Early report on my dry bean trial...

[wykvlvr]

Let my start off by saying this year has been far from normal. Winter stayed and stayed and stayed then suddenly overnight it seemed like we were in mid summer with record heat waves. My notes say my beans were all planted on July 5th
Mid July I went down sick with an abscessed tooth. After a round of antibiotics and days of sleeping, waking to take pills and going back to sleep it was deemed safe to pull on on Aug 1st. On Aug 3rd my best friend and a member of our Wyoming group for the seed swap died. We started cleaning out her house the day after and have continued to work on it until now. Nope it is still not empty... So during this time my garden was almost totally neglected. No weeding watering was sporadic etc.

Shockingly some of those beans grew and are producing beans but I would still not consider this a real trial... on the other hand I have some plants with ready to pick dry pods. That is only 79 days from being planted which is pretty durn good all things considered.
i use the square foot garden method for the back garden so 1 square = 9 seeds the half squares each got 6 seeds
Beans planted were:
Planted 2 squares and 2 half squares of Yellow Indian Woman dry bean -(Etsy) 10 July saw one bean starting to break ground
Planted 2 squares of Beefy - bush Black Resilient dry bean grex - center of box (Quail Seeds) Saw one bean sprouting July 10,2022
Planted 1 square of Speedy Alpine Dry bean grex top square near T (MMMS)
Planted 3 squares of Nez Perce dry beans. (Etsy) July 11 multiple beans breaking the surface

Today I picked about 12 pods from the Speedy Alpine grex with most having the small yellow beans in them. I need to pick the ones on the Nez Perce but I see a number of dry pods in that group of plants. Yellow Indian Woman has pods but not dry pods the loser in the race is currently the Beefy Bush Black Resilient grex which has not handled the neglect, heat and dryness as well as the others.

[Tormato]

It sounds like you have fairly good weather at sowing time, with only 5 or 6 days until plants broke through. You likely don't have much to worry about soaking rain-wise, which can make seeds simply rot in the ground. Then it's another round of sowing that can delay things another week, or more.

I recommend that you start one plant indoors, and transplant out, to see how it works.

I believe that you will need to select from the Speedy Alpine Dry bean grex for what works best for you.

[wykvlvr]

Yes I would say the Speedy Alpine Dry Bean grex is indeed my best bet. I do want to get more seeds of the grex as most of my dry beans so far are the small yellow beans. Second place would go to the Nez Perce which is also a small yellow bean. In the past I almost had luck with the Coco Noir dry bean that Pinetree sells. But that year our first snow and deep freeze was Sept 9th... I had still managed to get some dry beans, not many but they were enough for a square. Unfortunately those seeds are MIA..

So I think plans for next year will be to plant squares from my saved seeds as well as from some "bought" seeds. I will try the Speedy Alpine Dry Bean Grex, Nez Perce and Coco Noir and move forward from there. Of course another option is to toss all my current seeds into a bag and use them like a grex and just keep selecting for earliest beans.

[wykvlvr]

@Tormato what do your notes about Dapple Grey beans say? I saw it mentioned on another site where he listed it as "60 - 70 days for dry seeds" AND saw that you had it on the swap list for last year... This sounds like it could be a good addition to my trial.

[Tormato]

I only trialed it once. It was late, and had low production. A few more trials might tell me more. Betty C5 might have some notes on it.

It is a beautiful looking bean, though.

[wykvlvr]

Interesting... I wonder why such a discrepancy in times. The quote is from a trusted site which is why I got interested in them. I do tend to take what I read on sell sites with a grain of salt as so often the information is more here is your dream... then actual reality.

[BettyC-5]

I have grown Dapple Grey beans a few times. It seems they dried the same time as all the rest of the dry bush beans I grew. I think I would have remembered if they had been low on production, so they must have been pretty good. At least on a good year most beans do well for me. Not like this year, cold and rainy into June. Planted only a few bush beans for eating and had to replant a second time. I ended up planting all the Wyatt seeds I kept and I ended up with one plant, saving it for seed. I planted so many dry beans last year I didn't need more this year, I mix all the dry ones together. I keep a few notes on tomatoes but haven't on beans, guess I should.

[Tormato]

Do you have a few Wyatts to spare?

Also, on the Dapple Grey, the listed 60-70 days seems almost impossible at the 60 day end of the range. I've trialed a lot of beans over the years in many different weather conditions, with my earliest ever at 62-63 days, and only a couple others at about 67-70 days.

I have seeds of DG, wykvlvr, if you'd like some.

[wykvlvr]

The two stand out varieties here this year came in at 79 days more or less as I was not paying much attention to the garden. I was sorta like umm 60 days? Wonder if they meant to snaps (that would make them late) or maybe as shell beans.

I did see that Dapple Grey was on your bean list was thinking I would just add it to my wish list when I sent it in. I mean after all it is almost winter here so this is all very early planning stages for 2023... Wry grin I am sure I will find a few other bean varieties that sound interesting between now and then.