Just getting started really. A few experimental plantings in my yard are all up with no rotting issues, so today I was out early with Claire to buy tall steel poles and zip ties to affix wire fencing to the poles.
Claire had the camera for a good bit of the time, so I show up in a few of the pics.
Anyway, the poles are close to 10′ tall. I used a tiling spade to pierce the soil down about 18 inches, so I could push the poles in that far by hand, and then used a post driver to sink them in the rest of the way. At this location (Ness Farm) that is solid clay at that point, so they are not going anywhere.
I had a bunch of rolls of 50″ chicken wire, which prior to the car accident I had planned on using to fence in the garden down at my parent’s place in Red Wing. Well, that didn’t happen, but no reason letting it go to waste. Hoping also that the trellised beans help break the wind at the Ness Farm so that maybe I will not have corn blown down in windstorms as well.
In the time we had, we put up two, one shorter and mostly north-south, the other mostly east-west. Total of about 75′.
Now, the rest of this is as much for me to just know what I have and where it is, because I did not do any real large quantities of a single type.
Only reason it is called Dog Gate is the location I grew this on last year, which was the north gate in the home garden into Piper’s part of the yard. I am not sure if the red beans came from the same plants as the brown with red markings, so I planted them separately.
Just a close up to show the difference between the two color variations. This is an F4 of a cross between Dragon Tongue and Hidatsa Shield.
After those two I planted this, which is from Glenn Drowns who runs Sand Hill Preservation Center in Iowa. Markings are similar to the Christmas Lima bean, though it is not a lima.
Then it was Abenaki, which is a red on white bean, similar to the Orca or yin Yang, but red markings instead of black.
This is a “sport” from Blue Shaxamon. Blue Shaxamon is a black seeded bean with purple pods that are purple when they dry as well. I had one part of one plant the first year I grew them have yellowish/green pods which dry golden colored, and have white beans. Was not a cross as it was instantly stable, and just increasing quantity for myself.
Large soup bean which comes from gleaning a garden that was being plowed under in late fall by a developer. Home and garden which used to be there belonged to the grandfather of a neighbor of mine, and he did not know where his grampa got the seeds initially for this bean, nor what it was called, so since the garden was on the shore of Lake Minnetonka near The Narrows Bridge, I just called it this.
From the child of a volunteer plant in the home garden, making this an F3, its last manifestation was an exceptionally early yellow podded bean, setting 2 beans at each node. They tasted great fresh but no idea if it is stable or not.
Two years ago I had a Abenaki give me jet black seeds. I planted those separately last year, and got a mix of jet black, black with white markings, and solid reds of various shades.
So, I planted the black and black/white separate from the red seeded ones. Assuming then this was a cross, I am curious to see what variety I get from them.
Much like the Dog Gate bean, this is simply another variation of the Hidatsa Shield/Dragon Tongue which I grew at The Minnetonka Garden where I do mostly tomatoes and peppers with Frank Calta. Have not put that garden in yet this year. If things dry out enough we need to get in there and get it prepped for planting.
Just a close up of the same beans.
True Red Cranberry does not always do well for me. It wants a longer summer to really produce well than I usually get. Planting is early enough this year that I am fairly confident it will do well. In the past, in long summer years, it has been a fantastic producer.
Another unstable F3 of the same cross as a few of the others.
This was a gift from a friend, and though it was only supposed to climb to about 3 feet, I had them go higher, so trying it on a taller trellis this year.
It is another nicely large seeded bean.
This is the Blue Shaxamon which dries down in purple pods.
This comes from a curiosity last year. I had a single plant of Purple Podded Pole bean give me a more flat/wide bean that had black seeds instead of the typical light tan. Again, growing it out to see how whatever it crossed with manifests. I am thinking it crossed with Golden of Bacau simply due to the pod type (just dark purple instead of golden yellow) and hoping it maintains the great taste the pods had last year.
At the end of it all, Claire planted dried white lima beans we saved from a plant she started in a Dixie Cup in school and brought home with her at the end of the school year. The seeds were just from a bag of cooking beans the teacher brought into school, but fun to save and increase. The one plant, in a poor location, gave us 24 seeds, so by that math equation, not taking into account a better location, we should get at least 480 seeds from this planting. Probably a lot more.
Was really nice out there today. Overcast and expecting rain, so neither of us was overly sunburned.
Back home Violet was helping Patti on an ongoing project in our front yard. Removing the top few inches of soil, moving the soil to the gardens in the back yard, and then we are going to put down landscaping fabric and cover it with pine bark mulch. Hope is that it cuts down on the amount of dirt that gets tracked into the house. Which is a lot of dirt.
Gardens are all shaping up, and life is just an ongoing project we keep working at.
Scarlet Runner Beans on the arbor in the front garden are all up.
The stabilized ascension of the Hidatsa Shield/Dragon Tongue handled being planted in cool wet weather just fine. Perhaps not 100% germination, but most regular beans could not handle being planted that early here. Is nice to know this one can.
Even have a volunteer Dog Gate bean up, which I moved from where it came up, carefully, to the large dead sunflower I posted a picture of a few weeks ago. Just want to see how well sunflowers work for climbing beans up the year after we grow them. Wondering how well they would work as a natural trellis. Another experiment that we will have to wait and see how well it works.
