Garden Journal

[Garrett Schantz]

I planted out some Feuerbohne Eureka Dwarf, and Feuerbohne Kontra Dwarf runner / common bean crosses. Stable crosses.


I'm hoping that at least one of these has red flowers.


I did a row of Maroon, Peru Cow and Jungle Limas. Plus Alma's PA Dutch.


Alma's PA Dutch is very small compared to all of these other limas.



I also planted Beefy Resilient Grey Pole beans, from a 2021 packet.


If I remember correctly, I got the seed from fellows on etsy who also happened to be selling some Borneo C. Melo and other cool stuff.


It seems like their store is gone now.


I think that these may have been a line that they selected out of the Beefy Resilient grex. Which was black mitla x something if I remember correctly.


Some blog suggested that black mitla could be a common bean crossed with a tepary, as it had intermediate features / flowers.


And that black mitla is from regions which would grow both species.



I don't know. But, I've heard that the grex tends to outcross fairly well. And the seed packet that I have, says pole. So, this could've crossed with a pole bean. I don't know.



But, I'm growing it near some of these other things. The Dwarf varieties, I gave them a bit of space off to themselves.



I'll probably plant Kentucky Wonder, Provider, Scalzo, Marvel Of Venice and Royal Burgundy - maybe Beurre de rocquencourt into the garden when it's tilled.


For these other things, they're in a planter bed. I'll either let them sprawl, or I'll get a few trellises.



I want the limas to cross. Jungle lima is said to be very vigorous. It grows fast, and it produces a lot of beans.



Peru Lima, has a cow print on it. Black spots, some black markings on a white bean.

I think there's a Holstein cowpea out there that I've grown before. This is different.

Maroon Lima, may be the same thing as Christmas Limas or similar.



Alma's PA Dutch, is a lima grown by some PA Dutch groups, I guess. There's some other PA Dutch lima beans out there.

The one I have, is the smallest lima that I've seen. Granted I usually don't grow limas. It also has a different shape than most.

Purple Burgundy seems like an odd color.



With these Limas, I also want something of a seed crop.


Last year I planted my beans late.


This year, I'm on time. At least for these ones. I really need the garden tilled. But, the planting season for beans, goes up to like August here. Limas, are likely earlier, with their last planting dates.


I'm not 100% sure if the Beefy Resilient Grey pole beans, are pole beans or not. They could be half runners for all I know. I purchased them as an extra back then.

[A Horn]

We're pretty sure that black mitla is 100% common bean just mislabeled at some point.
Beefy resilient grex is a cross between it and guacho
None of the seed colors look like a grey and neither of the parents really climb so I think beefy resilient grey pole must be crossed with something else

[Garrett Schantz]

The beans look more tan or light brown to me, than gray.


But I'm also assuming it's crossed with something else.


I remember reading that black mitla has an odd pheno flower for either species. And, if it's a stable variety, then any odd or incompatible genetics would have been weeded out, a long time ago.

So I've been unsure about it. I'd assume that someone would need to do proper testing on black mitla, and tepary or common beans local to where it originated from.


An f10, may not look anything like an intermediate between two species.

I believe that some squash grexes in other countries were found to be interspecific hybrids, but natural selection removed anything which would indicate that. Plus possible backcrossing with a single ancestor.





But whatever the case, it seemingly outcrosses better than other varieties.




And I've heard about guacho being the other parent.


The beans could look like a different color, non dry. But the color seems uniform in the packet. So, they did likely stabilize it a bit.


Not a lot of people properly label things as half runner either. So I'm unsure if it's even a pole bean.



If anyone is interested, I'll post updates on it, as it grows. I'm planting these pretty close to other pole beans, just to look for crosses next year.



The website and packet said gray, but they also could've meant grex? The seeds weren't really gray. Then again, the seeds were uniformly tan.


It doesn't seem like I can ask the seller, but their other seeds were correct and good.



I'm just growing them as a "Oh I forgot about these" sorta thing.

[Garrett Schantz]

I planted Sart Roloise, Litchi tomato, Black Strawberry tomato and some other seeds today.

Pretty late for tomatoes here. It gets hot here. Otherwise we'd probably have a wider date for planting tomatoes.

If it gets too hot, planting plants directly into the ground becomes less viable. Sowing stuff still works.



So, that's a bit worrying.



But, I also got other seeds.

Free Landis winter lettuce. It's a decent lettuce if I remember correctly. I don't think it's typically meant for my climate.

Gabonese Sorrel. I've seen Joseph Simcox try these recently on his Instagram. I believe that I saw Brian Laufer selling these at some point as well.


So, I live in Mississippi now. It gets hot and humid. I figured I'd give Gabonese Sorrel a shot. I just need to make sure it doesn't spread.


Jiromaru spinach. And "Japanese Mountain Spinach", which says Swiss chard at the top of the packet, and has spinaches botanical name on the back of the packet.

I don't know if it's akin to Pereptual Spinach, that chard. Or what.


Sometimes Baker Creek likes to do that sort of trickery, haha. I'll figure it out.




Onto the legumes.

Promiscuous Peas. The packet has a fuller description than the website, or there's added details.


The peas are described as sports from Yanna Fishman's farm. Sports are usually mutants or things arising from clones - etc. If I remember correctly.


These may be more akin to probable hybrids or whatever, once you mix them together. And "Joseph Lofthouse's New Breeding Population."


I'm surprised that they didn't separate the two. Or at least grow them out side by side and then sell them together. Unless they did that, I dunno.


Not complaining.


There is also the Madagascar Blue-Mottled Mung Bean. I've planted some of that seed, near the area where I planted Kali Black Gram (Vigna mungo.) Typical Mung beans, are Vigna radiata.

I planted Adzuki beans (Vigna angularis) in that same sorta block.




The mottled Mung beans, are very, very small. There's decent sized Mung beans out there and there's small ones as well.


These, are much smaller than those.




I planted some Chinese Red Noodle long beans, next to the promiscuous Peas.


Moonshadow hyacinth, lavender queen butterfly pea and urizun Japanese.

(Lablab purpureus), (Clitoria ternatea), (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus).

Those, I planted in a different general area than the other legumes.


A bit closer to where I planted some Lathyrus tuberosus seed - which has foliage and sprouted.


Not way too far from these others. But yeah.



The south jersey hopniss, I planted even further away, closer towards the woolly beans. Their seeds remind me of pea seeds, wrinkled ones. Except they're glossy.





I've also become concerned that due to my planting some legumes early in raised bed soil, that could have made things wet and cold - killing some seed.


I didn't account for the soil mix with the early sowing and covering with leaves. Some things are still sprouting, so I think that it mostly delayed germination or a few things had beans here and there which came up too early.


I saw another new sprout earlier.




I'll be adding some images.


First, I found woolly Beans from last year, saved seed. One little bean is from a relative of woolly bean.


In the middle, you have red noodle beans / peas. Above or to the left of that, you have the promiscuous peas. And then there's the mottled Mung beans.


Long beans and African peas or black eyed peas are the same species.


Jeremy mentioned their differences, seed size and different shape. That sorta thing.


These ones in particular, have a groove or grooves / indents in their seed.



Their flowers may be different than typical Vigna unguiculata seed.



Not hearing of crosses between these groups isn't a bad thing. I usually have a little means or grouping of things, when it comes to checking foe stuff like that.


Do I know anyone who grows both of these, side by side? Do they all buy need seed each year, or do they save seed? Do they cull anything that's off-type?


Then there's the question, does anyone translate records from other countries, are those all public record.


I don't know if there's a correlation with the bean / pea size, and pod size genetics with long beans. But, those are all strikingly larger in size than cowpeas.


I do want to grow Holstein Cowpeas again. They aren't too large, even with these other cowpeas shown here.

I don't see anything that resembles their patterns here. Even in different colorations.



Some other Vigna species can cross with one another. Cowpeas, usually won't cross with the other typically grown species - maybe Bambaras or Zombi peas would work.


But, I'd assume that the same species can still cross with one another.




The second image. I isolated purple / darker seeded, but non black peas from the Promiscuous Peas mix.


I also found an outlier, with probably the largest size out of all of these. The seed coating was different from all of the others. It's rounded and plump, not just wider than the others.

The side opposite of the "eye", is white. Then the sides have red markings, and tan stripes with speckles. I didn't really see too many others like that.

Some others were simply large, long or one or just not as large. Some were this large.



I'm not doing this, this year. But, with legumes and maybe corn, I typically have a plan.


If I have a grex, I may try to separate the different colors into rows.


If something truly crossed, then the offspring shouldn't be the same color as the parent.


A truly promiscuous pea, should have a different flower structure, which seems more open, with sexual organs being exposed than others.



So, go out and look for anything that looks weird.


I'd make one grouping, with selected purple peas, taken from different purple African pea plants.


Then, plant the rest into the main grex, as per usual.



If you have a single promiscuous pea, you may run into some issues.


Mainly, things which aren't promiscuous will pollinate that plant. Then the offsprings flower structure can be messed up, or you'll have a hard time doing whatever.


I'm pretty sure that the main breeders know that this may become a large undertaking.


There is a "Seedzoo" online somewhere, which sells African landrace peas. If this goes well, I may look into getting some of that stuff.

Maybe Bambaras as well. Who knows.




Once a promiscuous population is developed and bad genes are weeded out, I'd imagine that others could just plant any old new variety or landrace into that group, and then have a stockpile of old seed, or grow the new landrace or mixture in a different field than the others.



Cowpeas seem to have the same issue as common beans, Phaseolus vulgaris when it comes to outcrossing. Closed flower structure, and a tendency to self pollinate.


Maybe this means that they'll self abort foreign pollen at times too.


But, I see no reasoning as to not grow these with long beans.



I'd assume that the potential for crossing with other species, may go up, if the flower structure is more open than usual.

Even if it's Bambaras.




There's also the very rare chance that someone could end up with a Vigna x Phaseolus, if there's two groups of wide population hybrid groups with open flower structures.


Since I've been growing a few different legumes, it's become apparent at how closely related Vigna, Strophostyles and Phaseolus are.


The cotlydeons are very similar, even if some species have those underground / above ground.

Root structures may be a massive barrier, if a cross ever took.


Lotus tetragonolobus, and Lathyrus tuberosus - I'll be posting seedling images of those.

But, they're strikingly different than those other species, even at early stages. Lotus tetragonolobus, has the cucumber looking cotlydeons.


Standard garden peas, also look different than the three mentioned genera.



I do, still want some runner / common bean early cycle hybrids, again.

The last time that happened, I had some issues. Some seed was wrinkled, but still viable. More prone to rotting or molding in storage. It looked like dead seed, but it was still viable.


So, when looking for hybrids, I now save seed from dried / dead seed, still plant it - away from other things.


I lost the remaining hybrid seed in the move. I planted Succotash and Runner beans up the same trellis and let them climb on one another for a few years.



Common beans seem to have some varieties which are simply prone to outcrossing. Mixing those with runner beans, could be fun.


I might get runner bean seed from the supermarket again. Dunno.


It was rainy last year and they rotted or got sick. It stayed dark for months. No plants were happy.


Then the powdery mildew came.



Typically Vigna and Phaseolus have vastly different flower structures, without taking the closed flower structures into account.

Open flowered Phaseolus species, tend to reject pollen from all other species, while closed ones can accept that pollen.


Tomatoes seem that way as well. With SC and SI species / varieties.


I won't say that I haven't been interested in the possibilities of creating interspecific grexes of Phaseolus and Vigna mixes, near one another with open flower structures.


That removes one barrier, I think. They hardly ever outcross within their own species.



I've been wanting to combine a few perennial Strophostyles species, with different populations of Woolly beans as well.

Just due to the possibilities.



I've also noted that F1s and even F2s can die off randomly. So, they'd likely die with any competition in the wild. Or they'd be absorbed into the same population.




That's all dream goals, pretty unlikely.



I am hoping to get a better look at some flower structures and things this year, concerning legumes.



Apologies for the long post. I wasn't sure about posting some of that stretch dream / goal here. It's out there.

[Jeremy Weiss]

Yeah, a lot of long bead seeds have those "grooves" on the sides (though not all).

Your confusion with the mountain spinach sounds like the old days when they was something from Evergreen YH (a Chinese seed company whose seed packs I'd sometimes see in supermarkets or florists* in Chinatown, that was marked "Herbs, Small Chives, Fennel on the top, and had a picture of what looked like fennel tops on it. I tried a few, thinking it was probably some sort of Chinese Fennel (pork and fennel top dumplings are a specialty of the city of Tianjin in China.) Never got much growth out of them (a few wispy seedlings that never really got past the first permanent leaf stage,) and never worked out if they were fennel or not (one would smell a bit like fennel, the next a bit like parsley, the next a bit like caraway, etc.)

Yes, the Madagascar blue is smaller seeded that the standard "small" mung bean, which is itself smaller than the "large" mung bean. The wild kind I'm trying this year are even a bit smaller than THEM. Azuki's are also pretty variable. I have a mottled seed that was so small I though the pod I got it from was an empty aborted one (it was the only pod on that plant, which is why I have not, as yet tried to re grow it, if it is super tiny AND super-non productive, why bother? On the other end, I have seen a red type with seeds the size of pinto beans (I just wish I know what it was called, and how to find it again).

Assuming the largest cowpea in the group is the "outlier" you mentioned (It took me a while to work out, since, as a Northerner, when I hear "peas" I assume people mean English peas**) that pattern is usually called a "yin-yang" or orca pattern, after the common bean that has the same look. That just looks like a bigger seeded type, that seed size is not uncommon in cowpeas. 

Vigna, Strophostyles and Phaseolus may be morphologically similar, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are genetically so. A coral bean (Erythrina) looks a lot like a common bean***, as does the sprout, but I wouldn't expect them to be able to make a fertile cross. 

On my side, I'm sort of stuck in stasis. The weather turned cold again, so I haven't been able to move anything out of the cold frame and into the ground. And, as with previous years, I'm getting a bit worried I WON'T be able to for several months to come, by which point anything I started will be long dead and anything remotely cool weather will be impossible.

I already thing I have lost pretty much every "unknown" I was working with. The seed I found mixed into the Green Roselle from Ghana sprouted fine, but then flopped over and turned to mush. And I really don't have that much else in "I have no idea what this is, let's find out" material. Maybe some more bindweed like stuff, but that's about it (and I really don't like doing those bindweed relatives, not only are most pretty ugly, but I don't relish risking another "grasp vine" incident, any more than another "Hellweed" one). 

*For some reason, a lot of florists in NYC sell garden seeds and plants (I guess in such a crowded area, that's the closest thing to a nursery that can fit in the space.)

** It doesn't help there is a gene that can give English peas a black hilum, and those are also sometimes called "back eyed peas" There's at least one variety (Black Eyed Susan) where this the norm for the type.

***Not all members of the genus have bright orange/red seeds.   

[Garrett Schantz]

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Relationships-among-Phaseolus-African-Vigna-subgenus-Vigna-Eurasian-Vigna-subgenus_fig1_263699032#:~:text=Vigna%20is%20most%20closely%20related,Vigna%20(subgenus%20V...

I had other sources at some point, but Vignas closest sister taxon, is believed to be Phaseolus if I remember correctly.


Some of their species were moved back and forth between genera. Strophostyles is somewhere in between.



But yeah, they do share some morphological similarities, versus more distant relatives. They're still somewhat removed, so a cross would be unlikely but maybe not impossible.


Say a turnip and a radish cross. They're in the same general grouping, one is very related to the Brassica genus.



The larger sized cowpea has two colorations on the shoulders, the back is white, and the "eye" side is another color.


There's lines of red which are on the shoulders different colored patterns. There's also speckled dots on the shoulders. I don't think they're unusual colorations, it's just unusual to have three different splotches and then the different patterns and whatever.


It stood out with the rest, and then combined with the size.



I may see if I can take it back out of the ground tomorrow. I planted it in a smaller area, alongside the purple ones.


It'll probably still be intact and fine to take out. I think I'm describing it properly, but it's not in front of me.




I'm also including the annoying seed packet, alongside less annoying ones.


I like baker creek for its fun introductions and all. But, yeah.



I should be able to open the packet up and tell if its chard or spinach. I don't have an area ready for these at the very moment.




And so yes. I've now went ahead and opened the packet. And I've added an image.


It's chard. The seeds are wrinkled spheres. The species name on the back, indicates spinach.


They could've called it Japanese Mountain chard.


I checked Jiromaru as well. It's spinach. The seeds are pretty spikey. I've noticed that some types from the middle east, and elsewhere are similar with those sorts of seed. Bit sharper than usual.



You'd think that whoever was making the seed packets would see that there's an issue. But, it's fine.


Heat tolerant Swiss chard. Sounds good to me. Besides the note about bitterness. Chard usually doesn't taste bitter, but I also typically grew Fordhook in Pennsylvania, I did try rainbow chard, also no bitterness. Perpetual spinach. I like chard.

Beet greens are good too, if you need to thin Beets. Same species.


This chard has small seeds. I'm used to larger seed.



Apologies for the various cowpea names. I lived in Pennsylvania, and I don't know of anyone who grew cowpeas. The Amish grew common beans, maybe they'd grow limas and things if they felt like it. Runner beans and strawberries in flower gardens.


I will way that I haven't seen a ton of cowpeas either, so the larger one with its patterns could be common. But I didn't see many others of quite it's size, nor others with that many different patterns all in one.


I say shoulders, but it's the sides opposite of the opposite end of the eye which is white, and the eye which is whatever you call that color. There's added splotches besides those - and those splotches have speckles and lines running through them.


It struck me as an interesting seed, due to its size and everything else.

It could be common. But, I liked it. The Purple ones I'm using as a test, just to see if there's any crosses, or if these are mostly selections.


I think that I added one shriveled red pea into that mix of purples and whatever.


Chickpea might work for a word. Or cowpea. I'll figure it out at some point.


All of these peas and things. And there's however many beans.



Oh yeah, my corn is coming up too. That's nice.

[A Horn]

Speaking of bean taxonomy, are you growing Phaseolus dumosus? Apparently it is a hybrid between p vulgaris and p coccinus

[Jeremy Weiss]

I no long can work out what is "unusual" for a lot of the Vignas, or, more accurately, what is totally impossible, color wise. For a while, I though anything with an "eye" was a solid color (be it black, brown, pink, or whatever). Then I found the mottled and speckled eyed ones. I thought that all "eyed" cowpeas were a color on a white/tan base. They I had to pick one of the pods of the white podded one early, and saw that, on top of being black coated, it had a black eye as well (they colors form at different stages, so you can often see the eye before the rest colors up). I already mentioned the cowpeas with the green cotyledons, I wasn't aware THAT could happen either (I knew a green cot gene could be found in peas, chickpeas*, vetches, Siberian Pea Shrub, and soybeans, but not cowpeas). I STILL don't know why that red seeded cowpea I got from India grows with its pods pointing straight UP!  Lots of mysteries, but also a lot of opportunities for surprises.

[Garrett Schantz]

Pretzel beans, I've planted those before.

The pods do an odd curving thing.

https://seedvilleusa.com/products/50-purple-pinkeye-cowpea-southern-cow-pea-crowder-vigna-unguiculata-vegetable-legume-seeds-320140205

"Stick Up", the pods on that stick up above the foliage.







Voatavu Cowpea

Many years ago our intrepid plant explorer, Joseph Simcox, was given some impressive cowpeas from Madagascar. The shape was almost round and somewhat flat, a shape that was completely different from that of almost all other cowpeas. Years later when driving on a desolate road in southwest Madagascar he came upon the same distinctively shaped seeds. This unique form is only found in Madagascar, and where it came from, or how it first came to be, is still a mystery. The centre of biodiversity for cowpeas is in Zambia and Zimbabwe, so cowpeas probably came from there. But after centuries of cultivation on the island of Madagascar, the worlds fourth largest, it seems that this form developed in relative isolation from the rest of the world. As Joe says, this is a really cool bean to grow and share with friends.





Avakli Bean

A traditional favourite of the Ewe people of the Volta region of West Africa. Harvest time is eagerly anticipated when the beans, along with maize and groundnuts, are cooked in seasonal dishes such as ayibli and ayikple. The mottled beans are commonly cooked whole or they are first roasted and ground and then cooked to make nutritious stews and breakfast porridge. Drought resistant and sweeter tasting than other beans. Traditionally planted in May or June and harvested in August.




https://www.richters.com/show.cgi?page=seedzoo/seedzoo.html

https://www.richters.com/Web_store/web_store.cgi?page=Html/Products/SeedZoo/seedzooproducts.html


Richters has two seedzoos, one with older seed - no longer available stuff.





Cynthia BeanVigna unguiculata 'Cynthia'
Uses: CulinaryDuration: AnnualWhen to Sow: SpringEase of Germination: Easy(Cowpea)

A variety of cowpea growing in popularity among Ewe farmers in the Lake Volta region of West Africa because of its higher yields and higher tolerance of pests. Farmers report that they can get higher prices for Cynthia than for other varieties. The flavour is similar to Tsenabawu and Turkoviahe varieties, but is taller and more vigorous. Like other cowpea beans, it is cooked in stews or cooked with rice and served with any spicy fish, meat or vegetable sauce on top. Little is known about the origin of the variety but some farmers have said that they heard it came from nearby Togo. We suspect that this variety was brought to the area by a trader named Cynthia and was henceforth known by that name.






They have a few other interesting varieties for sale too.



One of those could be akin to the sweet cowpea that you mentioned.


But, those three would likely be nice additions to any breeding project.


Upright pods would be nice. A pretzel bean mixed with an asparagus bean seemed like it would be nice.

I'm unsure of how upright "Stick Up"'s pods are. I only know of that one seller offering it.



Vigna species, unlike Phaseolus. They're going to be harder to source in the United States in terms of wild material or odd variants and landraces.



I can't find anyone reselling some of Joseph Simcox's introductions. I'm also unsure if "sweeter" is sweet at all.


Sweeter and different shaped could represent something from another V. unguiculata population or something that was introgressed for all I know.

There's supposedly better tasting Horned cucumbers / melons out wherever as well. Sweet, fruity ones.



I believe that Joseph Simcox actually mentioned that he may be offering more seeds again, soon. I'd have to double check his Instagram.

[Jeremy Weiss]

 I used to use The Seed Zoo quite a lot. The big problem is that Richter's can't (or, at least doesn't) regenerate any of the stuff. The seed they give you is the same original seed Joe gave them. This means that, even given the packets are kept in cold storage, they now tend to be VERY old, and not have great viability (at least half of the ones I purchased had none germinate at all, and even the ones that DID usually were only 50% or so.

By now, I think I have stripped anything I can use from them (most of the recent stuff, like the Sword beans, he clearly got from Jibril Enterprises in Ghana, who I just buy directly from.)

There's already a person in the SSE who grows Avakli Torkuviahe and Cynthia , and theirs is probably fresher.

There WAS another cowpea they had I though was decent called Tsenebawu, but they ran out of that ages ago, same as they ran out of all of those common beans from Uganada (at least I got some of those before they ran out, and still have a few lines of those.) I also used to have quite a bit of the Volta White Maize, but I think it lost it all when it got mixed up with some of my other maize samples. Pity, I'd have like to try my hand at Volta Violet (Volta white should actually be called something like "Volta White With a few Yellow and Purple Kernels."

If Joe IS contributing some new stuff, it would certainly be welcome, especially if he has more of some of the things he had before. I could really use some Piselle d'le Ago (an English pea from Northern Italy, and one of the most heat tolerant ones I encountered). Ecuadorian Black Roselle, and like that. I can also hope he has fresh Fort Portal Mixed stock, so it actually CAN be mixed again (I'm the person who turned it from Fort Portal Mixed to Fort Portal Violet and Violet Supreme*, since, no matter what color the seeds were when I planted them, they ALL came back purple. On the flipside, maybe he has some pre-release Fort Portal Jade, so he can correct the dumb thing I did**

I just hope he does his research this time. While I deeply respect Joe's efforts, he has been known to offer things that are actually quite common (or, at least, common if you ever bothered to go to an ethnic grocery) as being rare and endangered (like Russian Black sunflower seeds, or when he tried to offer rice beans (plus, he picked the wrong one for the U.S./ temperate market.) But I suppose we will have to see.

*They're almost the same, the only difference is that Supreme has slightly larger seeds and each pod has four beans rather than three (it's consistent, so it's genetic.)

The names are sort of ironically flipped. Fort Portal Mixed, which was marketed as a mix of beans, turned out to be one type with some variability, while Mottled Grey, which was marketed as a single variable variety turning out to be a mix of types with each giving back the exact same seeds as were planted (basically, the solid purple ones were more FPV (the heavy purple mottling on the cotyledons was a dead giveaway, and the "speckled" ones were the same as Pebblestone. I swapped those out, but I still have some of the rest of them (smaller differently shaped one with the Pebblestone type seed coat, "Night Sky" (purple/black with a few scattered white spots) and two off types that came out of the packs (one a small maroon bean, the other a smaller greyish tan one.)

**When I got my original Fort Portal Jade packet, there were two non-green beans in it, a purple one and a blue one. When I asked (since they looked so similar, I wanted to make sure I hadn't gotten Bantu beans by mistake, Richter's confirmed there were a few non green ones, but they then decided to go through, take out the non-greens and re-pack them. At the time I thought that was fine, but now I realized I stopped some people from potentially developing other strains from those off colors. I lost the blue seed, but the purple seed got planted. Unfortunately, it got planbted along with my actual Bantu beans, and since EVERYTHING came up purple with those as well, I have no idea which, if any, are the off type Jades.

Whatever Armenian Giant beans are now in the seed swap network probably come from mine as well. They did terribly for me, but I swapped them to someone who wanted big common beans (Armenian Giant is a common bean, but it's the size of a runner,) he swapped it to Russ, and Russ managed to bring it back to health.     

[Garrett Schantz]

I believe that he offers endangered as in variety or type.


He's offered capers before, different than the usual species.

Some accessions he's sold, can look superficially similar to other things.



I usually like what he offers, but the sweet cowpeas and things were offered before I started purchasing his seed.


I believe he's starting operations to grow some things out, somewhere.


Let me scim through his Instagram.

[Jeremy Weiss]

I missed some stuff I would have like to try as well, like the Limbang Midget watermelon.

And yes, most of what he offers is rare or endangered but, once in a while there is some other market way to get the same thing quite easily. Not often, but sometimes.

I actually contacted his Facebook thread with a request a while back. The next time his travels take him through Latvia, I asked if he could get his hands on some seeds for that white fruited version of whortleberry (basically, European blueberry.) I'm hoping those would have the same bird defying trick as I have found white strawberries have.

[Garrett Schantz]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27283708/

https://www.lvm.lv/en/news/5278-white-blueberries-an-alternative-to-black-mouths

I usually call European blueberries, bilberries.

There's more information on the white variants or mutants, if you look for them online. One of these blogs seems to indicate that many of the white plants, are genetically different per area, because they're otherwise possibly clones.










https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/australia-worlds-heaviest-blueberry-rcna143528


Eterna blueberries also seem interesting.

[Jeremy Weiss]

They would be, but, as I said, I wan the white ones to see if they can trick the birds. Around here, if I plant regular red strawberries, the birds will snatch every one before I can, and I get none. But if I plant yellow or white ones (and they have to be pure yellow or white, no secondary red, so things like White Rabbit (which has a pink blush) and Pineberries (which have red seeds) don't work,) the birds assume they are still unripe, and leave them alone. It limits me almost totally to alpine type strawberries (as of this point, I've only found one type of full size strawberry that is pure white, and it's hard to get going) but it's better than nothing.

And to clarify with the cowpeas, I don't meant the pods on mine stick up above the foliage, I mean they stick up with respect to the ground. The flowers appear pointing sideways (parallel to the ground) like on a normal cowpea. However, as the pod develops, the joint that attaches the pod to the plant seems to grow against the force of gravity (negative  geotropism) so that the pod ends up completely perpendicular to the ground and parallel to the growth direction of the  plant (it's a bush type, so the plant grows upright). So basically the pods stand on their heads! They look like extensions of the stems until you get close. Maybe that's why everything leaves them alone, they look like something already ate all of the good parts.

[Kadence Luneman]

Planted everything 3/10
As of 3/31

King of the north pepper, 8 of 12
Hungarian sw pepper, 12 of 12
Lofthouse sw pepper, 7 of 12
Big Jim hot pepper, 5 of 5
Anaheim hot pepper, 3 of 5

Tomatillo chupon de malinalco, 3 of 8
Tomatillo Goingtoseed grex, 1 of 8 (plus 1 rogue volunteer in another pot from last years seed starting soil, could be either of these two so put it here)

True potato seed, stopped counting at 25, so at least that many. Plenty for this year. Seed is from just watering last year's tray that got abandoned in the mess of everything. Seed is Clancy and red tetraploids. I found some teeny tiny micro tubers that managed to survive among it.

Alliums all had bad germination rate except for Carentan leek... Boo... All except Carentan have gone under the plastic dome for a bit to try to get more germination.

Leeks- Carentan, Bulgarian giant, king seig

Bunching onion- red welsh, he shi ko, goingtoseed bunching grex

Bulb onion- yellow of Parma, red of Florence, yellow sw Spanish, Dakota winter

I don't want to take up this thread with the rambling list of my tomatoes so see my thread on them if interested lol. Short version is I planted 198 tomato seed and had 97 seedlings. Replanted a few to make sure I have some of certain varieties for crossing with. So I'm at about 100 tomatoes of 26 varieties/crosses/populations.