Everything else is early,

[Steve Peek]

So why not the bugs? I found the first two Mexican bean beetles today. They met with an untimely end or perhaps that was timely?

[songbird]

[you do know that mentioning the word "bean" around here is dangerous right? :) ]

are these the same beetles that used to be sold as mexican jumping beans to kids in the back pages of comic books (along with sea monkeys :) )?

as for the seasons, things are evening out here. had a nice rain yesterday afternoon, forgot to check the forecast in the morning and previously it had said no rain this week so i watered as i needed to be sure all the beans planted had enough moisture to continue sprouting, 2hrs later it rains, go figure... i needed the break anyways as i'd just finished turning and planting.

today and tomorrow, finally planting the north bean patch, beautiful days to be out.

cooked up a batch of dried cranberry beans yesterday to make sure i wanted to plant more. good thing, taste good, but i prefer other beans for eating/burritoes/etc. still planted plenty of them elsewhere for shelling.

have you ever grown adzuki beans?

songbird

[Ecnerwal]

I haven't grown them, but when I bought some bulk it was an illusion-crushing experience to find that all they are is a small red kidney bean that tastes pretty much the same as a large red kidney bean, and the sweetness of the red pean paste associated with them has nothing to do with the red bean used and everything to do with a lot of sugar...

Or at least that was my impression upon cooking a batch up.

[Bill who putters]

Not ever grown them just eat them often. No Gas issues.

[Steve Peek]

?

I don't know. These are just a little bigger than lady bugs and metallic bronze in color with black spots. They can turn bean leaves to lace quite quickly.

The bean I'm growing this year is an heirloom pole bean locally called "greasy beans". The strain has been in my family and one other for well over

100 years. I usually grow it every other year for canning and leather britches. I wouldn't dream of planting another bean at the same time for fear of crossing them although I do grow soybeans the same year.

I plan to try to grow "yellow eyed beans" from supermarket seed. They are my favorite soup bean. Hopefully they are a bush type bean, this trellising is a big job. It took a dozen posts for three rows.

I'm not familar with them.

[Sean Straw]

I'd be interested in hearing why.

I've got 60 feet of row in the garden (2 sides of a 30 foot trellis) planted with beans this year. I expect to give away quite a lot from it. When I got done stringing the sisal twine, I did some math, and realized I'd strung a quarter mile of twine.

Hmm. Magic crystals (salts), electric shocker (wind up thingy), x-ray vision glasses (cardboard thingies with a wavy pattern printed on 'em). I wonder how many more dissappointments I could recall. Its depressing to realize just how much all of those companies preyed on the comic-book reading youth. Where was the consumer protection agency? "Provide evidence that your 'Sea Monkeys' hold tridents and build castles or cease adveritising them forthwith."

How many plants are in your 'patch' and how large is it (sq feet, or for the benefit of the people reading this usenet group via that infernal gardenbanter site, in sq metres)?

My beans, being pole varieties, are all planted along the north side of my garden this year. Next year, I'll probably put them along the west side (as part of rotation).

Rancho Gordo isn't too far from where I'm at, and the Seed Bank store has started carrying some of their packaged beans (though I'm sure they're intended more as a food product and not seed stock - I sure don't need a POUND of seed beans of any one variety.

[songbird]

i suspect you didn't actually get azuki beans as they have a distinctly different texture, taste and look quite different from a small red bean.

i have both small red beans and azuki beans here, the small red beans are indeed similar to dark red kidney beans in shape (but smaller). i haven't eaten a batch of them alone yet to check the flavor.

seems to be a decent reference for seeing what different beans look like, alas they do not control for size or color so you aren't always sure the scale or color of the various beans, but it's a start).

azuki beans are more similar to taste and texture of lentils (to me :) ).

i've never had red bean paste but i have heard of red bean ice cream (haven't tried it yet).

if you like lentils, get the right beans and give 'em a try again. :)

songbird

[songbird]

a bit of a joke at my expense... :) since whenever the topic of beans of any kind comes up i tend to perk up a bit and write too much...

ah, ok, i don't think i've seen these yet. do they have any predators?

...

"and leather britches"? i'm not familiar with that usage or if it is a bean variety?

anyways, good to hear about old time varieties still being around. someone said this past late winter that they would send me some of their greasy bean variety but then they forgot or something happened as i never got them... so i won't be growing them this season.

i'm not worried too much about cross-pollination here as i plant various kinds of beans of the same variety in areas farther apart. most beans self pollinate. and if the types seem to mix and not stay true then i can sort out the odd-balls and eat them or perhaps even get some interesting new variety. we'll see what happens this year, i've already started applying some selection pressure to see if it makes much difference.

yellow eye are bush beans according to what i've read. this is my first season of growing them. at

+$4/lb organic it is well worth growing them and any other beans i can squeeze in any empty spaces. we like to put up three/four/etc bean salad and if i get a huge surplus perhaps the guys down the road who run veggie stands will take the extras off my hands for a few $...

last year i grew about 15lbs of pinto beans and Ma likes them too, so i'm expanding production this year of these, plus lima beans and many other types of beans too. just for grins and because i do like the different colors/shapes/sizes and sorting beans is very tactile and appeals to my hands on sense of things too.

similar in taste/texture to lentils but larger. i'm about to find out if i can grow them here and what their habit is.

songbird

[songbird]

when the topic of beans comes up i tend to write a lot. :) a joke at my own expense...

i only have a few climbers (pinto, pink and red beans) and they do ok climbing all over each other well enough that putting up anything special for them is more than i want to do. however, i do have a bit of fence that i put a row of pinto beans along this year to see what happens.

heh, it was so long ago, but still amusing.

i haven't planted any yet, but it is about 1200 sq ft for the one garden. some areas already planted with other things. okra will be on the north edge. i've planted seven other gardens of various sizes (probably another

1500 sq ft).

and after i get this north bean patch planted i'll be gradually planting the back strawberry patch as i get it weeded and ready (but no rush as for this patch i'll consider the beans a cover crop and a soil improver depending upon how many get eaten by the critters and how many survive the soil and lack of general concern they get because they are so far back and i don't get there as often as i do other places. plus the whole garden is on the edge of a large ditch that has horsetail and a very vigorous grass. to keep that all from making inroads i will have to do an impermiable barrier down several feet and the edge is already planted with hollyhocks too, which are a royal PITA to work with...). um, yes, a fun project for the spare time i'm not too likely to get. already with the strawberries coming in and weeding and keeping up with watering it's already enough to keep me busy enough for what i like to be doing... beats work though. ha.

yeah, here even a half pound is more than i'll likely use this season for several of the varieties i have. i'll keep some back as a seed stock for next year in case i have a complete failure. whatever i don't plant or save is fair game for cooking.

i'm planting many many different kinds of beans and peas along with several varieties and different sourced beans of the same name just to check out how they do and how they compare. i plant the dry beans in the middle areas of the patches or the back where i won't need to get into that often. the edges i put in the shelling beans, peas/pea pods, lima beans, butter beans, and fresh beans (wax, green). it's nice to not have to have pathways to weed in a patch if i get them planted right, a better use of the space too.

mapping it all out and keeping track of the dates, sources, etc. will be fun to see what happens and how well this year compares to last year for the beans i am continuing with.

songbird