Well, the harvest of dry seed has begun. For peas, both Sugar Magnolia and Limestone had an exceptional year. PM never made its appearance, and the two varieties produced about a pound of dry seed each. Mesa was almost completely washed out by heavy rains, but a few plants survived, and I have enough seed for another attempt next year. Cera Sierra has a great stand, is loaded with pods, and beginning to dry down. Nadja was flooded out after planting, and was a complete failure... so like Mesa, it goes to the top of the list for next year. The cowpea CES-18-6 (Paayap) has a very heavy pod set, about 1/2 of which have dried & been harvested. MN-13 also has a very heavy stand, and I picked the first dry pods today. It seems cowpeas were the only direct-seeded beans which appreciated the drenching rainfall which followed their planting. There were two plantings of the black-seeded yardlong that I grow (one for seed only), and both are loaded with pods. Chinese Red Noodle is just beginning to set pods, and Thailand pole (which is incredibly vigorous this year) has begun flowering. All should have time to produce dry seed. For runner beans, I picked the first dry pods from Gigandes today. Considering that most of the seed I harvested last year came in late September, this could (finally) be a good seed harvest. Tucomares Chocolate surprised me by setting large numbers of pods even during 80 degree heat, so it too should have a great year. German Butterbean lima has only a fair pod set, but there are a lot of plants, so the harvest should still be good. Some of the pods have begun to change color now. The news is not so good for my other lima, tentatively named "Pan-Pacific Black & White" (a Filipino heirloom from a member of this forum). While the vines are vigorous, they have yet to begin flowering. It may be daylength sensitive, and my hopes for getting dry seed are diminishing. The Takara Early adzuki has begun drying down pods, I picked the first few today. Yellow Mungo has quite a few pods set, but I've lost a few plants to the wilt which has decimated them in years past; those plants were pulled & destroyed at the first sign of infection. The mungo is spread out in two widely-separated plantings & surrounded by flowering plants, so hopefully those measures will impede the spread of the wilt, should it reappear. The bush rice bean, which I had such high hopes for, has yet to flower. The plants are incredibly healthy & Vignas mature seed quickly, so I haven't given up hope yet. Beans have just begun to mature. I've already harvested quite a bit of seed from both Solwezi and Sargas... making up for the total loss of Sargas last year. Pods on Jembo Polish & Giant Red Tarka have just begun to enter shelly stage. All other beans are filling out, and beginning to change color. Barring any interference by weather (a major hail storm missed my garden by 10 miles), it looks like it will be a good year. It is also on track to be my best tomato & pepper harvest ever (yes, I do grow things other than beans) ;-)

Melissa, neither do I, I don't have a big garden so as a rule I only grow pole beans, but there are exceptions, like Woods Mountain Crazy Beans and Blue Jay and I grew Candy for seed last year. Some of the varieties I grow were very hard to find like the little Comtesse de Chambord, when I went looking for that one I couldn't find it sold anywhere in North America. With the help of one of the GW members on this forum I found a source in France. I'm happy to say several places are selling it now. When I grow this one I grow it in containers, although it's used as a dry bean we eat it as a snap, really tender and has a sweet flavor. My main interest is in growing heirlooms, helping in a small way keeping them in circulation. Sometimes we don't even get a taste, the seed collected is stored in a freezer until I or someone else would like to grow them. I always grow one or two varieties just for eating, the rest we might, or might not, get a taste depending on how they produce. If I only have one or two seeds, it's hands off LOL but it's amazing the amount you can get off a single pole. Growing as many varieties as I do I always bag a few flowers just in case of a cross but so far I've only had one cross/mutation from the beans I have grown from my own collected seed. The pictures I post are usually of the dried seed collected at the end of the season. The only bean I grow and use as a dry bean is the pole bean Gigandes, a Greek runner. Annette

My bean report: This year we had kind of strange weather (though with every year now being strange in a new way, I guess that makes it a "normal" year). Like drloyd, here we had an early, very warm spring, and are currently in a late, very warm autumn (going to be 70 degrees all this week!), but the summer in between was unusually cool and almost completely missed any of the heatwaves rolling over the rest of the country. The coolness made beans slow and tomatoes a full month late to bear. Anyway: --Alma Whitaker Cornfield-- A bit on the late side but did very very well, healthy tall vines totally loaded with handfuls of pods. Smallish, curved pods tightly packed with small, pinto-patterned seeds. I ate some as full beans and they stringed easily and cooked up pretty quick. Got these from Remy of Sample Seeds. Planted 6 May, flowered 8 Aug, dry seed 14 Sep. --Blue Shackamaxon-- A favorite of mine and in my opinion a real winner. Did very well, as always. Tall plants with shiny black seeds and pods that turn purple at maturity. Great-flavored dry bean. My seed was getting low so I grew a bunch out at my folks' place well away from any other beans, since this variety seems to cross very readily, both as a pollen recipient and donor. --Clarendon Wonder-- Stringless snap bush with large bright red seeds. Australian heritage variety bred by Hawkesbury Agricultural College in the early 1900s. Did pretty well in a container. Planted 4 May, dry seed 24 July. --Gunlik-- Dual-purpose bush bean. Small black seeds look just like Midnight/Black Turtle, but the pods are sweet. Did pretty well despite being grown in a container in a shady spot. Planted 6 May, dry seed 30 June, and all of the plants survived the first harvest and are currently loaded with a second crop just past the shelly stage. --Inka Pea Bean-- Did quite well despite being in a shady spot. Relatively short vines ( petered out at 6'), and seed in the usual pea-bean bicolor red & white pattern, but with pretty pinkish streaks inside the red part. Planted 4 May, dry seed 1 Aug. --Kaiser Friedrich-- Did very well. Fairly tall but well-behaved vines; when they outgrew their trellis I looped them down to the bottom and grew them back up the same way again, making approx. 9' feet of vine total. Pods stringless, flattish, yellow at first getting a neon pink blush, and purplish when dry. Bright purple seeds. Old German variety. Planted 6 May, dry seed 2 Sep. --Kuma Anna's Charcoal Grey-- Got utterly smothered by the Apios growing in the same bed, so I only got out 3x the seed I put in! Pole snap. Planted 2 May, dry seed 30 July. --Lavender Bush German-- Bush dual-purpose variety with seeds a unique lilac color I haven't seen on any other bean. Did pretty well in a container. Planted 4 May, dry seed 25 July. --Mariazeller Bush-- Pretty seed, but didn't seem to like being container-grown and hardly made anything. --Mountain Pima Burro & Caballito-- Poor germination from old seed, I'll have to grow this out again next year to bring numbers back up. Weakly climbing plants, beautiful seeds, tasty thin-skinned dry beans, wish I'd got enough to actually eat any this year. --Norridgewock-- Usual-looking red & white pea bean. Short vines. Didn't have many seed to start with and had damping-off issues, so only got replacement seed for a harvest. --Riesenkorn aus Omsk-- "Giant-seed from Omsk," which sounded intriguing. Summer-planted bush plants that weren't very happy with the container I grew them in. Seeds like large kidney bean size. Limas: --Black Cave Dweller-- Bush lima that turned out to be day-length-sensitive, so I haven't gotten any seed off them yet. --Madagascar-- Large-seeded pole lima. Planted late, so just maturing pods now. Plants doing well despite tomato competition. --Ping Zebra-- Finally deigned to make flowers this month, so I'll see if anything actually comes of them. Cowpeas/Yard-longs: --Washday-- mostly-bush cowpea that did pretty well despite being smothered by Apios. Seed coats tend to split. This is supposed to be fast-cooking, and I think would be considered a "lady pea," but I haven't tried any yet. Seeds small and ivory with some red speckling around the hilum. --Tiger-striped-- Yard-long with red stripes on green. I have a bit of trouble with yard-longs due to the cool nights here, but this one did pretty well for a yard-long. Not day-length-sensitive, and made a couple big handfuls of snaps. Didn't eat any yet but it's still producing. P. coccineus Runner Beans: --Ayocote Amarillo & Ayocote Morado-- Some beans from dinner planted on a whim, they made nothing at all in the summer but perked up slightly in the autumn to give me a very small harvest (like half a handful per plant). --Tucomares Mixed-- Complete crop failure this year. Every legume in their planter shriveled up and died and I'm not sure if it was blight, fungus, herbicide-contaminated potting soil, or what (all-new store-bought soil in only that planter). Misc: --adzuki beans Buff, and Blue Speckled-- both did pretty good this year, making a decent number of pods with seeds of the proper size. Seed for both from Anpetu Oihankesni. Planted 2 May, dry seed 30 July. --unnamed buff-seeded rice bean (Vigna umbellata)-- Second year growing this, and it again did well sprawling over a short trellis. The seed pods corkscrew open explosively when fully ripe, so I've taken to picking them either in the shelly stage or over a deep bucket. Going to try a dal recipe with these next week. --unnamed hyacinth beans-- A veritable explosion of neon purple flowers and pods on horizontally-greedy vines (were quite useful for separating P. vulgaris bean varieties from each other). Seed looks like tiny Oreos. Planted early May, dry seed 12 Sep. --unnamed red-seeded sword bean-- Made tall thick vines, but seems to be day-length-sensitive as it didn't bloom until well into fall. Currently ripening a few thick pods that look like they'll have only 1-2 seeds each. --groundnut/Apios americana-- Went utterly mad this year and swallowed all in their path to form a very leafy 4'x4'x5' hedge out of their 4'x4' raised bed. Flowered a lot (and smells like your great-great-aunt's perfume, pyew) but I don't think set seed. I can see some tubers poking up from the soil a bit and it looks like there're going to be masses of them to try out some recipes.

One more now on this year's grow list. A bean variety I have been searching for a long time arrived in the mail yesterday. "Bob and Mary" a pole bean grown in British Columbia at the beginning of the 20th century. The only source I knew for this one 'The Heritage Seed Library'. With the help of Russ Crow he knew someone who had these in the UK and was willing to share a few with me. After some inquiring I found the bean seed had been mailed before Christmas so thought they must have been lost in the mail. Mailed November 26th. 2016, they arrived yesterday March 21st. just a few days short of 4 months, this puts a new meaning to snail mail. Thank you, Galina, you really made my day yesterday :). It is said the pods of this endangered heirloom can be eaten juicy and young, or tender and mature, hopefully I'll have a few seeds to share in the fall, help in a small way get this one back in circulation. I have a lead on the other one I was looking for "Sarah's Old Fashioned Black" grown on Vancouver Island, hopefully I'll have a few of these in the fall. I'm a great believer in paying it forward and it looks like I'm not the only one :). Still haven't finalized my list yet, probably not until they're all in the ground, someone needs to light a fire under me LOL. Annette