Thank you all for these very interesting discussions about dry green beans and how they are called in english! Leather britches, wouldn`t have guessed that! I read a little bit about bean drying here in Switzerland. Here the beans were mostly dried in over or in the oven, not in the sun, because in most of Switzerland, the climate is to wet in summer and the beans would propably spoil if you tried to dry them outside. You discussed that the beans for drying are called greasy beans because they have no fuzz on the pods. How is that an advantage for drying? or is it a coincidence that greasy beans are used for drying?
I guess for drying well it is an advantage if the beans are quite thin, so they dry out fast and evenly. Well I guess my Dasinger donāt fit this bill, because they are quite flatā¦
Concerning trying new uses for them:
Two days ago I tried using the dry beans/ the seeds in a chili. I found that they have quite a neutral taste, nothing to write home about, but a satysfying meaty texture. I soaked them for 3 hours and cooked them for one (yes, I know most people oak them longer but it was a somewhat chaotic day) and I had no digestive trouble at all. Nevertheless, i will try to soak them longer next time, to find out if they stay meaty or if they get mushy, because depening on the recipe I would prefer one or the other. Below, there is a photo from before soaking, one after soaking, and one of the chili. What surprised me is how wrinkly the skin got with the soaking and how the beans filled then out again during the cooking.
With regard to heirloom central/southern Appalachian beans, here at our small farmers market we look toward Bill Best for information. Mark Reed linked to the seed store that Best is affiliated with, the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center in Western North Carolina. This is the link to that seed store again: Featured Products
I thought I would also link to one of Bestās books which provide discussion of historic beans from Appalachia: Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste: Heirloom Seed Savers in Appalachia
That text is not available for free online, but if a person searches for something like ābill bestā āgreasy beansā itās possible to find specific information on these good old bean varieties, and sometimes opportunities to purchase
Iām not sure when the next one is but if you can make it to their seed swap you can find things not on the website and things other than beans too. Like I said I havenāt been since they moved it from Billās farm in KY but now, Iām getting the want to for the next one. Folks from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and other fun and interesting people are always there.
I got a sweet pepper from a fellow there that I swear tastes like red delicious apples. I only grow it once in a while when I can convince the woman to set out a year on her super-hot peppers. I donāt remember what it is called. Itās an heirloom I reckon, but I consider it a treasure and I strive to keep its genetics absolutely pure. Also, I reckon, has nothing to do with beans. 
I imagine there are lots of ways to do it. Here we string them using a needle and thread or just on screens and put them in the attic of the shed, but not outside in the sun. I like to give them a fine mist of salt water, or just rinse in salt water and when they dry, put them on the strings but I donāt remember the old-timers doing that.
I donāt know but I think that is mostly a coincidence. They had greasy beans, but they didnāt have electricity so it kind of just happened. Canning beans over a fire or on a wood stove where they have to boil hard for three full hours, in July heat, isnāt much fun but itās doable if you have the jars. Hanging them in the attic to dry is much easier.
I think about any shelly bean, that is beans that are fully mature but not dry, canned with some peppers and spices of choice make fine chili. Just peal them out of the limp yellow pods and throw them in the jars. The skins donāt wrinkle up or fall off that way either.
That would be awesome! Like @UnicornEmily I had been looking for the whitner or another bean that actually grows well inside the corn patch. But ended up just growing a mix of Cherokee cornfield this year, some liok luke they have flowera set by now so fingers crossed I will get some that like at least part shade out of this year!
Haha, now after re-reading this and confusing myself I am wondering if you mean dry as in ādry shelled beansā or dry as in āleather britchesā bean?
I that case I was talking about dry shelled beans but the same goes for leather britches. To me leather britches have a more intense flavor than using them as green beans or as dry beans. That more intense flavor is what a lot of people donāt like and that they can be tough and chewy, but they arenāt tough and chewy if you rehydrate them good before cooking. Itās hard to rehydrate them by cooking.
Beans going in.
Beans coming in
Pods of the best doers where purple.
Boring, no exciting mixes. 5% crosses they say? Nothings wrong with the bees. Iāve seen them pollinating between them.
Does anyone do hand cross polination like weāve seen in the course?
Hi Hugo,
It seems your beans got more homogeneous. Are there some types that do much better than others and therefore come to dominate? Also, are the big seeds Phaseolus coccineus?
Yes. The ones grown locally dominate. People grow the grey ones which have purple pods, the white ones and the ones with brown stripes. I collect from as many sources as i can to enhance variety within the variety.
The few smaller round ones with red specckles come from a southern mountainous area. They maintained.
Phaseolus coccineus indeed, always maintains. Iāve heard itās an easy crosser.
The browns and blacks around the red speckled ones come from my food stack probably but are on the way out. The ones outside the Scarlett runner beans are pink and brown striped. Iāll keep them seperately to find if they have changed color come spring.
Iāll try to be clever and replant the non locals when snails are gone and hopefully it will not backfire and somebody will pass whoās an expert at manual crosses or itāll be me torturing my flowers with my fat fingers and waning eyesight.
to my knowledge, phaseolus does not cross with vulgaris. they easily cross between phaseolusses, correct ? Since I have only the purple / black one like yours, I donāt expect it to improve other than adapting to my practice and soil.
I have no idea Isabelle. By saying i heard i mean just that. It stuck, because i liked what i heard. So i blab it out hĆØre for someone to pick up upon basicly. Thank you for correcting me. Now itās a rumor i heard which i should have examined which is probably not true, but i believed because it would have been beautiful.
If the question is whether phaseolus vulgaris and phaseolus coccineus can cross, they can
I believe that I had a coccineus x vulgaris cross. It was seeds I saved from vulgaris-pole beans, but two seeds were very big and looked like typical coccineus seeds. I sowed them im spring 2022 together with normal polebean seeds. The supposed hybrids germinated but them swiftly died. Because of this I believe that these hybrids may have a reduced viability.
That would line up with the small amount of anecdotal evidence Iāve heard on the subject. I believe Joseph also bred one that proved feeble and was unintentionally culled by a visitor
EDIT: Iāve not heard about F1 beans being any different in appearance than uncrossed beans however, though I would believe there might be cases where the difference might be easy to tell. Iām also confident there are ways to reliably distinguish them without instrumentation of any kind, but Iām skeptical as to whether such methods (if they exist) would be easily learnable by anyone
I was given some F1 seeds of a borlotti (mother) / runner (father) cross. They looked just like borlottis. I grew them out this past season and got white and two shades of pink beans. The pink ones had the typical borlotti markings, in pink and red rather than the classic borlotti colouring. The fowers were either white, producing white beans or red, producing the pink beans.
Iāll be growing out as many as I can manage this season.
Hey Ray, were those the ones i sent? If so Iāll let peter may know the results, since i got them from him.
Yes, indeed they were. Iām curious to see if there is any perenniality. The beans I sowed all showed runner bean habit - e.g., hypogeal germination, large pods and seeds.
Today I sowed the 2024 pole bean population. I put the following seeds in it:
- my Dasinger Blaue from 2023
- Kaiser Friedrich
- Fasoi Grisoni
- Blue polebeans from @Susanwakeman
- Beans from the seed exchange (containing seeds from @marcela_v, @JesseI and @Richard).
I have decided to not limit myself to purple beans in this phase of the project, but to test broadly what varieties do well. Of course, the focus is on purple, but if a plant does well, I will save seeds, even if the color of the pods is different. Maybe I will drop the purple altogether in time and focus on other traitsā¦
Can you get your hands on blue coco beans? Itās a French heirloom variety supposedly developed in the Rio Coco valley (modern Honduras and Nicaragua). It might already be everything youāre looking for. Iām trying to get mine to cross with rattlesnake beans to get a little more heat tolerance into the package.