Common Pole beans for the Ohio River Valley

[reed]

I'm working developing/selecting pole beans that better suit my tastes and have a few different ones in progress. I usually grow some bush beans as well, for early green beans but bush beans are a real problem in the Ohio Valley when it comes to using as dry beans or even saving seeds because the weather here is very friendly to various mold and fungal diseases, add in the usual storm that comes along and blows the vines over and splashes a lot of soil around and by season end you generally end up with more dirt and disease than dry beans. 

Because of that and also that I like the more indeterminate production of pole beans better anyway I moved over to mostly pole beans several years ago. I also like not having to stoop over to harvest. I always grew some pole beans anyway, being particularly fond of Ky Wonder,  NT 1/2 Runner and Greasy Beans, each of which has distinctive flavor as green beans and also good as dry beans.

Even pole beans however very often, depending on weather, have ugly splotches on the dry pods from I guess, some of the same diseases that bother the bush beans. Over the years, even before I knew that I was a plant breeder I tended when I had that option, to save my seeds from those pods that had less of that. In recent years I have trialed and added a lot of new kinds of pole beans and I notice that plants from my own seeds of my old stand by's have considerably less of the diseased looking pods. I call it "clean pod" trait. So that is the first and most advanced of my bean projects.  It's really just a common sense selection project and it has worked pretty well so I'll keep it up with all the new beans too.

I'v also found that common beans cross much often than most literature indicates, with off-types showing up pretty regularly.  I have the one that I'm working to stabilize into what I'll call Hoosier Wonder or Reed's Hoosier Wonder but mostly they just get added into my second longest running project of what I call my "Survivor Beans". They are the ones that get planted and neglected to see if they can produce that way and some do. I figure if they make a few seeds under total neglect then they should produce pretty good with just a little cultivation.   I have just been saving those seeds all mixed up.

My newest goal is to find or breed some that don't grow quite so big. I think 4 to 6 feet tall would be ideal but even when I'v bought varieties because the description said they are shorter vines they still get bigger than my trellises which are generally 8 - 10 feet. Last two or three years though I did find some that really do only get about 5 feet tall. A friend from the HG forum had a collection of short vine snap beans that did real well and I found a collector in Illinois that has hundreds of varieties so now I have around 15 kinds that grow in that range ans some of them are very good producers and fine flavor. One variety called Refugee is particularly nice. It is supposedly one of, if not the first kind that was used when commercial canning started. 

I haven't had much luck in finding info on the inheritance of vine type in bean crosses but I'm hopeful I might get some new ones by planting a few bush plants side my pole bean mix, I'm gonna try that this year.

[Ferdzy]

Hey @Reed - those ugly blotches; could they be anthracnose by any chance? Because I've been struggling with that for the last 5 years or so. Look it up and see what you think.

[reed]

Hey @Reed - those ugly blotches; could they be anthracnose by any chance? Because I've been struggling with that for the last 5 years or so. Look it up and see what you think.

I found several pictures and yes, it looks very much like what I see in my beans. I don't know that I can remember a time when there was none of here it but it did get worse, probably 20 years ago. Maybe cause I'm not very diligent about garden cleanliness or maybe cause there is just more of it in general. It can sometimes, depending on weather completely destroy a bush bean patch. All I did and do is save seed from pods that have less of it and now I often have opportunity save from pods that have none, even though neighboring vines might have a lot.

I don't think it's possible, at least for me to keep such things out of my garden so I don't make much effort of it. I just try to select for plants that can produce anyway, I don't usually even bother to identify diseases, I'm not gonna spray chemicals or anything anyway so specific identification doesn't matter.

Now, though I'm worried about sending seeds to others who may have a different approach to gardening.

[Ferdzy]

Well I'm interested in anthracnose specifically because I have it too. 

We've spent the last 4 or 5 years selecting against it and also attempting to breed some resistant beans. PM me and we can discuss some possible trades.

My experience with individual beans:

Roc d'Or is advertised as very resistant and in my experience, it is indeed the best by far.  It is a tasty and highly productive bush bean with tender, slender, yellow beans, fairly indeterminate considering it's a bush. I would really like to cross it with other beans but given that almost all my other beans are pole beans I am having trouble getting the timing right and then beans are buggers for making deliberate crosses anyway. No luck yet, is what I'm saying. I plan to try again this year.

Blue Lake S7 has had medium-good resistance. Cherokee Trail of Tears is even better; I would say good resistance although not quite in the class of Roc d'Or.  We have a cross from those 2 beans and grew out the f2 last year. There is quite a lot of segregation for purple and green pods, flat (but not wide) and round pods, white, beige, and black seeds, and of course resistance to anthracnose, or not.

Tung's and Early Riser are moderately susceptible, not the worst, not the best. Your Ohio Pole bean that you sent to me was fairly susceptible, I'm afraid. I haven't grown Deseronto Potato in a couple of years, but my memory is that it had decent resistance. Annelino Yellow and Anselloni's Bologna that I got from Holly are both pretty good. We're growing on a cross of Annelino and CToT that looks quite promising so far, which admittedly is, like, f2.

Snowcap and True Red Cranberry got eliminated on the grounds of being too susceptible to disease before the anthracnose even showed up. Flageolet succumbed in droves and was so bad I yanked them out half-way through the season. Berta Talaska only better because as a pole bean it took  little longer to work its way up.

Cowpeas, Lima beans, and peas (pisum) are not immune, but they don't get it like phaseolus vulgaris gets it. We are growing more of all of those as a result.

[Richard Watson]

I'm growing Cherokee Trail of Tears atm, the 6x1 metre row has produced 10kgs for the freezer which is about half the crop

[Ferdzy]

Yeah CToT is a jolly good bean in and of itself. It's just such fun to "cross"* it with other things!


*so far the bee's success rate is much better than mine. But I'll take it!

[reed]

CToT is a fine bean I think for green beans but we don't like black in our dry bean mix. Ideal Market is another bean very similar  to CToT. I think those two are involved in several of the crosses that have showed up in my garden. Rattlesnake is also suspect in some crosses. Rattlesnake isn't immune to the diseases but always produces an abundance despite it. Too bad Ohio Pole isn't more tolerant cause it might be, flavor wise my favorite green bean when picked small, it gets too stringy when the pods get big. My biggest gripe with it though it is very long season and HUGE vines. I'm not sure but I think it may also have been involved in a cross or two.

I don't have especially good luck with Lima beans but I keep trying. Only one that is fairly reliable has small dark red seeds that don't taste all that good and it also is apparently their favorite kind as it shows up a lot even if no dark red seeds are planted.  Although, I found a couple new ones last year called Snowstorm and Rosie Clare, that produced on par with the little red ones. Snowstorm is white and Rosie Clare is white with reddish mottling on one end they are both very good, much better than the dark red ones. Sure wish I could find some Lima's with shorter vines.

I'v about gave up on peas, they just don't grow here very well anymore. They always look nice but then it gets real hot and the flowers dry up and drop off. I'm thinking maybe they might do better if I put them in a spot with some shade.

I'v never grown cow peas but have some seed and will be planting them this year.

Ferdzy, lets hold off till end of season this year to trade. That way I can take extra care and save you some from 100% clean vines.