I am not sure. We’re on the border of zone 6a/6b here, average first frost depending on the source, NOAA says Oct. 7, Dave’s Garden Oct. 10, Farmers’ Almanac Oct. 15. Usually it’s mid October. Usually my grandmother lets them go to seed in August or Sept., but I am not sure the reasoning. They are up in south central Missouri with normally later frost and same zone. I’ll be interested to see how this thread progresses.

Yeah, Jacob, that timing is close to mine. USUALLY I have found that our first freeze is about October 30. But I have had a bad surprise a few times, and a good surprise a few times, and one year, the weatherman forecast freezes THREE TIMES before it actually hit, so I picked off all the little green tomatoes each time and had a heck of a time figuring out how to use them all. Then I realized, when cooked, the taste of a green tomato was pretty close to that of the red ones, and hard to tell in winter meals, especially in chili, when some of each color were used.

Lone Jack, that is really good advice to pick from some areas and not from others. I think maybe I should've thought of that but sometimes I guess I can't see the forest for the trees. I have my Lazy Housewives planted at two hoop trellises (made with 16' x 5' stockwire panels, the narrow ends fastened to the ground). I also have quite a few plants bearing on a makeshift trellis and it's not as stable as the hoop trellises so there's more danger of wind damage. It was the best I could do for this year and so far it has held up pretty well. I am grateful for your good advice and will pick from it and leave the beans on the hoop trellises alone. After this morning's picking I have a nice big bowl of them ready to cook and devour!

We are expecting rain here but I think there is plenty of air circulation on those hoop trellises, as well. They span over the walkway that runs north and south, one end of the panel in the west side of the east bed, the other end in the east side of the west bed. So, crossing fingers for no fungus issues. Now if I can keep those dang Texas-sized grasshoppers off them.... I just don't have good luck with beans planted in the spring. The last several years we just really haven't had a decent spring, it's kind of gone from Winter to Summer, our summers being hellish with triple-digit temperatures and not very much rain. This spring my beans just sat there and did not bloom for a long time. When they did finally make flowers, something came along and ate the flowers. I have maybe 6 plants from that group that made it through the summer, and that was ONLY because we had only one day that hit 100 degrees. So fall beans were a gamble that I took because I didn't have any other options. Not saying it'll ever work out this way again. Oklahoma weather is really erratic.

My season (while shorter) is more moderate than yours, so "your results may vary"... but these are my observations.

The average killing freeze here is around October 5th. As a general rule, any bean that blooms here by August 1st will usually make dry seed before the freeze. 6-8 weeks from flower to dry, so if pods are already set, you could probably subtract about 10-14 days from that. Some varieties take longer; Fortex & Emerite (I grew Emerite for seed this year) are very slow to develop seed, as are some of the "October" beans.

I agree with LoneJack; if you want to save seed, stop picking immediately. Early Riser should mature more quickly, and is your best chance for dry seed at this late date. I have not yet grown Lazy Wife, so don't know how quickly the seeds develop. Are you growing the fat-seeded original version?

Getting dry seed at this point will be iffy at best. Cool wet weather is likely to be arriving just as the seed begins to mature, and that can cause a lot of spoilage. It has also been my observation, though, that bean plants put all of their energy late in the season into ripening seed... so go for it. Some of my heaviest dry seed harvests have come after the vines were kissed by a light frost, ripening really went into overdrive. Be prepared to harvest pods that are ripe (but not yet dry) when wet weather is approaching. Feel the neck of the pod, just below the stem; if it is dry, shriveled or rubbery, the seed is mature or close to it, whether the pod is dry or not. Dry those pods indoors as quickly as possible to prevent mold, preferably under a fan.

Thank you Zeedman. I have been a contributing member of these forums from back when they were hosted by GardenWeb. I remember I was not yet retired when I found GW on my computer at work when searching for information about my Cutco knives and found a GW conversation about them, which led me to find all the garden posts. I have learned so much from the other people who have been contributors for even more years than I have. I remember reading posts written by you 'way back then and I have learned much from you. Now that I'm in my 70's and still trying to keep a garden going, I find that the challenges just keep on coming and I still need my friends that can be found on GW.

I originally had seed that was kidney-shaped and I would always find pods near the very bottom of the vines that were already fat with seed and so I didn't have much trouble saving seed and did so for several years. I just loved that bean. I originally got my seed from someone on the Seed Trading forum. Since we have moved, I've had several green bean crop failures in a row and I used up all my saved bean seed. When I tried to buy some to replace what I had, I found there's been a lot of confusion about what is, and what is not, Lazy Housewife. Lots of the seed houses were no longer selling either variety. First I got seed from Terroir Seeds that they were selling as Lazy Wife, and they were not the same as what I had, though the dry beans were kidney shaped as my original beans had been. I was really disappointed in those. The seed from Shumway's, sold as Lazy Housewife, is closer to what I had, but still not quite. The beans I planted from the package were more round. Now that I've actually been able to get to the point where I have bean pods on the vine, the pod seems to stay flat longer and gets broader than what I had. And what I had was more prolific, with 3 and sometimes 4 beans growing in a bundle together. They were long pods and were totally stringless, as are these that I'm growing now, but the most I've found hanging together on the vine is two. The only thing I can think is that, in the seed trade, I might've gotten someone's Landrace Lazy Housewife. I loved that bean and I've been thinking about getting on the seed trading forum and trying to find someone that has it but I haven't been organized enough yet to get up a list of things I can trade. It seems like most people just will not even talk to me if I don't have something listed that they want to trade for.

I had not picked any but the first flush of beans from the vines that are now growing on the hoop trellises and some of the pods have gotten about 8" long. The initial picking did, indeed, jump-start production and there are lots of beans hanging there as a result. So on Lone Jack's advice, I'm leaving them unpicked and so hope is alive as long as grasshoppers don't eat the pods or a rabbit doesn't get into the garden and bite off the vines near ground level. Been there, done that. I have eaten some of the Lazy Housewife beans that I picked off the other trellis and they are delicious but I still have to say not same as what I had and I still prefer what I had. I have tried growing Fortex and Fortex is a delicious bean, but I cannot ever seem to get seed from Fortex. I do not want to grow something that I'm going to have to buy seed for every year.

I am glad to know the time period from flower to dry. That will give me a benchmark for future years. Whether seed will develop in time this year for me will hinge on whether the first fall frost will be late. We have had weather here that has been even more erratic than usual so I just don't know what to expect from day to day. For instance, tomorrow night we are expecting a low dipping to 47. Forecasts have to be checked every day because what's expected further away than one day can change radically by the time we are actually coming up on it.

I hope I'm not risking cross pollination between Early Riser and Lazy Housewife in growing them both this fall. Yikes. If I can ever get straightened out again I will do Lazy Housewife in spring, Early Riser in fall.

Rockwisperer, good to see another who remembers those good old days on GW. There are not many of us left, unfortunately. I'm not too many years behind you, I could retire now if I wanted to - but I'm just too stubborn, and not accustomed to quitting anything without a fight. ;-)

Fortex is indeed hard to save seed from, as is Emerite. I'm able to save seed for both; but it takes the full season to do so, sometimes with frost knocking at the door as the seed is ripening. Fortunately I was able to plant Emerite early this year, and have already harvested a couple pounds of seed. I hope I have the same luck with Fortex next year. Fortunately both of those beans have demonstrated good longevity, so I only need to replenish them every 7-8 years or so... the Emerite seed I planted this year was saved in 2009.

Yes, the Lazy Wife controversy continues, which was the reason I asked about your seed. Apparently a different strain entered the trade after it was dropped by Burpee, and that strain was widely distributed. The original strain - with "round, polished-white" seed (from the SSE description) was still maintained by Burpee's former catalog manager, Derek Fell. He recently re-introduced the original Lazy Wife (via SSE & perhaps others), and given its proven provenance, much of the false Lazy Wife has been withdrawn from the seed trade.

Cross pollination between different beans is possible, if they are grown in close proximity & bloom at the same time. The degree to which they can cross depends for the most part on the level (and species) of pollinator activity, and what other food sources are available. Beans descended from different ancestral regions are also reluctant to cross; Fusion_power has posted about that in the past, I really miss what he contributed to our discussions. IMO it doesn't take much separation - either by space, or by planting time - to lower crosses to an acceptably low percentage.

The last few years have seen very warm Falls, with the killing freeze arriving much later than normal. The weather here seems to indicate that will not be the case this year, we already have frost warnings for later in the week. I hope your beans have time to make it.

Over the years I've corresponded with quite a few gardeners from Oklahoma, most notably George (Macmex). If you have not already done so, you should check out his web page, Green Country Seed Savers. I gather that you split your growing season into "early" and "late", with your mid-summer temperatures being too hot for most vegetables? If it is possible for you to nurse a few spring-planted beans through the heat, then your split-planting strategy for Lazy Wife & Early Riser should work.

It's really hard to have two seasons here. The timing has to be just right and that varies from year to year. I am just 20 miles south of the KS line so my weather is more like that of The Ozarks than like Oklahoma, except for during late July / early August, when the aforementioned heat and drought is upon us. My soil is even different. They have black gumbo clay in some parts of Oklahoma and red sand in others. I think George might have the latter but not sure. I, unfortunately, have a lot of limestone. I have to pry out rock every time I dig in the soil. It seems like just a little further north, even closer to the KS line, where my parents gardened for years, the soil is relatively free of rock except for some isolated areas of sandstone and the soil is on the sandy side. They get more rain there than we do, as well, and Dad was an oilwell driller so he had a contact that drilled a water well that they watered from, and their gardens were successful every year with only a few minor failures because of insects and critters. After he retired, he grew potatoes, corn, beans and squash in "his" garden and Mom grew tomatoes, peppers and onions in "hers". Mom was very competitive so they had to split things up that way in order to have peace in the household. You had to know Mom to get the full understanding of that.

This year I guess I just "got lucky". During many years I have made a "desperation planting" in July, just trying to get a crop of something that failed, and the seedlings have dehydrated in the hot wind and glaring sun no matter what I did. I often "joke" that if Hubs and I had to live off what I grew in the garden, we might starve to death by New Year's, but often I'm so dang mad at Mother Nature for killing off my garden by August that I just throw in the towel for the year.

All that said, it is 41 degrees here this morning. Lowest temp forecast for the week and anything forecast beyond a couple of days cannot be depended on so it wouldn't help me to look up a forecast for more than a week anyway. I'll just have to see where it goes from here. Maybe this cool night will jump-start the beans into maturation and slow down the grasshoppers. There's always hope.

Thanks for that information about George's website, I'll check it out. I haven't been participating in the forum for a long time.

It was 41 degrees in my garden this morning as well. It is sunny and lovely this afternoon. I think both of us still have at least a couple weeks before we need to worry about frost. Saturday morning's low of 45 is the lowest I see in the 2 week forecast. We'll both be back up in the 80s by Sunday and most of next week.

Grasshoppers have been a little worse than normal this year here too. Most years they are little more than a nuisance but I think they mowed down my fall lettuce transplants a few weeks ago. I originally blamed it on slugs that I imported into the bed in mulch. They may have tag teamed the lettuce...hoppers during the day and slugs at night. LOL I seeded some more last weekend but I doubt they do much this late.

Zeedman always gives great advice that I have very much appreciated over the years here on GW. As he mentioned, Fusion Power (Dar Jones) was also very knowledgeable and helpful especially for bean growers in the south.

My Provider bush beans are ready for the 4th harvest. I've been impressed with the 28 lbs. I've gotten from the 3 rows in a 4x10 bed so far. I'm hoping for another 6-10 lbs. over the next couple weeks.

LoneJack, how do you like the taste of Provider beans? Are they stringless? I looked them up on Burpee's website and found they are OP, straight and slim, more round than flat, and grow so tall one reviewer thought they could qualify as a pole bean rather than a bush. Another reviewer said they are a little tough though (but most beans are if you don't cook them long enough). The main selling point was a review from a person from Tulsa OK (just 50 miles south of me, though in zone 7 as my zone 6a doesn't cut a very wide swath) that says he gets a spring and a fall crop from two plantings because they go from flower to mature bean so fast. Maybe I ought to give those a try next year. But I have a back that's prone to spasms and a knee replacement that doesn't like kneeling so bush beans might be troublesome for me.

Seems like I remember you from when I was contributing here before but I don't remember anyone that called themselves Fusion Power. I'm a Jones too so I prolly would've remembered that. Glad to see you experienced folks still checking in, as I sure did learn a lot from all of you in those early days.

Provider is my go to bush bean in both spring and fall. It is very reliable and extremely productive. Taste and texture is very good IMO. A few of them may have strings if allowed to get overly mature. Being a dark (purple) colored seed it can be planted in cool soil and still get good germination. I usually plant my spring crop in late April here so I can start picking in mid June before the weather heats up too much. I hate picking bush beans when it's hot! I sow my fall crop in late July and start harvesting in early to mid September.

Provider has high resistance to bean mosaic virus which is important to me since I have a lot of clover around my garden that seems to harbor the type of aphid that spreads the virus. I made the mistake of growing Maxibel fillet beans this spring which doesn't have resistance to the virus and they got hit very hard and did not produce much worth picking.

Just like most bush beans, picking provider is hard on the back. I grow in raised beds which makes harvest a little easier. It takes me at least an hour to harvest a 4x10 bed with 3 rows when they are in max production.

I have quite a bit of seed saved from 2017 and could send you some if you're interested in trying Provider.

Oh, I would love that! We used to be able to see each other's email addr in profiles but I don't see any way to get that. Should I just put my email addr here and we can go from there?

Ilene, you used to be able to message people but it seems to act a little funny lately, not even showing up sometimes.

This is a really good thread. It’s too bad it couldn’t be a highlighted thread on the forum for anyone wanting to grow beans!

We have to follow each other to PM each other. I just clicked on you user name and chose to follow you. You will need to do the same on my user name.

You need to check your user profile to make sure you are set up correctly.

Go into your profile. Choose 'advanced settings'

Towards the bottom you will see 'Privacy Settings' and make sure it is set up like mine is below.

Privacy settings

Who can message me

Allow users I follow to message me

OK, I'm done and sent you a message.

I got it and responded so you should have an email in your in box.

Jacob, I just clicked on your user id to follow you. You are welcome to do the same to me if you want. I still email some of the people that I met back when I was on the forum years ago, and they me, and it's nice to be able to be able to stay in contact with people even when they seem to wander away from GW.

Rockwhisperer, I only just now found this thread. Must have been away longer than I thought. How are your Lazy WIfe's doing? Seed forming?

I often deal with the same kind of challenge, as I grow Tarahumara Pink Green Bean, which is day length sensitive. It won't even flower until the first week of September. So, every year, it's a count down to see if I get seed. As hard to imagine as it might be, I only came close to a failure last year. I thought I lost all my seed for that variety, but actually about 1/3 of it did make.

I planted Barksdale Wax Pole bean on July 22 this year. The plants are COVERED in nice pods right now. I harvested my first dry seed on October 8. With another two weeks of decent weather I should get plenty more.

I suppose I'm now one of the "old timers" on this site; joined in 2003 or 2004.

Oh, try checking Sustainable Mountain Agriculture to see what Lazy Wife seed they have. They would probably be the most knowledgeable seed source for this bean, Sustainable Mountain Agriculture/ Beans

Also, do drop in on Green Country Seed Savers . We'd love to have you and we specialize in NE Oklahoma conditions, though we have international members, etc.

My soil is kind of red, clay mixed with rock. We have some limestone and sea shell fossils, but also chert.

George

Tahlequah, OK

George, I remember you well. You taught me a lot back when we were both pretty active on the same forum and I enjoyed so much reading about the things you were doing there in Tahlequah. I think you and I joined at about the same time. I will have to look on my profile to see when I joined but I know it was quite some time ago, and I have been away for quite awhile. Had been looking at this Ozarks forum for awhile because my climate is more like KS and MO, being in that 6A band. .

As a matter of fact, I decided, just last night, that I would give up on these beans that are supposed to be Lazy Housewife, because clearly they are not what I had and loved. They are still pretty flat and very broad. Still stringless, though. I picked out the vines this morning after things dried off from the rain, and I am pressuring a small batch in my iPot, just to see if they will be edible when they have been canned. If they will be, I have enough for at least a canner load, maybe two. I remember 'way back from long ago when farming wives would go pick out the garden before a frost and they would make what they called "shelly beans". I thought if the taste and texture of what comes out of my iPot is any good I would do that with these beans. I no longer care if they don't fill out with seed now because they have already shown me that they will be problematic every year. I just want good dependable, productive beans to can, that will make seed I can save and thus not be tied to purchasing new seed every year. I don't need my level of determination tested. That happens enough already. LOL The bean that I grew in years past, as Lazy Housewife, was easy to get seed from, prolific, tender and delicious. I just didn't realize they would be so hard to find if I ever needed to buy any.

All that said, I do continue to grow Crunchy Muncher cucumber, even though some years it's hard to get good seed from them, too -- depends on whether they've been pollinated. But this is a wonderful cucumber in all other ways and I have neighbors that are addicted to them now. LOL So I grow every year even if I don't eat very many of them, just to get some fresh seed.

Thanks for that link to Seed Savers, I will look into it. Thanks for your post, it was great to hear from you.

PS the beans are out of the iPot and they are too fibrous to be worth spending the time to cook them. The broth from this batch will make a nice base for vegetable soup and I can put the rest in the compost, I guess. I don't think extra pressure time would help any.

rockwhisperer what shape are your Lazy Housewife seeds, perhaps you have the wrong one. The original Lazy Wife seed look like this...

There are seveal different beans with the name Lazy Wife, Lazy Housewife.

"The 'Lazy Wife' bean made a brief appearance in the 1980s through a seed company that quickly ran out of seed and substituted another variety when fulfilling orders. The incorrectly identified variety was propagated and offered to other seed sources, unfortunately, so most (if not all) of the 'Lazy Wife' seed sold today is not the historical variety known for such wonderful flavour.

Seed of the true 'Lazy Wife' is not kidney shaped like most other beans, but almost round and shiny white like polished marble. Another way to distinguish the true 'Lazy Wife' pole bean is the shape of the pod. It is not long and round like a 'Kentucky Wonder' or long and flat like a pole Romano, but rather it is knuckle shaped and up to 51/2 inches long. In other words, the pods are flat but the seeds swell up to stretch the skin out like a knuckle of a clenched fist.

Regardless of it's appearance, what sets the 'Lazy Wife' pole bean apart from other snap beans is it's flavour. Just a few minutes of cooking (or Steaming) renders the pods buttery flavoured, meaty, and delicious. Moreover, the white, marble-like beans make the best baked beans after the pods turn brittle."

Annette

Here's a link, which contains a picture, of the Lazy Wife offered by Sustainable Mountain Agriculture.

Lazy Wife/ Sustainable Mountain Agriculture

A picture of Lazy Wife Greasy seed, notice the seed is a different shape.

If you go to the Sample Seed Shop site there is a picture of the true Lazy Wife and the one that was sold as this for many years side by side.

http://www.sampleseeds.com/?page_id=3725

I also have bean seed from South Africa called Lazy Housewife this seed is brownish, sorry don't have a picture.

Annette

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

Well ok, then, my bean original bean seeds did look like the kidney-shaped beans on the page of the link that you sent, Annette. So according to this I did have the correct name "Lazy HOUSEwife" for the variety. I have found much contradictory advice and now I just don't know WHAT to think. I even bought some beans by this name on eBay a couple of years ago and sent them back because they didn't look like either of the beans shown in the aforementioned picture. Those were flattened on the ends as if they'd been crowded in the pod. The plot thickens..... --ilene