ARTICHOKE-Emerald BEANS-Triumph De Farcy Bush & Vermont Cranberry BEETS-Detroit Dark Red BROCCOLI-Calabrese (Early), Waltham 29 (Fall) BRUSELS SPROUT-Long Island CARROTS-Royal Chatemay, Scarlet Nantes CELERY-Tall Utah CUKES-Cross Country & Mici KOHLRABI-Early Purple Vienna LEEKS-American Flag LETTUCE-Buttercrunch & Cracoviensis MELON-Honeydew ONIONS-Candy, Red Torpedo, Spanish, Walla Walla PARSNIP-Harris Model PEAS-Green Arrow (2 plantings) PEPPER-Cubanelle & Marconi POTATOES-Red Fingerlings & Gold Fingerlings (Bought some at the grovery store a few years ago and just keep saving some from each crop for the next year) SQUASH-Acorn & Zuchinni - Napoli SWEET POTATO-White Yam (Another one from the grocery store.) TURNIP-Rutabaga WATTERMELON-Sugar Baby TOMATOES Anna Russian Black Krim Neves Azorean Red Oplaka paste Rose de Berne (Grew these for the 1st time last season and they were prolific, perfect and had a fantastic flavor. They make a great sauce!) Brandywine Caspian Pink Thessaloniki Virginia Sweets Black Cherry Juliette Sun Gold Wild Cherry Not sure about corn yet. The deer have been jumping the fence and raising cain in the corn so I haven't grown any the last 2 years. Sure do miss it though...

No, Happy, the numbers for an accession don't change on GRIN once assigned. PI 507984 is out of stock at present... hopefully not because of my efforts to promote it. It will remain that way until they replenish their stock, which could take awhile. I'll contact the repository; provided that I meet their isolation criteria, I'd be more than happy to send them back some seed. Still have several pounds left from my last growout. "Giant Red Tarka" is an outstanding bush shelly, the best bush cultivar I have grown to date. I hope one of the heirloom seed companies picks it up. My shelly crop - and my garden in general - will likely be disappointing this year. My main plot (where I grow most of my seed) has been flooded several times, and has never really dried out since mid-June. Much of what I had planned never made it into the ground, including several beans & more than half of my soybeans. After a good start, most of my pole beans are turning yellow & dropping leaves... they don't like muddy feet. Drier weather is finally in the long-term forecast (although it's raining as I type this) so I'm hoping that they will recover once the ground dries out. The yardlongs, though, seem to be thriving. Keeping fingers crossed. Fortunately, the "Atlas" bush bean has fared better than the pole varieties. Most of the flooding went around it. I'm trying to bring it back from near extinction, and am optimistic that this year's seed crop (45 feet of row) will be successful.

"(New) Wood's Mountain Crazy runner beans were productive..." Runner? The ones I grew were bush. This was a bad garden year for me. Because of heavy June rainfall, the rural garden (where I do most of my trials & preservation grow outs) didn't get planted until July... so all of the crops originally planned for there were not planted. My home plots dried out faster, so I got a few things planted there on time. Looking on the bright side, although I only used about 20% of my rural plot, I was able to cultivate it all summer to kill off most of the perennials, and the pest & disease pressure will be reduced next year. - "Canon City", a pole shelly similar to "Bird Egg #3", but slightly smaller & earlier. My seed was getting pretty old (2005) but germination was still over 70%; glad it did well this year. Long flat pods as snaps, turning to mostly scarlet when the shellies were fully ripe. Harvested over 2 pounds of dry seed & several quarts of shellies. - "Grandma Roberts Purple Pole", from a trade with Fusion in 2006... figured I better plant it before the seed died. Germination was over 50%. Good thing I finally got to try it, it is a great bean - thanks, Dar. :-) Straight, round purple pods with great flavor as snaps. I only ate a small sample, since it was a seed crop... but I didn't observe any strings in the young pods. These were also the last beans still producing; after I had picked the dry pods, the plants re-sprouted, and were just beginning to bear again when the frost came. This was a small planting in pots, to isolate them from my other beans. I harvested enough dry seed for a larger planting next year, when I plan to use them as my main snap. - "Madeira" (pole). 2006 seed, had over 75% germination. This was the most vigorous pole bean grown this year, and was the first to produce dry seed. The seed is red-spotted like many large shellies, but has a pink background when dry. Although the shellies are large, I didn't like the flavor when I last grew them, and rated this as a soup bean. However, the DW loved them as shellies this year, so I guess it is a question of taste (I still didn't like them). The seed yield was very heavy; but much of the seed was deformed, which reduced the yield. One or two seeds in nearly every pod had a broken seed coat, and a 'stretched' appearance, almost like pulled taffy... very odd. The remaining seeds in those pods were normal. Even after heavy culling, there was still over 2 pounds of dry seed. - "Tisa", a brown-seeded pole wax bean from Serbia. This was the youngest seed planted this year (2007) but had the worst germination, under 50%. Long, slightly flattened yellow pods, borne late. These were best picked as snaps before fully yellow, at which time they were still tasty, but developed strings. Very slow to develop seed, so I was glad the frost came late. Only ate one meal, and let the rest go for seed; harvested 1.5 pounds of dry seed. - "Tenderette" (bush, Livingston Seed). I don't usually grow bush beans for snaps, but since I couldn't cultivate my rural plot until July, this was Plan B for snaps. Picked them up at a local garden store. Round pods that were similar to "Emerite" in quality, but shorter. Firm, sweet, and stringless even when the pods began to bulge. Plan B was successful, I was able to freeze enough green beans to last the winter... but don't like bending over while picking a 100-foot row. There was also a fairly high level of crossing in the seed; some plants with runners, some that were flat-podded, and some with short, round, fibrous pods. While I thought the variety had a lot of good qualities, there was a lot more instability than I would expect from commercial seed. - Runner bean, "Tarahumara Tekomari". The source told me it originally came from Native Seeds / SEARCH. This appears to be a land race, with flowers that are either white or red, and seeds that are either white or "gray" (fine black spots over a white background). Red flowers / gray seeds made up the majority, and all the seed sent to me was gray. There was also considerable variation in seed size & shape. Although it flowered quickly, the summer heat was unbroken by a cool spell, and no pods set in the heat. Only during a 1-day drop in August, and the cooler days of September, did pods set. Because of this, the seed yield was disappointing, just over a pound from about 30' of row. There was also one plant which flowered late, and produced purple seeds; since the source did not experience this, I am assuming it was a cross, and will attempt to eliminate purple seeds from the strain. The one bright spot: because the killing freeze was 3 weeks late, I harvested a huge late crop of snaps & shellies. The immature shellies were delicious, as were the snaps. - Lima, "Hopi Pole". 2008 seed, 100% germination. A mid-sized lima with multi-colored seeds; red, maroon, black (very dark red) brown, orange, and many combinations. This has always been a very late lima for me, pushing against the frost for dry seed, and dying with many pods unripened... but it did spectacularly well this year. It bloomed much earlier than my previous two attempts, and nearly all seed ripened. Harvested about 3.5 pounds of dry seed, and froze 6 quarts of shellies. I gave away a lot of "Hopi Pole" at the Berea, Kentucky get together, it was the most requested seed... so hopefully it will be more widespread in the future. - Yardlong bean, "Taiwan Black" (reference to the seed color). 2005 seed, germination erratic, but eventually 98%! Very long, slim, light green pods, with a mild flavor. Originally from Baker Creek, but they have since dropped it - as has everyone in SSE who had listed it - so its status is precarious. I had nearly dropped it myself, before finding that it was no longer commercially available & adding it back into the rotation. Fortunately, the seed crop went well, harvested over a pound of seed. - Yardlong, "Chinese Long Green". A red-seeded heirloom sent to me in trade. Very long, dark green pods with firm texture & good flavor. Like "Hopi Pole" lima, this had been a very long DTM cultivar for me previously - but not this year. It produced a heavy crop early, and kept going for most of the summer. The only setback was some leaf yellowing & stunting early, which was likely caused by herbicide spray from the neighboring property. Also grew two peas for seed, "Shiraz" (purple snow pea, swap from Aftermidnight) and "Opal Creek Golden Snap" (from Peace Seeds), as well as 6 soybeans for seed. The soybeans really benefited from the late freeze, all ripened. There was no vole damage to dry seed this year, as there has been in recent years. A ground hog had one meal of soybeans & "Shiraz" peas early in the season, but I trapped it on its next visit. At least its last meal was a good one, before it became a meal for my resident falcons. Since I was on 12 hour days for much of the summer, my time was very limited, and I didn't track dates & take measurements to the extent I did in previous years. I did, however, continue my multi-year observations of seed longevity... which have thus far shown that beans can have a shelf life far beyond what is stated in many references, with only modest precautions. As I have mentioned on other threads, my job has been cutting further into my free time every year - especially during the summer. There are signs that may change soon, under new management. I hope so, as I am way behind in my grow outs... and there are so many beans yet to try. ;-)

Paula, I was out harvesting okra tonight and thinking that it would be OK with me if everything dies because I am so hot and tired. I know, though, that I really, really, really don't actually want for the sweet potatoes, peppers and okra to die. It'd be alright with me if I could push a 'hold' button and have everything freeze in place for a couple of weeks until the weather cools. I'm going to try to get outside early tomorrow to pick peppers and green beans before it gets too hot. Carol, Do they look like anything you grew last year or the year before? Megan, I'm doing a lot of experiementing with the amount of hot vs. sweet peppers in Annie's Salsa trying to crank up the heat enough for the firefighters at DS's fire station without making it so hot it actually starts a fire. Tomorrow I may try a batch with a combination of jalapenos, habaneros and serranos or bird peppers. So far I haven't made a batch that's too hot for me, which means that what I've made isn't nearly hot enough for them. Did you sneak a taste of the Peach Twist before you bottled all of it? I've been trying to imagine the blend of peach/tomato flavors and I just can't imagine how they taste together. I probably wouldn't have thought about cutting the pepper either, for what it is worth. Those are often the kinds of things you think of "afterwards" every single time. Dawn