Favas were the only harvest from main plot, besides one seed of summer squash. Even the harvest from favas wasn’t huge for the ones a sowed, but it’s a clear seed increase. I can’t remember how many I sowed, but I think it was little less than 100. Maybe 40 out of those grew, but not all made seeds or many of them. Still enough to try and fill up the plot with favas as much I can next year. Some of the seeds have faults or discoloration from ripening so late, but this time I didn’t make any selection based on that. Anything that grows is fine and then at the end of next season I can be more selective on how they perform. There were also some spotty/striped that possibly are crosses, although I can’t say I have paid enough attention to the ones I sowed to say for certain that I didn’t have any like those before. Still I’m selecting these and some others that I have just little of to grow in more certain conditions in the main growing area.
I just googled (try google diverse favas) for more diverse looking fava seeds and came across some that had quite a bit of different colours and patterns, but unfortunately none available in EU. Even if colours are little irrelevant, new colour compinations are always good way of picking out crosses.
About a quarter of the Savitaipale I grew this year have the same pattern as those spotty purple favas, so that colouration might come from there (I mean, if you have some Savitaipale in your landrace - didn’t seem like an unreasonable assumption though). I had my first bean aphids this year though - made for a very welcome selection event - and had potentially attributed those markings to that, but I’d be happy to accept that it might be genetic.
Anyway, looking good! I might need to get myself some green favas too, I kind of like how they look like in there.
Not that I know of, but very well might be. Seeds are from @polarca so she might know better. There are some where irregular colouration is definetely from bug damage or discolouration from moisture, but the ones that I signled out certainly look like it’s from the inside, genetic. Looking at some pictures of those diverse favas it looked like some patterns, that are genetic, might be easily confused to some damage. Those still had some uniform pattern. Greens on my seeds might be just immature. I didn’t make any selection. If they aren’t ripe or damage is too much that’s fine. The plot is probably still quite patchy.
Found some of the earlier seeds of this year that I saved that had little more clearly two colours on top of spots/stripes. Couldn’t get any better picture. In real live the contrast is more clear and is visible without extra lighting unlike the others that are more one shade of purple on other shade of purple and can be seen clearly only with extra light. Well, atleast now that they have fully ripened. They aslo were easier to spot after harvest when they weren’t completely dry.
