knittlin, as far as I could tell they came true to their parents. I cannot tell with the chickpeas since they have not even flowered yet. I also forgot I did plant the common (pantry) black eye peas a couple of years ago, and that was also very good. It was the first time I had them as shellies and they were delicious, too bad it takes so many of them to make a pound of beans. Lately I try not to plant from the same species close together, but with only 1/4 of an acre I cannot separate my species completely. However, I have many flowering bee attracting herbs (cilantro, mint, marjoram, thyme, oregano, rosemary, sage, lavender, borage), citrus flowers from the lemons, lots and lots of roses, still have tomatoes and eggplant flowering too. I have lots of bees! I put barrier crops all over the place, but with such small space I must have had bees transport DNA from one bean to another....bees have a radius of travel that is over a mile, don't they? I have not noticed any obvious crosses, except at first I was growing three varieties of P. vulgaris pole beans together, and the wax beans sometimes got a little purple tinge probably from the purple pole beans. I am not trading those seeds since I have only barely enough to replant (a bug got in the bean envelope and destroyed/ate a bunch of them, darn!). I am making an effort to only plant different species of pole beans together now. I also figure other gardeners will have similar problems unless they have a huge farm, and getting 1-2 % or so half breeds does not bother me.

Brenda, Leave the beans on the stock until they turn brown and dry out if you can but if you get frost that kills the plant before that then you can place them in a single layer in a sunny window to let them dry, then remove the seeds from the pod and store for next year. Carol

I use to presprout my snow peas, and I would just gently set them in a slight trough in the soil and gently put dirt over them. Why do you presprout your beans? I did it because the mice were eating the seeds, but not when I would presprout them. I totally forgot to presprout this spring, and didn't get any snow peas.

Annette, thank you for your informative post. That's much like what I found out when I began looking for seed to replace what I ran out of due to 3 successive years of failed crops due to weather and rabbits nipping the plants off at just above ground level. The beans that I originally had were some that I got in a seed trade on GW, but I can't remember who it was that sent them to me. It's been a long time ago. They were kidney shaped. My thinking at this point is that I got someone's "landrace" bean. Last year I grew a bean marketed by Terroir Seed as "Lazy Wife" and it was disappointing. It was a kidney-shaped white bean. This year's trial was "Lazy Housewife" from Shumway's. It was more of an egg-shaped white bean. George, thank you for that link. The beans I planted this year, when in the pods, do look like the ones in the picture on Sustainable Mountain Agriculture except maybe a little longer and wider, and it seems like they stay flat forEVER. By the time they look like the ones in the picture they are too fibrous to eat as snap beans, and yes, I have harvested the seeds, such as they are, and will be cooking them today before they have a chance to dry out, as many of them are small and will shrivel if allowed to dry. I will freeze them in the broth and add to vegetable soup this winter. They were delicious when picked young. But whatever variety I had at first was quick to produce seed. Considering that I have to compete with the grasshoppers every day that they hang on the trellis, being able to get seed within a shorter period of time is key. I've tried growing fava beans in the spring and the grasshoppers are not at full population yet. Even so, I can never get a crop due to something drilling through the pod into the bean. I've given up on fava beans and to this day have never tasted them so I don't even know if I would like them. I am going to try Lone Jack's Provider bush beans next year, though I might try another variety of Lazy Wife/Housewife if I can lay my hands on something else to try. I love home-canned green beans and have really missed not having any in the pantry. Maybe I can get away with growing both kinds at the same time, as one is bush and the other pole, and I will not plant them both in the same bed. A side note: when I was a kid, my mother believed "green bean juice" was ever as much restorative as was chicken soup. When stomach flu or some other such upsetting virus would make its rounds in my school till it found me, it would always be the first thing she offered when I thought it was possible to hold something down, lightly salted, and if that was successful, the next round was "garnished" with torn pieces of homemade bread, lightly buttered. If I could keep that down, I was pretty much well. :~} This is actually one of the main reasons why I prefer to grow my own seed. The other reason being economy. I would not be growing a garden at all, considering how hard it is to get a decent crop, if economy was not one of the driving forces. That and knowing that no chemicals have been applied. We are expecting our first freeze early on Tuesday morning. Oh, Annette, I just got an email telling me you have posted again, I will post this and then read your post so as not to lose what I've written here. Been there, done that. --ilene