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

[Blue-Jay]

Hi Journey !

Yes I got two varieties in the mail either yesterday or the day before. Palomino and the other I don't remember right at the moment. Thanks !

 

[Blue-Jay]

Would you like to see photos of all those beans I got from the bean grower in South Africa? I can put all those in the Little Easy Bean network next year. There is another fellow from Australia that ran into my website and he's going to be sending me an assortment of Australian varieties. These guys want someone in America to keep them all alive.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hey Marshall ! If there's something you would like let me know. I updated the website yesterday and there's all sorts of varieties available now.

 

[so lucky]

That is so interesting that you got all those "sports?" from the beans. Thanks for posting the pics. I have the beans I grew from your seed waiting to be mailed; just haven't managed to get them packaged up yet. I intend to plant some of the Purple Amazon Bush bean, for eating next year. Great productive tasty bean.

 

[journey11]

Hi Journey !

Yes I got two varieties in the mail either yesterday or the day before. Palomino and the other I don't remember right at the moment. Thanks !

Great! I had tons of the Top Crop, but I picked out the prettiest 50 of the Appaloosa. I would hate for USPS to have lost those!

That is amazing, the wide array of variation in those beans. My Ora's Speckled, brown speckled greasy cut-short, threw off about 1/3 of its seeds as coal black cut-shorts. The pods were purple streaked too on those. From the same original seed batch I had planted it from twice prior with no variation at all. I meant to ask you all about it. I wouldn't have realized it was so common. Many of yours in the photos above are really far off from the appearance of the original too, Russ. Beautiful, either way!

 

[897tgigvib]

Russ!!!!!!!! I just now saw the photos of some of this year's outcrosses up in the post above!

THAT IS AWESOME POSSUM!

That one which crossed a 3 foot gap and then won a battle against a Tomato plant most definitely has BIG POTENTIAL. Any bean that can do that and still produce lots is a serious winner.

I've had some beans that grew in and around tomato plants before but they usually don't produce as much as they should, and never had one go 3 feet first to do that.

I actually like to plant the underdogs and such, so I like that plain greenish one with the faint colorings. Maybe that's a good name for it; Underdog

Course, Underdog needs a Polly Purebred So if that one's Underdog, oughta name a really fine one Polly Purebred. She was ALWAYS much too classy for him, but he ALWAYS saved the day for her.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hi Journey !

In the case of the beans I have pictured thowing off other combinations. That is because when I planted say the Smith River Super Speckle. The one seed that produced the plant that gave me the odd color of seed had undoubtedly been outcrossed. I planted 16 seeds for every variety planted in the garden. The majority of the seeds planted were fine, and I got back mostly what I planted. Also in the case of the bean called Falcon. Out of 16 Falcon seeds planted two of the plants produced the odd colored bean seeds. So beans don't just throw off different colors by themselves. It is because some bumblebee or honey bee brought your bean some pollen from another variety and made a bean cross. However you won't know it right away. Then about two years later when you've grown the outcrossed seed for the second time suddenly out pops a new color. So after a cross occurs it will take until the second season for you to see the new bean seed color. That is exactly what you are saying about your Ora Speckled you planted it twice before you saw the black beans.
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In the case of some of the outcrosses I found this summer. Even before I saw the plants new seed I could already see a difference in some of my plants growing in the middle of a variety. The one single plant in the Smith River Super Speckle planting was two to three times the size of all the other Smith Rivers, and it also had some red coloring in it's stems where Smith River bean plants did not.
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When it comes to the new bean seed being so different from the original. You just don't know all the genes that the bean plants contain and the color combinations they are capable of until you cross one with another variety and some new gene combinations get paired up differently. I was reading a book on bean collecting this past winter. It was a book for these people who go out into the wild and collect seed of wild varieties. Kind of technical book really, but there was one chapter on making some bean crosses using white seeded varieties. Some white seeded beans are actually mottled seeded beans disguised as white beans. They contain a dominate gene for mottled or marbled seed coats, but they have been selected for the recessive gene for white seededness and have the genes for white seeds paired up. Often times when you cross two white seeded beans you get mottled seeded beans by pairing up the dominate genes for the mottled seed coat. What is amazing is the wild beans the ancestors to all the beans we have today actually didn't have but a couple of different seed coat colors and they were very drab looking so they couldn't be seen easily and become food for some animal or bird. However today we have all these different colors and combinations of bean seeds. So the wild beans must have contained all the genes for all these possible colors. Just amazing.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hi Marshall !

I thought you saw them all yesterday when you said that was quite an assortment. I had one line of photos up just to see how they sized on my screen. Thought they were too small then went back to work on the rest of them for about hour and a half. You probably saw the first line of photos I did as a test.

The bean that climbed the tomato when I shelled out it's seeds and put them on syro plates I put a label on the plates and have been referring to it as Super Bean. By golly he should have an S on his chest.

Actually almost all the beans I planted and got these new combinations from were varieties I planted for the first time. So I figure they had to actually be outcrossed already from the people who I got the original seed samples. In the last three gardens I can see a bit of evidence that I have one outcross that actually has occurred in my beans that I have been growing. That one is Jacob's Cattle I grew in 2011 with Painted Pony on one side and Orca on the other row. Each year I have not gotten good JC patterned seeds. Most almost solid red seeds. Same thing last year. This year I got some really nice JC patterned seed, but also got some shorter almost oval seeds with mostly red and just a bit of white, and some seeds shaped like JC but mostly red with some very faint wispy white mixed into the red. So I think that could be outcrossing.

Last year I planted Jacob's Cattle in alternating it's seeds up the row with Black Coco. I would like to get a bean again like you see on my outcrosses page on the website called Holstein. It was close to being patterned Like JC, but the black on it was true jet black. Not like the dark purple you find on a bean today called Black Trout. Plus the bean was a good producer and seemed to dry down nicely with not a lot of spoiled looking seeds. This year I planted JC again in alternating fashion with the seeds of Crow River Black. Will see in the next two seasons if the results I want come out of it from either Jacob's Cattle or Crow River Black.

Let me know if anything I have you would like to plant. Some of the new beans I have fair number of seeds of them, and some not so much. I also have many now available of those pictured on the website. I harvested just a little over 100 pounds of seed and it was all hand shelled. Took me all the month of October. I have a couple of pods of the Super Bean I have not shelled out. I should send you two of them and let you see the pods and let you plant those seeds. I definitely think it might be a pole bean.

 

[journey11]

It is amazing, the genetics at work. They are all little works of art.

I am going to start keeping better notes and observations from now on. I need to do that with my tomatoes too. I can't wait to see my black ones will come back again as greasy cut-shorts next year.

 

[897tgigvib]

Journey, if those black seeded greasy cutshorts breed true I think you'll really be on to something. Not too sure if there are any black seeded truly greasy truly cutshort varieties out there.

Russ, I'm still devising plans for next year's garden. For all the new varieties I'm practically drooling with anticipation of growing, I might only be able to do 5 to 8 plants of each.

I really want to grow the new outcrosses, and varieties that potentially may outcross, and old outcrosses too.

I'm still devising my anti gopher measures, need to get a soil ph tester, and possibly a yard or two of new soil. This forest compost has a tendency to shrink a lot. For example, my bonus bed of little brown cat on one side and piros feher started full to the brim. by season end it went down 8 inches! I have soil planning to do in addition to variety planning. Also, I may raise the roof at the sides and remove the top beams and use 8 12 foot 2x4's inner, and 8 10 foot 2x4's outer. Also, I do have the south bed to frame and some other beds to go higher and deeper, especially my beauty bed of colorful pole beans for all the boatbabes to admire. That bed was barely deep enough.

Some of the varieties I'll be sending to you are real special. The half runner semi greasy white seeded variety that began sorting out of the salle/dunahoo white greasy mix is definitely stable, nicely vigorous and productive, and makes real nice very straight slightly wide pods with nice looking medium sized white seeds that look to be every bit as good to cook as any white navy. Reminds me, I also have a nice selection of "Senate Soup" bean which is definitely a 3 foot pole bean. Senate Soup is one of the white navy varieties, but has the history of being the official bean served in the capitol building for the senators and staff in the cafeteria there since, a long time ago.

SHOOT! Maybe senate soup beans are the cause of all the political problems? Lol!

Well, next year I defeat the gophers once and for all!