successful) involve the rice bean and the adzuki. I am trying to make stable strains of all the colors EXCEPT the flat red that is the industry standard, and has been for centuries (while the other colors were tolerated for most of these beans cultivation history, the social connotation of the color red in Asia have more or less skewed production to red whenever possible. And the modern age with it's easier access to seed from far away has done no favors.).
But when I plant the seed I glean (most of my material comes from sorting through massive amounts of rice beans and picking out the few "off types" that sneak through or in the case of the adzukis that get through as an admixture in some suppliers rice bean crops (the mix ins are so diverse I have to assume whoever is growing that particular supply is basically using a hodgepodge of small adzukis as a green mature before the rice bean planting (no, I have no idea why a legume would need a green manure, let alone one weaker than it is) I don't really make any attempt to try and match seed to seed or track them. I usually don't even bother to make not of whose packing I got the seed from even though that can make a MAJOR difference in the plants (I'm fairly sure the strain with the adzukis in it is the only one whose season is short enough it can actually produce for anyone as far north as me.) On occasion I do, if the seed needs to be kept spate for some reason (for example the Thai red rice beans are separate, because they look too much like the normal Chinese ones). But usually everything just get separated into the four colors, reds (which get eaten, or thrown out, since, at 98%-99% of the total beans they are so common they'd out compete everything else if I kept them in) tans (everything from brown to cream) reds with mottling, tans with mottling and pinto (there were three others, black, blue, and green but since so far all blues have proved to be tans with unusually heavy mottling, and all blacks have proved to be reds with the same (or very deep reds usually spoiled) those have gotten folded in to their respective sectors. And I have yet to see a rice bean that was indisputably green. Adzukis get the same, (though black, blue, and green ARE separate there, and there is such a thing as green with mottle.) What I have grown myself get separated by plant for them, but that's just because, due to several mishapts during the last grow out, I only got three adzuki's that made mature seed before frost (two tans and a black mottled olive brown.)

 

[the1honeycomb]

i love giving 25 seeds back! i feel like I am helping Bluejay, and getting seeds for myself!!! i get to keep all the seeds from that particular variety and I planted them all this year!. Plus I get to experiment with new varieties!!. I know that I lost a few in the heavy down pours we had here, all my orcas are gone, and I am not sure about the others! I have a whole line that was beans that I no longer have it is empty but that is OK I will send what I get and I am excited about it! It seems very fair to me, I love bartering.

 

[the1honeycomb]

@Bluejay77 I was wondering if next year you could seperate the offered beans by bush and vining. I don't have as mu space for vining varieties but that is what I picked! working to get them going! Just an Idea

 

[897tgigvib]

Different native cultures can garden very differently from one another, especially when widely separated by continents or by latitude.

Up north, Waheenee very carefully sorted her beans for choosing which seeds to plant, planting the most colorful, healthiest, and true to spirit seeds for planting.

Some of the Southwest native seeds and Sonoran, and Sierra Madre seeds I have gotten have been what most of us would call a mix, even mixes of growth types that some even seem to have crossed and grow unusually, such as some pole growers that flower near the base of the plant mostly. That's how my original Capirame was until I carefully sorted them. Now, I wish I had not sorted them at all. It was simply a unique way of selecting that they did in that region. It yields a great diversity selecting the way they did.

Our way of selecting is not necessarily the best, but we do it how we want, and then, the variety, the particular accession of it that each person selecting has, actually reflects our selection.

I really like how Russ selects! If some of you have noticed, some of his selections of beans have the amazing combination of 3 colors. It may be a white background, with red splotches, but mixed in or between those red splotches is a nice deep beige. If not for great care in selecting, one of the colors could easily disappear in a few generations.

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On the other hand, us here, just now growing out varieties from Africa, some of which may have been grown as THE MAIN SOURCE OF SURVIVAL FOOD, even just last year for all I know, the selections may have well been from handfuls of seeds that got stashed, cached, tucked away so nobody would eat next year's food seed.

In that kind of circumstance, they might not care at all what color the seeds are. Heck, they might not even care if they are the same species!

This is the seed for the food. Plant it, grow it, Hunt and eat any Warthogs that try to get into this small farm.

I hear tell in America where they are rich and learn farming at schools, SOMEONE OR ANOTHER MIGHT BE ABLE TO MAKE OUR SEEDS PRODUCE MORE FOOD. LET'S SEND THEM A FEW! They don't even know about our delicious Banbarra.

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When I have these precious few African seeds in my hands, I look at them knowing these may well have been someone's precious food. They got them to us over here.

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So, it does not too much surprise me that some packets may have 2 or more species in them. This year these grow more beans. Next year those grow more beans. That could be their VERY IMPORTANT way of selecting. For when crop failure is not an option.

So, yes, I'm going to steepen up my learning and understanding curve.

'sides, we may well have beans here the Africans can use. Pretty Beans to sell to the tourists. That may be helpful.

Meantime, I'm finding out how these Nyimo Groundnuts grow. I have 5 plants of them growing.

 

[Smart Red]

@Bluejay77 I was wondering if next year you could seperate the offered beans by bush and vining. I don't have as mu space for vining varieties but that is what I picked! working to get them going! Just an Idea

@the1honeycomb, you can ask for them that way. Last year I asked for -- and received -- 3 pole and 3 bush varieties. I asked for 2 pole and 2 bush for this year. Of course, I didn't request any particular variety, I just let bluejay77 pick them for me figuring he knew best what needed to be sent out.

 

[the1honeycomb]

I did that the first year was thinking that I had plenty of space for climbing beans but next year I will let him pick I liked the colors of the ones I picked!!!

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Planted Prescott's Old Family Heirloom beans today. I'll be sweating bullets until these produce.

 

[897tgigvib]

I'm almost done framing BED 11, that farthest bed in the back. Hoping to have it done and planted by June 1st, though that may be an ambitious estimate. With Memorial day weekend coming up I won't have much time to work on it, and even after finishing the frame of it there is a lot to do in it before I can plant in it.
First will be getting about 20 inches depth of base soil over the double dug bottom. That will consist of native clay soil about 50%, mixed with forest compost and perhaps a little fresh leaf ash toward the top of it.
Some of the sides of this framing will need lining with plastic because some of the poles used to frame it were not all that straight. Partway along I began using the chainsaw creatively to make them fit better though.
Once the base soil is in I make the antigopher cage for it, a foot deep. (This bed is being proactively designed for more work on it next year to raise it higher, to the same height as BED 10). (That increase in height next year will make its antigopher cage 2 feet deep).
Once the antigopher cage is made and placed, then comes the difficult and slow process of obtaining the forest compost to fill it. Just double checked my woodstove, and yep, got the perfect amount of the best ash to mix into it. I use zero paper in my woodstove. My fires are started with tinder that I dry and make, mostly of used redwood, but also good and dry Pine or Fir. (That reminds me. I need to sharpen my hatchet.)
Once the cage is filled, finishing the bed goes fast. Plastic linings are placed before the soil, all except the surface one. That one is cut and placed, tucked in tightly. Then with the tape measure, cut the watering and relief slits in it, then the holes for the seeds.
Yes, when I was in town the other day I looked at the seed racks...

I bought a packet of Royalty Purple Pod to add diversity to mine which I have had since 1968 or so, and was down to one seed I found in a very old sock from clothes in a box my mother packed when I joined the Army. I do notice this packet has similar looking seeds, but they are smaller than mine, and also these show more variations in the beige color of them. Definitely a different and newer accession, and so far, very glad to renew the diversity of this variety in my collection. I will plant 3 seeds of this.

Also bought Roq D'Or, which looks like a nice Yellow podded bush bean with black seeds that have that nice snap bean shape to them, somewhat small, and its seeds have a delicious satiny sheen to them, with nice clean white Hilums.

I woke up too early this morning, but I'm wanting to get out to the garden practically at first light to finish framing that bed. Want to get to the base soil before it gets hot, and then there are some things I have to do to get ready for my campers, some of whom will be arriving today.

 

[the1honeycomb]

I bought a packet of Royalty Purple Pod to add diversity to mine which I have had since 1968 or so, and was down to one seed I found in a very old sock from clothes in a box my mother packed when I joined the Army. I do notice this packet has similar looking seeds, but they are smaller than mine, and also these show more variations in the beige color of them. Definitely a different and newer accession, and so far, very glad to renew the diversity of this variety in my collection. I will plant 3 seeds of this.



I love that you found a seed in a sock! I would like some info on your camping, I think getting to meet you and seeing your garden would be a wonderful adventure!!! I guess you were ment to have that bean!!