bean notes

The whippoorwill cowpeas are getting ready to mature - the pods are not quite plump yet, but there are a nice number of them. The black-eyed peas have surprised me. I thought they were almost done with their crop. No... they were just getting started! I see three times as many pods now as what I've already picked - and it will be a week or so before they are ready. The Kentucky wonder and white half-runner beans are starting to produce enough for more plates of green beans. I am enjoying the brown Mississippi silver crowder peas - they taste more like a dried pea than the black-eyed peas and taste like they have a lot of minerals in them.

Other notes: The White half-runner beans were planted intermixed with the Kentucky Wonder beans, but I can tell the difference. The half-runner beans plump out quickly with large shelling beans inside them and the Kentucky Wonder grow longer and skinny before they begin to develop beans inside. That makes a lot of sense as the SSE boards were mentioning half-runner types are more likely to be large beans. The black Shackamaxons are planted at the end of that row and have purple flowers instead of the white/yellow flowers both of the other varieties have. However, they have not yet gotten any beans on them.

Notes: I have seed (three total) for Tongues of Fire beans, and they look VERY pretty. They have red pods with striped beans inside when mature. I should plant those next season, and put them on poles. The files say they are pole beans. In that same box are three Scarlet Runner beans that were not planted and might need a second try.

I am really looking forward to planting Esme's experiment beans and seeing what they become next. An article said that it only takes a few beans of any type to make a 'variety', and then year after year it will become more hardy for the land it is planted in. Most of the bean swappers on the seed saver's exchange are exchanging as little as five beans per variety, and that explains while some of the packets from heirloom sites are ten or fifteen beans each.

With these new beans and cowpeas, I've joined Seed to Seed. The challenge is to grow a new plant or variety from seed, save the seed, and replant it the following year. I'm already planning on doing that ;)