Yes, I would agree that search engines are highly problematic these days. Relying only on sources that seem reliable (such as a post from someone talking about their personal experience with a particular plant, for example) is what I do when I’m looking for information, and I highly recommend it. AI is a pretty decent place to start research, but it’s a terrible place to finish.
I have now seen a number of times when a person has cited an AI overview as a source for something, and when I’ve gone to double-check on their AI overview’s sources, the AI had just wholesale fabricated something false that wasn’t in any of the cited sources, and yet the person believed it . . .
I often use an AI overview in order to tell me which websites I want to go to for further research, since the AI usually cites its sources. I would estimate 50% of the time, the AI overview completely misrepresents the original source. (50% of the time!!) About 40% of the time, it gets it right, but only because it just directly quoted the original source (a.k.a. plagiarism). Only about 10% of the time is it useful as a combination search engine / summary generator.
I completely agree that it’s best to rely on reliable human sources. However, in the case of scarlet runner beans, it is a fairly obscure topic and often people who grow them don’t provide a lot of details about varieties or crosses in their commentary. I would love to get some accessions from GRIN if they are even still functioning anymore. Does anyone know?
GRIN is back online after the government shutdown, but they are pretty exclusive about who they share seeds with these days. They have many hundreds of accessions of Phaseolus coccineus (some of which I think are mis-identified), but I don’t see any mentioned as heat tolerant. You can search yourself at Search Accessions GRIN-Global
Someone on this forum (it might have been @Lauren?) mentioned to me that white runner beans have been better at flowering in hot summers for her than other ones she’s tried. Perhaps that would be a starting point?
I can add something anecdotal, as well. I have a neighbor who grew runner beans this year, and they seemed to be flowering and setting pods profusely, despite our super hot, super dry summer heat. They were in morning shade and afternoon sun, and she watered them a lot every day. So maybe watering them a lot can help?
The beans were light purple with dark purple stripes. They looked like tiger eye beans, only purple, and larger. It’s possible they were common beans; she had been told they were common beans by whoever sold them to her. But the flowers were red and the beans were much larger than normal for common beans, which makes me think they were runner beans.
In any case, that variety seems to have done okay here in Utah, where most of our summer days hit well above 90 degrees for about four or five months. My guess is that the partial shade and lots and lots of water probably helped.
I would love to swap seeds with your neighbor, if she’s interested. I have a fairly diverse mix of scarlet runner beans. But, I’m still at the point where I’m only harvesting a little more seed than i plant. I’m still committed to the project though, because hummingbirds are much more interested in the runner beans flowers than in my common pole bean flowers. So for the space, I’d rather be growing scarlet runners if i could get better yields.
She gave me a few seeds, but it was only about four of them, and I’m planning to plant those myself. Maybe next year, I will have enough seeds from them to save some for you? I very much hope to!
I am actually planning to put my runner beans in the ground in my greenhouse around February. I figure if I can give them an extra three months to grow, the summer heat may not be as much of a problem, and maybe I can even keep the roots alive in there and make them perennials, which will help them grow back earlier every year. I am really hoping!
I started my first generation of runner beans in the greenhouse about 8 weeks before i planted them out in the garden… that was several years ago in western Washington. And i watered them in the unusually hot, dry summers we had when i lived there, so i could get them to produce seed. Here in western Illinois, i just plant them in the ground and let rain be their only water. I had one volunteer this year that came up from seed that overwintered. I think one could probably plant seeds in the fall, so they could overwinter and germinate as early in the spring as possible. I wanted to do that this year but unfortunately was too busy with graduate school to get around to it. Next year…
I think in general, people drastically underestimate the quantity of seed needed to get a really adapted population when the plant is poorly adapted to their growing conditions. Think about the scale of undirected evolution, it is probably often 10^9 or more individuals over time for significant climate adaptation. I don’t think we need to go that high if we are strategic in our choices, but i still think it’s probably in the thousands unless you get lucky. Natural selection eliminates a lot of them very rapidly, so it’s not like you’ll have to be tending thousands of plants.
Luck would include having access to strains that already show improved adaptation. From what I’ve read, scarlet runners are grown throughout Central America and parts of northern Columbia for at least the last 4000 years. So there must be many locally adapted populations over that vast and climatically varied range.
Yeahhhh, I’ve definitely found that my usual gardening style (which is something along the lines of, “I’ll bother watering it once a week, maybe, if I remember; every two weeks is probably more likely”) eliminates a lot of small plants. The bright side is that everything that survives is great to share with people who value drought tolerance! But yeah, I’m finding beans a struggle right now. I think most varieties of most species probably expect to be coddled and/or put in an environment with mild summers that get frequent rain, and, um . . . (scratches head) . . . yeah, that’s not my garden.
One of the reasons I want to start the runner beans in the ground in my greenhouse is that our rainy winter will keep the soil moist all through April in there, and even after our arid summer begins, I suspect the greenhouse roof will keep in a fair amount of humidity, so the soil is likely to stay moister longer. Plus I’ll water there more frequently than in a lot of other places, because I’ll have baby tropical trees that like moist soil that I really want to make sure don’t die. So it’ll be a completely different climate in practice, and that seems worth testing out.
My greenhouse is small, so I’m hoping that just opening the front wall will be enough to keep it cooled off . . . but I haven’t tested that yet, so yeah, it’s a valid concern.
