Another Suprise in my Yard

[blueadzuki]

Hi all,

Well yesterday, my yard yielded up another suprise. While going outside to dump the week's leftover rice beans in one of the mulch piles. I noticed a splash of yellow. Looking closer I made a suprisng discover, possibly due to the unseasonably hot summer we have had up here, a few of the rice bean plants that had popped up on the mulch pile from pervios deposits have actually made flowers (we've always gotten a heavy crop of plants fro the scattered beans, but never any reproduction). I also saw a few buds on plants along the patio and in the stump (I did not plant any bean in any of these places, but the birds,squirrels and chipmunks pretty much guarantee that little bean plants sprout everywhere and there are a few goodly sized ones in any place in the yard that it not actively sprayed or mowed It's mid September, so the odds of actually getting mature seeds is remote, since were likely only about a month and a half to two months from first frost up here (actually some of the mornings we've had this week have made me wonder if fiest frost isn't coming any day now). Guess I'll have to look up if rice bean pods are edible as a green bean.

[ottawagardener]

For some reason, I can't view the photo, assuming one was there?

[blueadzuki]

No, there was no photo. Oh I see what happened! I started writing the message, then got up to go to the bathroom whne I came back I found Cassia was sitting on the "enter button" (she likes to sun herself under the computer lamp) I remembered to move the text but must have forgotten to delete the extra spaces. I'll edit when I'm done here.
BTW I did notice something else worth noting whne I was out today. Much like the common bean, rice beans come in both "Pole" version (ones that grown like vines, climbing over surfaces" and "bush" versions (ones that grow upright without support) well I ran a quick spot check and of the ones that are flowering, ALL are "Bush" type (which are in the minority in terms of strict plant numbers) Guess those aren't day-lenght sensitive! Actually they may be just as day-length sensitive but this may be the right day length for them, a few of the flowerers are quite short (less than a foot tall) This should make them var. Rumbaya, assuming I'm reading this link right

www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.css.cornell.edu/ecf3/Web/new/AF/pics/RiceBean2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.css.cornell.edu/ecf3/Web/new/AF/managedFallows_02.html&usg=__lArp2y8vhLKan055lv9v9sOBv6w=&h=583&w=300&sz=128&hl=en&start=1&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=4NRF2Si5JDaogM:&tbnh=134&tbnw=69&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2522rice%2Bbean%2Bflower%2522%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26tbs%3Disch:1

Well at least I now know some rice beans can flower up near me, I'll have to make note of the seed characteristics so that, as I sort my beas I can put to the side those that will actually produce (of course between bird movement and the fact I've been treating these things like green manure, I don't have the faintest idea which packers beans are the "flower" ones, if indeed it's any one's specifically (I've got plants that match up to at least four of the five named types listed (it would be all but the shoudn't be any torosus out there, as any tan or cream seed I've found is sitting in a quart soup container in my room, along with the rest of the "off colors") so I'm beggin to think that all that dumping has left me with a cocktail of all of them.) We'll just have to wait and see.

[blueadzuki]

Another update:

I've been doing a little reasearch and it is possible that the flowering ones may, in fact, not be rice beans at all, they may be adzuki beans. The plant's I have have yellow flowers and whne I did my original web search for pictures of the rice,adzuki,and mung bean plants respectively, I was led to believe that adzuki bean plants had pink flowers, so I ruled them out. I have since learned that adzuki beans can have yellow or pink (amougst other) colored flowers, depending on type,so they are back in as a candidate. I do not recall tossing sorting through or tossing out and adzuki beans specifically, but as I mentioned in earlier messages, adzuki beans are one of the most common additional seeds found in the rice beans (so much so that, practically all of the odd colored adzuki beans I have saved have come from rice bean packages, not adzuki bean packages) and if they are "normal" (i.e. plain bright red, in this context) I did not bother to pull them out and they would have gone outside in the same lots. In fact it occurs to me that as I was using a new brand over this spring, a brand I noted for being unusually rich in off color adzuki's it also might have been unusally rich in regulars which could have upped thier presence in the piles. I think I will wait till the pods mature, at this point I'm curios as to what I've got.

[starlight1153]

Blue... Is your Adzuki possibly Vigna Angulais Aduki bean - Phaseoulus angularis the Yellow Corkscrew vine? Also called the Yellow Snail Vine?

I picked up some seed of the above. Supposed to be rare. Never know how rare something really is though, but the package says that it a bushy type annual, makes a incredibly beautiful display of bright yellow snail like blooms. The package also says that they have a strong nutty, sweet flavor and used as a filling in desserts.

[blueadzuki]

Oct 29, 2010 7:08:09 GMT -5 starlight1153 said:

Blue... Is your Adzuki possibly Vigna Angulais Aduki bean - Phaseoulus angularis the Yellow Corkscrew vine? Also called the Yellow Snail Vine?

I picked up some seed of the above. Supposed to be rare. Never know how rare something really is though, but the package says that it a bushy type annual, makes a incredibly beautiful display of bright yellow snail like blooms. The package also says that they have a strong nutty, sweet flavor and used as a filling in desserts.

Not impossible, but not all that likely. As I said before there may or may not be adzuki/aduki/azuki bean plants in the mix, there's no real way to tell. V. angularis and V. ublillferata (or if you prefer Phaseolus angularis and Phaseolus calicartus) are very very closely related, so that telling the plants apart is difficult. The main reason I rebel against the concept of them being adzuki beans is simply due to numbers. When I wrote the previos update to this thread, there were maybe 5-6 plants total that were flowering so the concept that they might all be adzuki beans which had been mixed into the rice beans was entirely possible; as I mentioned before there are usually scattered adzukis in rice bean bags, and if they are the regular red type I don't usually bother to pull them out before they go on the mulch pile/lawn. Since that thread however many, many more of the plants have set flowers, in fact as far as I can tell every one of that odd, short height did (I also may have seen one climber set flowers, but it was in one of the placed where there were a lot of plants growing on top of each other, and it is equally possible that it was a short bush one that had been climbed on and extended by a vining plant.) This reduced the likly hood that they are all adzuki beans; for them to be would required the amount of adzuki beans mixed in to the rice beans to be something on the order of 10% of the bag (which they weren't, I would have noticed) or that I sorted and tossed out several bags of just adzuki beans (which I didn't I would remember).
and you were right whoever told you adzuki beans were rare was feeding you a line (unless they meant the bush type was rare (I have no idea the relative commonness of bush versus pole types) or that it was rare when grown as an ornamental plant. Bags of red adzuki beans can be obtianed in pretty much any supermarked you care to go into, they are a commodity crop by now. I suspect the "yellow snail/corkscrew vine name was dreamed up by someone trying to capatialize on the fame of the real snail/corkscrew vine (Vigna caracalla) as a way of taking a very very common seed and justifying a seed packet price for it)
As of now almost all of the flowers have gone into pod form. However no pods have actually ripened yet and I'm not sure if any will before it gets cold enough to kill the plants.

[blueadzuki]

Okay, FINALLY when I went out today a few pods had fully ripened. The plants are indeed rice beans no if ands or buts C:\Documents and Settings\Jeremy\My Documents\My Pictures\myricebans.jpg[/img]

(note the larger ones are the same as the smaller ones, they just haven't dried down yet)

Look Like I was also right about it being the larger, duller looking seeds that were the short, fertile ones, these are clearly not shiny seeded (unless the beans only become shiny with handling, but no if that was the case then there'd be some dull ones in every bag. Besides, the dulls are a much lighter shade of red) Okay guess I'm set for next year If I actually want to grow some on purpose!

Attachments:

[raymondo]

Does this mean you have a rice bean that is a little earlier than the rest?

[blueadzuki]

I guess so, or at least one that is less day length sensitive than the "normal" one

[blueadzuki]

UPDATE:
I've got a few flowerers this year as well. They still don't actually give me any clue as to which brand is the one that can do this trick of producing as far north as me, since that patch was planted from my mix jar (the jar i toss all of the not flat red beans) but at least they will (hopefully) add a little more seed to my supply. And since it is from the off color jar, that shoud mean these will be tan , which is one more color (last spring I divided my mix jar (which probably contains a few seeds from every bag of rice beans I've ever gone through; all the way back to the first one about 10 or so years ago) into three piles. Pile one (cream to tan seeded) went into this patch. pile 2 (cream to tan to red seed with black mottling was planted in my corn patch mixed with the corn (my attemept at a 3 sisters like arrangement; I would have put in some sort of cucurbit later) and was promptly devoured basically down to the last seed by the chipmunks who ate all of the corn seed and decided not to pass up free food. Pile 3 (black, blue, pinto and any other colors or oddities, went back into storage, for future use.) Next year I'm planting the WHOLE mix jar there, to try and get maximum color variation.
However to make things confusing, I've noticed something odd about the ones that are flowering this year. Remeber when I said that, unlike the regular kind, the ones that flower are bush type? (this is actually a very important distiction for me, as it allows me to safely thin the patch by pulling out any plants that start turning into a vine. Well this year the flowers are also bush type.....sort of. Basically they are bush type but the flowers themselves are coming out on vines, completely leafless ones. Basically, they have five foot long, twisting climbing petioles!

[blueadzuki]

Now that I am actually getting some beans, I've noticed something odd. Despite the fact that all the seed I poured into the one patch that is actually producing was cream to tan, I'm getting red seed back. I don't mean I'm getting back some seed that is red (all that would likely mean is that some of the red seed that was in there last year overwintered and came up this year. I mean that nearly all to TOTYALLY all of the seed that has come back so far is red. It's not the reddis that I know such beans can produce (ithey're that sort of pinky brown shade that I belive is officially called "clay" but I alaways think of as "hot dog") So I'm thinking that some to most of the tan beans that went in were genetically red and simply deficient in red production.

[canadamike]

Very interesting. I bought seeds of these beans this year but did not grew them..

I would not be surprised if the difference of color came from difference of maturity when the beans were picked. Color variation happens often when beans ( at least p. vulgaris and coccineus) are ''almost ready to be picked'' and mature enough to be viable but did not make it to full color.

It happens to me all the time here in my shorter season.

On a different topic, I started in 2010 to greow peanuts for earliness selection. They are grown here in Canada in Southern Ontario, which is about at the same lattitude than northern California, Canada's southernest area.

They can be grown here in Quebec, but nobody can dream of a true productive harvest. But climate is changing. We have a much longer growing season now, I would say one month or so.

As I moved this summer, I gave my harvest to two friends to keep on selecting, but I had a big surprise this week when I met a couple that owns an organic farm...the lady had been growing them and selecting for 3 years, and the harvest was beautiful if not huge, with plants bearing roughly lots of peanuts, and some much more and a lot of 3 and 4 peanuts per shell ( language limits here, please come in if desired).

I do not think they could dry quietly in the ground unless the season was exceptional, but they dry up very quicly and beautifully inside, kind of like most sweet corns here...

I now have another project for next year...

[blueadzuki]

Oct 16, 2011 17:49:58 GMT -5 canadamike said:

Very interesting. I bought seeds of these beans this year but did not grew them..

I don't like to sound like a cynical Cyrus, but depending on who you got your seed from, it may not grow for you. That is, it will probably grow, but may not flower or make beans. Rice beans are usually super day length sensitive, and are used to a latititude far, far further south than anywhere in the US. I lucked out by stumbing on a strain that can take a shorter day (unfortunately, I dont know which of the dozen or so brands of rice beans you can buy in Chinatown is the one with this interesting trait though I think I have it narrowed down to two). And that one is marginal even for me. one of the reasons I'm so obsessed about saving every seed I can is that in a normal year, I can expect that at least 85-90% of the pods produced will not mature by the time the frost comes, so each year I get a handful of seed back. Rice beans teng to go from flower to full sized pod pretty quickly, but it then takes a very long time for the seed inside to mature. This is also why I'm not immediately offering some of my seed (defined here as seed I have actually grown myself) to fill the gap; I actually do not have any to spare yet (plus if it's marginal for me, it's probably going to be impossible for you, who are even further north)

Oct 16, 2011 17:49:58 GMT -5 canadamike said:

I would not be surprised if the difference of color came from difference of maturity when the beans were picked. Color variation happens often when beans ( at least p. vulgaris and coccineus) are ''almost ready to be picked'' and mature enough to be viable but did not make it to full color.

It happens to me all the time here in my shorter season.

You are partially right, I am taking pods before they go brown (party because I am worried about frost, party becuse I am worried about animal damage and partly becuse I do not know if rice bean pods shatter at maturity.) However pretty much all of the seed that went in had its "gloss", the shinyness of seed coat that the beans only get when they fully mature, So lack of maturty could not explain all of them. And if I was a maturity issue, you'd expect the reverse; red seeds in, white/tan seeds out. There were at least some that were pale enough they had to be legitamately "white" of gene (Since red is the ovewhelmingly commonest color, I have to assume it is dominant to most to all of the others) just as there are some that are black, or green, or pinto, or speckled (this in conbination with any of the former (except pinto) or blue. It just may be that none of those are among the ones that had the short season gene and survived the competition from the ones that don't (the long season ones dont' flower, but they grow 2-3x as fast as the ones that do, so they tend to smother a lot of them out.) And there was one pod I took that might have been white; I'm just not sure I should count it becuse I took it so immature (it had gotten insect damage and started to rot on one end, so I removed it so the neigbor beans would not catch the fungus.) so it's final color is not easily determined.

[12540dumont]

I purchased some Comtesse de Chambord beans from Two Wings Farm in Canada. I haven't grown them yet, but this makes excited to see what they will do here.

[blueadzuki]

Well, In today's harvest there were a few pods whose seeds are unquestionably white, so at least ONE white plant is in there (the beans are so snarled that I have no idea which parent plant any given pod is from (beyond that beans in the same cluster are obviosly from the same plant) or indeed how many producing plants there are in there (anywhere from 5-50 as far as I can tell). Based on this, next year will be fun, next year is when I toss in EVERYTHING in the reserved container (before it gets too old) so pretty much ANY colors could show up. I may (if the things can cross) find out if it is possible for a bean to have both the speckled trait and the pinto trait.