A Few Bean Notes

[blueadzuki]

Hi All,
I just potted the seedlings from my Ricters beans and there are one or two points I though might be interesting to others

1. The Hashuli bean appears to have a bit of a problem with "hard seeds". Out of the nine seeds I planted (one was "off type" so I reseved it for a later planting) six remanined unimbibed after three weeks in very moist soil. This isn't a fatal flaw (you can simply nick the seeds to solve the problem) but I felt it was worth alerting the forum to. On the plus side, one it does swell, it does so quite impressively. While the dry seed is more or less the size of a standard kidney type bean, when imbimbed it swell to more or less the same size as the Armenian Giant does when it swells. Oh and one other thing, despite how it looks when it is dry, the black spots on the beans are not in fact black at alll they're magenta!
2. It turns out that the Fort portal mixed bean (or at least the dominant type in the mix, the maroonish to tan slightly smaller one. I saved the one larger purple skinned seed for later, so I have no idea if it has it too.) has a very interesting trait. While the bean itself has no real pattern on the seed coat, the emerging cotyledons have VIVID purple streaks all over themselves including on the inner surface
I didn't take any seed coats off any dry ones, so I don't know if it has the streaks all the time, or if they develop during germination, but I have NEVER seen such streaks before.

[tl]

Hi
Thanks for the advice, I have the Hashuli bean, and good to know. When you say 'nick' the seed; can I rub it with sandpaper to give it a bit of a scratch? and then plant it...

Thanks!

[blueadzuki]

Sandpaper should be fine; you just need to take off enough of the coat that water can get inside. In fact, if you have a gentle hand, sandpaper might be a better choice that actually putting a cut in the coat, since it could allow you to weaken the seed coat at one point (thereby letting the water in) without actually breaking through it (which would reduce the risk of fungi/bacteria getting through the hole and making the seed rot). Though I'd stick with a fine grained sandpaper, closer to emery cloth (or even an emery board) a real rough one might catch the seed as you rub and either tear large chunks out of the seed coat or even cause the bean to break along the division between the two cotyledons.

[tl]

Great, thanks for the help! Incidently, I did a google search and Hashuli appears to be a small town in Iran. So perhaps these seeds were traded and ended up in Georgia.

Here is a blurb from my search:

Hashuli is a place with a very small population in the province of Kordestan, Iran which is located in the continent/region of Asia. Cities, towns and places near Hashuli include Hushuli, Sepehran, Spehran and Sepiran. The closest major cities include Sanandaj, Kermanshah, Bukan and Hamadan.

[blueadzuki]

Hmm. You know, at some point (next year most likey by now since I am done planting common beans for the season). I'm going to get around to putting that "off type" Hashuli bean in the ground (the one with no red patches and a somewhat thinner outline) assuming that it 1. breeds true 2. is worth keeping and 3. is revealed to actually be similar enough that it can safely be assumed to have come from the same source (and not, say, an errant Voatavu bean that somehow got into the Hashuli hopper during packing). It's going to need its own name. Given that it sounds like those other places are pretty close to Hashuli (and hence seed is probably actually common between them), one of those other town names might be a good choice (I personally like Sepiran, it's very different from Hashuli so no risk of the two getting confused (like it would be if the other was called Hushuli) is pretty easy to pronounce and sounds impressive.)

[blueadzuki]

UPDATES

It looks like the Batu Beans have thier first flower buds. Looks like they share something else in common with the Fort Portal Jade, they can flower super short and super early. Actually I'm wondering if this is actually a purposful selection. I was reading in this months Heirloom Gardener how one of the big problems gardeners in warmer climates have is that the midsummer heat often gets so intense that it basically stops the growth of even heat loving plants. I have no idea if the comments in the magazine (which were about gardening in Arizona can be applied here. But given that Uganda sits squarely in the tropics (I looked it up and Fort Portal is less than half a degree north of the Equator) I have to presumble that things tend to get very hot there too. Under those circumstances, having a bean that can break into flower very very quicky and stay in that state a long time may come in handy; you can get a crop in before the plants either wither in the dry heat or rot in the wet heat (I have no idea whether Uganda has a dry and rainy season, and how dry or rainy each half is) Actually ALL of my Ugandan decendent beans (Fort Portal mixed and speckled grey) seem to be developing flower buds, so that may be a tait common to most or all Ugandan beans. Though I have to say, for beans that come from such a tropical area, all of them seem to take the frigidly cold climate I have had up here for the last few years admirably.