I think a collection of known crossers is a great goal, and collecting them from anywhere is a good idea.
My own bean effort was dismal this year. Super dry until the last four weeks of constant rain. And in addition, I somehow got pole beans mixed into my bush bean collection and now I don’t know what’s what in at least half of my stuff. (Tom Knippel – who I can’t figure out how to @mention, alerted me to this first from some seeds we traded, but I thought it was only stuff I shipped him somehow…nope!)
Anyway, I’m on one bean-group on FB – are you asking me to ask there, or just asking if I think you should collect from outside source?
Yes could you post in your facebook groups and Ideally we should all ask wherever we hang out online and in person… since we need as many as possible and are unlikely to get very many. I’ll ask a bean growing neighbor farmer to keep an eye out for off color beans to save for me. Then we can all send you the beans to mix, sound OK?
I also would say those just darken over time. Some of the lighter colour might also be from immaturity or just natural variability for other reasons.
My try with Josephs mix didn’t go that well. Had 15 distinct types (first thought 16, but noticed after picture that 2 were same colour with slight size difference. Possible that there are others that had little colour difference), but only got 10 or 11. Might be just 10 as there are so few of some similar looking, but like i said trial failed and so many didn’t make many pods and I didn’t go plant by plant. There seems to be one type that is novel from mix I got (big white), but that seems somewhat immature so can’t say for sure and remains to be seen if they grow next year. I suspect failure on some was because seeds weren’t fully mature. Conditions to start with weren’t helpful also, but most other beans I had had a lot higher success rate. But now I have quite a lot more each type I got except for some. Some seem to appear also on speedy alpine mix that I read is heavily based on Josephs seeds.
Speedy alpine mix had 4 distinct types to start, but harvested 5. I’m not quite sure if it’s own type or just colour difference in one. There were definetely some rogue darker speckled among lighter speckled beans as well as whole pods of black. Below is close to whole harvest of black/very dark specled to suggest that there weren’t one plant like that, but what’s the reason I’m don’t know. I will sow them separetely to see how they turn out.
You mean you had other bean populations that matured faster? Or just grew better or? Thanks for sharing these photos.
You are right about color darkening over time. I checked my bean photos from last year and they are also light colored right after harvest.
I have 4 more colors grown separately that haven’t been threshed. So I still have a lot more to obeserve. But if I do this again next year I will plant each color in in a different part of the garden, not just separated by flags, since I do have volunteers help me sometimes and they get chatty/not paying attention to flags or rows.
Yes, I had over 10 distinct varieties (some I had saved myself, some bought) plus that speedy alpine mix. It was quite weird how low germination was, I think around 20% at most where as others mostly were over 90%. Not sure what’s the exact route how they got to me so can’t say were fault is. I would think they aren’t that badly suited here, but start was cold that definetely could affect beans. Some of them did also mature slower, but some also had lot slower start. But I did get some so altogether there are plenty of different types and ultimate goal is to have them cross so it’s not a huge loss if i miss out on few.
This year I didn’t have that many seeds per type. I think I counted max 100 seeds for those 15 types so it was a bit hard to separate them without making it akward and after they didn’t do so well I didn’t bother harvesting them separate. Next year I have some plans how to set them so that they are separate, but also close with different types to have change to cross.
I just spent 40 minutes trying to apologize, ask for clarification, answer questions, and explain what we’re doing. In the process of getting permission to post, which I did finally get, the owner of the group implied repeatedly that I was up to some vague assault on her group and she called me lazy and disrespectful. I’ve left the group and won’t be having anything more to do with her. So someone else can try if they want to. Nothing is worth the grilling I just took.
Ah sorry to hear that Christopher and Joseph. People usually do not care to reply to me when i explain landraces and concepts. I haven’t had attacks so far, fingers crossed.
I’ve gone to Pascal Poot once, a french iconic dryland farmer once upon a rime, he who STUNs his plants. Hé said in a vidéo hé knew there were others doing extreme seed saving but not who or where.
So, I went to his farm to speak of Joseph and of landraces, showed him the book. But when i said mixing varieties his éyes simply glaced over and hé turned to my GF and started speaking about bees. I had evaporated to him.
We had fun afterwards imagining a conversation between him and his wife. ‘So here comes this dutch guy, talking in his crappy french about mixing varieties carrying a book of some désert Yankee! I can’t believe this shit!’
It made me shy to try again when there was a video about a seed savers collective and their journey. A retired pioneer was willing to answer questions afterwards My GF was there again and she spoke to him about mixing varieties. And hé was like ‘yeah ofcourse, i did that with 13 varieties of melons from abroad when even biological melonseeds where rare in France. I teach young gardeners about mixing and personnaly i believe it’s the future of seed saving, etc’
I didn’t bring the book along that time, but i’ll send him a copy when the French translation is published.
Goes just to show, i’m a weaky and mostly people surprise you but when they’re ripe for the knowledge they will receive and spread. Aaah i’m damages! I préfet plants over people!
How could I name it any other way . Unfortunately it’s likely to be just one off. Atleast i don’t knoe that beans could have normally sides that aren’t mirrow image one other, or very close to it. Interesting to see what comes out of it though.
10.1 lbs of beans total
sorted out all the off types, there were 1.47 lbs
8.66 Pinto colored
=17% non pinto looking.
So @MarkReed need your help! What exactly do I know now? What I want to say is that the beans are more promiscuous than average… But I’m not sure if I can say that, this is super complicated
When I started in the spring, I thought that I would know that every non-pinto looking bean would be an F2 cross, because they were all pintos last year… Can’t this still be true? But Ok, so some of them are segregrations from previous generations that looked like pintos last year.
Here is a closeup of some of the ones in the bowl.
This is little mindf*ck to think about since you have 2 different things with beans to think about, genetics and looks of the seed. Even with beans it’s F2 generation that will segregate so seeds from F1 generation are the ones that segregate into F2 (in genes, not in looks), producing variety off F2 plants that have F3 seeds that segregate also in looks as they are from F2 plants. Highest genetic diversity in F2 seeds, but in looks you see it only in F3 seeds. My brain hurts going through all that. Just remembering to mark F3 to seeds that I get from F2 is hard enough and I think I still have some where I have just used label I had in plant so need to correct those for sake of record keeping. F4-5 as about 75% stable, although I think it’s possible to have stable it this stage sometimes. Generally F8-10 is considered stable. Some pepper breeding video had a graph that showed that by F8 stage there could be 2 milloin different possibilities F8 ends up, although many wouldn’t be that different from eachother.
It’s really hard to say what actual Fx would be as there are so many possibilities debending on what plant where crossed and what kinda compinations they can have. Like one trait might dominate others and even in early Fx generations there might not be that much segregation. On the other hand it might even be mix of all sort of compinations. I suspect some might be natural colour variation, but I don’t have experience to judge that. It does seem that you have lots that maybe wouldn’t make so much sence as just colour variation. Assuming that lots of beans in that population weren’t crosses then it’s likely these came from F2 seeds. That way they wouldn’t show when you sowed, but would segregate. If they came from F3 seeds then it would depend on how dominant that colour would be. It’s possible that colour would be fixed in some of them and they wouldn’t segregate in colour of the bean, but would still be genetically diverse.
Saved some seeds from bush snap beans in order to see if I can find crosses next year. One variety, purple teepee, came already with atleast 2 types. Didn’t pay attention when I was planting them, but now when I checked seedpack it also had range of colour. I also noticed when I was picking those beans that some of them had flatter shape and slighly paler pod colour. I also pulled out some plants early that didn’t seem to do any pods (and if remember correctly were vining). At that time I was thinking that different variety had accidentally got there, but maybe there are crosses. I would expect more segregation, but maybe both parent’s had purple pods and there is more segregation in next generations. Similar to when crossing 2 red tomatoes off colours in F2 might not be that common. I only had around 10 plants so it might be very random whether there is no or several clear off types.
Had some pods of these that I had picked after I thought I had already picked them all and now noticed something interesting when opening them. Had two pods of those grey beans in the center; one was very purple and other was green with just little darker spots in it. Maybe it’s possible that colour had not developed in it, but I doubt that. Might be something look out for when opening pods. There might not be as much variance in pod colours as there are in beans, but maybe sometimes that’s the only thing that differentiates two similar looking bean types.
. Unfortunately it’s likely to be just one off. Atleast i don’t knoe that beans could have normally sides that aren’t mirrow image one other, or very close to it. Interesting to see what comes out of it though.
