The Little Easy Bean Network - Get New Beans Varieties Nearly Free

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

Don't know why i never knew he was born in my town! i guess it's because i only associate him with UNH as a former professor there. you should see some of the neat strawberries they have coming out of their breeding this year with deep red flowers on them! thanks Marshall for posting that!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Out of the 13 Jeminez pole beans I got from Russ, I wound up with only 3 plants. Germination was poor, a cutworm got one, and then those corn root borers killed a couple. Still, I have these three plants.

They still have a way to go but I think Ill be able to fulfill my commitment to Russ.

 

[journey11]

For only getting 3 to grow, those look really good, Ridgerunner. Very healthy plants and I like the looks of those long, full pods too.

I pulled a few Appaloosa pods to dry today that were yellowed. The Top Crop are coming along, slowly but surely.

 

[897tgigvib]

Oh, Journey, you got Vermont Appaloosa too? Can I see a closeup photo of yours? No matter how bone dry my pods are when I pick them, my Appaloosa beans are about half white and half deep blue. I kind of think they have to cure for several months before the brown starts to develop. Some varieties are like that.

I have some Sicilian heirloom beans with a name I can never remember quite right, Fagiola di Polizia Blanda, which means THE BLONDE BEANS OF POLIZIA. These are a 2 tone pole bean that are half white and half soft beige. When first picked, no matter how bone dry the pod, they are almost pure white, with the beige part barely showing color at all. In fact, when I first grew them last year and was harvesting them, I was thinking I must have a very poor selection growing. Then, early this year while I was going through my beans to decide which ones to plant, I looked at them and VOYLA! They had colored up! (Polizia is a town in Sicily. Apparently they have near that town an historical garden park where they grow these beans along with another set of several varieties that are a closely guarded set of local heirlooms that are not allowed out. I understand there is also a darker colored variety that has not yet escaped from there, lol.) Italy has some amazing beans!

Most seed catalogs seem to divide beans into a few categories:

SNAP BUSH
SNAP POLE
DRY

And maybe a few other categories:

WAX
MISC

While I see so many categories are out there!

DRY COMMERCIAL BUSH
DRY VINEY BUSH
DRY POLE
DRY ITALIAN BUSH
DRY ITALIAN POLE
DRY EAST EUROPEAN BUSH
DRY EAST EUROPEAN POLE
DRY NATIVE AMERICAN BUSH
DRY NATIVE AMERICAN VINEY
DRY NATIVE AMERICAN POLE
DRY MEXICAN BUSH
DRY MEXICAN COMMERCIAL BUSH
DRY MEXICAN VINEY
DRY MEXICAN POLE

Oh shoot, just making the categories can be a long list! I'm just going by memory and half a cup of coffee. But shoot, Borlotti, Annelino, Bolitas, Frijoles, Cranberry, Horticultural, and then there are inbetweens and boths!

Sometimes I imagine it is almost as if each bean is its own category. Not quite of course. I was reading about a breeding program for Kidney beans by the state of Michigan that began around 1908. The breeders were really fine tuning the varieties for high production by weight and by volume. Fine tuning for producing large crops even if the plants got disease, that is, resistance to disease. For different diseases, especially some "halo" disease. It looks like Kidney beans have gotten the most government support for breeding programs. And sure enough, those seem to be the plants that have those commercial qualities.

Russ' DAPPLE GREY plants have that commercial quality of growth! They are not at all Kidney beans. (Finished that first cup of coffee...) Dapple Grey plants are just beautiful! Mid season, not early. A few pods have ripened for a sample, but most of the pods are still down in there, slowly developing. I actually think there may be a set of "slow development to ripen" genes that some beans have. Petaluma Gold Rush has it too I think. For the most part I like it, but it does mean the pods are in the garden for a longer time, vulnerable to bugs or vermin.

I'm just babbling now...

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hey Ridge !

Nice looking pods and Jeminez plants. You'll get plenty of beans out of those three plants. Like your growing trellis too. Sometimes I think if I would construct some type of trellis system I would get more out of my space than the single poles I use now. I plant 48 seeds per 47 feet of row now. If my entire row was all trellised at 7 inch spacing for seed I could plant 80 seeds per row.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Thanks, Russ. That trellis is about 12 tall and 8 wide. It was built to provide shade for that storm shelter behind it. Thats why I wanted pole beans. Thats the perfect place for them. I cut a 16 cattle panel in half to make it.

I looked up Jeminez online and found the vines are supposed to grow 6 long. Yeah, right! Those pods are like that all the way to the top. Thats going to be a lot of beans.

If you put in a trellis system, think weed control. A permanent fence may have to be prepared for planting by hand, not by mechanical means. I mulch heavily once the beans are high enough so I can mulch around them without smothering them so that short bed is not too bad at all once I get to the mulch stage.

A temporary trellis may be an answer but wind load comes into play plus the time to put it up and take it down. Then there is the winter storage issue.

Before I started using my garden perimeter fence for the blue lake pole beans I put in three posts for a 45 row and stretched fencing between them. I took the fence down at the end of the season so I could work the ground to get it ready for planting but left the posts. Those end posts were well set but I still had to brace them really well to keep the weight of the beans when the wind blew from pulling them over.

There are pros and cons with everything. With as many pole beans as you grow, spreading them out and using poles may be the least amount of work for you. I spend a lot of time on weed control in my main garden, preparing the ground and then weeding the things I dont mulch. Pest control is nothing compared to weeds and ground prep.

 

[MontyJ]

When I got home yesterday evening, from being out of town overnight, I went straight to the garden. There I found 5 or 6 dry brittle pods on both the Winterfare and Tobacco Patch. I picked them and have the beans in coffee filters to make sure they are completely dry. The Winterfare will have many more ready in the next week or so, but the Tobacco Patch seems to be much slower. There are many, many pods, but most are still green. I wonder if the hail damage caused the Winterfare to hasten ripening. The beans look fully developed, but are more pale than the ones I planted. Will they darken with time? I have some pics, but have to get them uploaded.

 

[journey11]

Marshall, I just took a look at mine after 2 days of drying them. They do not look right at all! They are entirely orange, darker, no white, and a bit smaller than I remember the originals being. We've been averaging 2" of rain a week and I wonder if that ruined them? I did take a pic of the packets Russ sent me, if that helps... The Appaloosa are the bottom left.

 

[897tgigvib]

That's a different appaloosa than the vermont appaloosa than the kind I got. There are several varieties with the word appaloosa in the name...gonna open another tab and look...Yep, the appaloosa you got, listed on his site is a different variety than the one I got. The one I got is Vermont Appaloosa, completely different. I don't know why they'd be completely orange though. Like Russ said, sometimes different conditions can do that kind of thing. I think that is real neat.

 

[journey11]

I'll try to germinate a couple of those orange ones before I toss them. There are still more out in the garden developing, either way.