Bean, pea, legume (& tomato) swap

[Spike2]

You guys are making me drool!! Beautiful beans Joseph!

[Raiquee]

Oh man! Wish I could join! Maybe next year, all I would have to send is calypso beans. Which I think are pretty "common".

Question though- for all of you that have a million varieties- what are you doing? Growing one or two plants? I have a 50x50 garden and although I plant out large plots of beans...I only do one variety in them. This year I am planting my blue lake bush (they just do so well here and are a great canning bean). New this year is top pick pink eye purple hulled peas and Lima beans. One variety each.

I think I need a bigger garden...but really my 50x50 is all I can manage with a full time job.

[happydog]

Joseph, how's the flavor of your Great Hutterite? I once bought Hutterite from Rancho Gordo and they tasted amazing. But the Hutterite I grew was disappointing. I tried again with seed from a different vendor, but they still weren't great. Maybe it's regional soil differences. I sure wish I'd saved some of the Rancho Gordo beans and planted them. They don't sell them anymore. The Rancho Gordo Hutterite beans made the most delicious, creamy, soup. It was the epitome of comfort food.

[happydog]

Originally Posted by sdambr

They don't usually have these padded envelopes at the post office, but you can go to usps.com and order them online. They are free and shipped free to your home.

I've learned to keep a small stash of postal supplies at home. It never fails that the day you desperately need a specific box or envelope, they're all out of that one.

[PhilaGardener]

Originally Posted by Raiquee

Question though- for all of you that have a million varieties- what are you doing? Growing one or two plants?

Great question!

To increase/maintain a variety, I plant 3-4 seeds for a pole variety and train them up the same post or plant a 4 ft row (across a raised bed) for a bush variety. That usually gives me enough to taste test but as some pods mature production falls off.

For the kitchen, I plant 2-3x that amount but do like to have several varieties coming along to vary what I am picking and hedge against the weather lottery, etc. Successive planting are another way to keep them coming in over an extended period.

My garden never is large enough either!

Because legumes are mostly self-pollinating, there typically isn't much genetic diversity within an heirloom strain, so small numbers seem an OK compromise to me. For some varieties, like Violet's Multicolor Butterbeans, where I can see there is diversity to maintain, I will plant more to maintain all the color forms in a population.

I also try to recognize anything that seems off-type and isolate/cull a plant that doesn't match expectations in form or vigor. Having several plants for each variety lets me compare them and recognize chance crosses. Runner beans do seem to outcross a lot, so I typically raise a single variety of those in my garden in any one year to keep it pure.

Glad to hear others' approaches and thoughts on this!

[joseph]

I only eat mixed varieties of beans, so I don't taste specific varieties. To me all beans pretty much taste like any other beans.

I closely inter-plant varieties of beans, and especially runners, in order to maximize the potential for crossing. I want as much variety as I can generate without doing something laborious like hand-pollinating.

I plant some as mixed bulk beans.

I plant some in what I think of as family-groups. About 10 to 40 seeds of like kinds together in a short row.

If anything off type shows up, then it might be a hybrid, so I save it special so that I can continually be growing desegregating hybrid families. I suspect that I found five or six F1 hybrids last fall. I'll know for sure when I grow them out.

A hybrid family clade. All descended from one hybrid plant. The grandmother of these beans was like that yellow bean in the top right. Grandfather unknown. I sent some of this seed into the swap as Dutch Brown Cross.


This was my bean field last summer: About 1300 row feet of beans.


The previous year, my bean field was much smaller.

[joseph]

Here's more photos of beans that I sent into the swap.

Runner Beans:


Fava Beans:


Long Island Seed Project's Snap Beans:


Teparies:

[Tormato]

Originally Posted by Raiquee

Oh man! Wish I could join! Maybe next year, all I would have to send is calypso beans. Which I think are pretty "common".

Question though- for all of you that have a million varieties- what are you doing? Growing one or two plants? I have a 50x50 garden and although I plant out large plots of beans...I only do one variety in them. This year I am planting my blue lake bush (they just do so well here and are a great canning bean). New this year is top pick pink eye purple hulled peas and Lima beans. One variety each.

I think I need a bigger garden...but really my 50x50 is all I can manage with a full time job.

If you'd like to join, there's no need to send anything but return postage.

A mega-package arrived over the weekend, 120 varieties/ 600+ packs of seeds.

[imp]

Originally Posted by Tormato

If you'd like to join, there's no need to send anything but return postage.

A mega-package arrived over the weekend, 120 varieties/ 600+ packs of seeds.

OMG, OMG, wow and zowie!

[Raiquee]

Tormato) I would love to if I could float along for this ride. Do I just pm you my addy? I can put Calypso in if no one minds them horribly.

[spacetogrow]

Originally Posted by Tormato

If you'd like to join, there's no need to send anything but return postage.

A mega-package arrived over the weekend, 120 varieties/ 600+ packs of seeds.

I bow down! I bow down! OMG!!!

[habitat_gardener]

Originally Posted by Tormato

If you'd like to join, there's no need to send anything but return postage.

A mega-package arrived over the weekend, 120 varieties/ 600+ packs of seeds.

I give up. This is just too tempting. I will find space to plant more beans, in addition to my dry-bean project this year!

[imp]

I sure am soooo glad our friend is building us trellis's and giving us long T posts for our gardens this year!! Gonna need 'em, <big ol' grin>!!!

[Tormato]

Originally Posted by imp

I sure am soooo glad our friend is building us trellis's and giving us long T posts for our gardens this year!! Gonna need 'em, <big ol' grin>!!!

"You're gonna need a bigger boat"

Sheriff Brody

[imp]

Originally Posted by Tormato

"You're gonna need a bigger boat"

Sheriff Brody

I'm working on it honey, working on it!!

Already paid for 19 plots in my community garden, waiting to see if the other lady renews her 5 plots and if she doesn't...more room! I have most of 1 side now except for 4 plots and those 5 plots. Thank goodness I can also get free wood chips along with the free compost and water. I am planning on putting down landscape fabric and wood chips to mulch over that.

I wonder, instead of a 3 sisters sort of thing, could I grow some pole beans up and along with the Tomatoes???!!!! Maybe a 2 brothers thing?

I think I am currently in the process of what is known as "losing it"! But what a way to go!

Losing it or not, I am getting more and more wound up and staring at those darn mesquite trees, waiting for them to give me the go ahead by budding out.