North Dakota Beans

[William Schlegel]

https://www.prairieroadorganic.co/products/bean-nodak-pinto

I just noticed that the Podoll's have a North Dakota State University bred pinto bean for sale. Kind of interesting. They also sell several of the beans from the three tribes of the upper Missouri. I've grown their OSSI Bumble Bean before and incorporated it into my bean mixture along with Carol's Beefy Resilient Grex, Joseph's beans and some others. I don't know if I have ever noticed a natural bean cross yet.

[reed]

Pinto beans are the about the most reliable and productive variety in my garden. I have them from a few sources but I'm pretty sure that some from a bag at the grocery store are the dominate ones. Carol's resilient grex did not do well nor did Joseph's, they were all terribly disease prone. 

I have seen a few times crosses between some of my others. Refugee, KY Wonder, Cherokee Trail of Tears and Ideal Market have all yielded off-types. I tracked the segregations for two or three generations but never observed any real improvement in vigor or production over their still inbred parents. Two different crosses between common and runner beans yielded gigantic vines and massive amounts of flowers but almost no beans.