Saturday, July 26, 2014

Roll that Beautiful Bean Footage


I asked the wife to email me a picture of some of the beans we grew this year and she typed "Roll that Beautiful Bean Footage" as the subject line. I swear my wife is sucha  goober.

These beans are from the Burbee Heirloom organic line named Golden Dragon Tongue. What's interesting about them is that about seven years ago these beans were sold as a pole bean variety. I picked up about 10 packages of them because I thought they looked neat. I like growing off the wall stuff anyway. Usually I don't buy the big name packaged seeds as I prefer to go over to one of the Amish stores or order from Baker's Creek and buy their hand packaged stuff but the purple pods caught my eye.

Now the interesting part is when these beans came up only about a third of them looked like the picture and the ones that had these purple-ish veined pods did not climb like pole beans but grew as bush beans. The other two thirds from that planting that climbed and acted like pole beans had regular green pods.

And from that moment on the Small-Hold Pole bean experiment was born.

I truly do not know what happened. Maybe someone screwed up at the company or someone is lying but if these particular beans are heirloom they shouldn't have reverted back to a different variety, or so I think it works that way. Whatever the case the variety of pole beans I been growing for years now are somehow related to these bush beans. The next year I noticed these same beans being sold only this time they were clearly marked as bush beans.

Just for giggles I decided to try a package of these beans again and sure enough all of them came up as bush-type this year and all had the purple veined pods. I took a bunch to the farmers market today and handed them out and the vendors there were eating them raw and exclaiming they were delicious.

I still cannot figure out how that first batch I planted turned into pole beans though unless maybe someone mixed up some seeds. The other reason why I think there is something else going on is that inside the beans from either these pods or the pole bean green pods look exactly the same. a kinda distinctive very light tan to white bean with dark brown veins.

As bush beans go they are actually not all that prolific and kinda late developers. In fact other than for their unique coloration I doubt I would mess with them but the pole bean off shoot I got from them is a superb bean. They grow super fast, are very prolific and the pods dry wonderfully.

I still find it interesting to speculate how the mix up or cross breeding or whatever happened and since I have no clue and never will know I declared my beans their own special variety. I should package some up this year and send em out to everyone so the variety will live on.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!


8 comments:

  1. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?? The world my never know?? Same with the beans.

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  2. My mother lives right up by bakers creek, what a great place it is! I am stocked up on seeds, I am going back in October.

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    1. LW - Ya it is a cool place. I have had some bad luck with a few varieties from them that were hard to get started. I think they try so hard to get some off the wall stuff out that they don't realize it will only grow under ideal conditions but I don't fault em for that.

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  3. If I hadn't planted pole beans this year we wouldn't have had anything as the bush ones just failed to grow. Sounds like your experiment with beans is working out.

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    1. Sf - Like I said this has been one of the better bean years (of all types) I have seen since about 07 or 08 I think.

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  4. We picked a mess of beans yesterday from my uncles garden, and today I sliced them open and harvested some of the beans out. Now they are drying and I hope to have some thing from them in the Spring. I did the same with some canteloupe seeds. I like those purple ones, they look neat, may need to look for some. I don;t like getting seeds from those big stores either. Found an ole hardware store, that sells heirlooms and you get a huge packet full, for less cost then the big box stores.

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    1. JuGM - I don't know if harvesting beans from ripe but not dry pods works. It may. Maybe that is the way it is suppose to be done but I always allow the pods I am going to use as seed dry on the vine then collect the dried seeds. Maybe I have been doing it the wrong way though but it has worked for me so far.

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