I haven’t tried horse gram yet, but I intend to next year. It’s supposed to be the most drought tolerant edible legume period, which sounds promising for me.
Is moth bean particularly drought and heat tolerant? If so, I definitely should try it next year, too!
Yeah, the Joseph Lofthouse tepary beans must not have been adapted to my climate. I thought they probably would be because we both live in Utah, but he flood-irrigates regularly and lives at a much higher elevation where it’s cooler and the growing seasons are shorter, so he probably isn’t selecting for the drought and heat tolerance I need.
The frustrating thing is, I also got tepary beans from Native Seeds Search, and they didn’t do any better! Is it possible they’re watering them regularly, too? I don’t know. I just find it a bummer that the species is supposed to be super drought tolerant, and it hasn’t seemed to me to be so far. I imagine I just need to find the right seeds, so I’ll keep on trying.
On the bright side, I did find some lima beans last year that did well in my climate. I planted about a hundred seeds of twelve different phenotypes, and only six plants survived, but they represented four phenotypes, and one of the plants produced about a hundred seeds all by itself, so — that’s promising! (The other three eked out about three or four seeds each.) I forgot to plant lima beans on time this year, but I am hoping to plant them again next year.
I’m sure I can find common beans and tepary beans that will do well here; I just need to keep on trying everything I can find until something clicks. So far, my most promising common bean has been a locally grown pinto bean I found, which is nifty — I got about twelve seeds out of one plant last year, and about six out of two more. Not enough to eat, but good enough to try planting them again, and hoping they will produce a lot for me.
It’s also noteworthy that I saw someone in my neighborhood last week who has runner beans and common beans growing abundantly and producing tons of seeds. She saves her own seeds every year, and she gave me some. Apparently they haven’t had trouble setting pods for her! And her beans are in mostly full sun all day, even the runner beans.
Now, she says she waters them every day, so they aren’t adapted to the growing conditions I want to put my beans in: I want to water them once a week, if I have enough time and I’m feeling generous, and less often than that if I don’t or am not. Still, heat tolerant and not drought tolerant is a start. I will happily try her seeds, probably in morning sun and afternoon shade, and see if I can find some that are willing to become drought tolerant and produce lots of seeds.
I am noticing that a lot of the people in my neighborhood who love gardening put their plants on a daily sprinkler or drip irrigation system, and that really concerns me. It means we don’t have any locally adapted landraces that can handle our summer rainlessness if tapwater ever becomes unavailable, which it would in a long-term emergency. It makes me feel it’s even more important for me to work on adapting these crops to work for our climate, so that I can share seeds when people around me need them.
I really want to get beans that are happy to work with my climate, rather than against it. Those are such an important source of protein, which is something we’re going to need in my neighborhood if grocery stores and tapwater and other modern conveniences go down. Even if that never happens, having locally adapted landraces is important so I can hand seeds to people in my neighborhood who aren’t interested in spending a lot of time on gardening, and give them the ability to grow food that will thrive without much care. That seems important and valuable for everybody. 
I wonder if the available tepary bean varieties have been grown in places with a lot more water, so they aren’t as well-suited to being dry-farmed in an arid summer as the species originally was.
(He really likes that beautiful view, and he doesn’t want it blocked by a mountain of wood chips — I can understand why!)