Tepary Beans

[blueadzuki]

Sounds like the time we wound up making "Black Death Paella" (paella using "forbidden" rice. Turned everything the color of blueberry pie filling, chicken, shrimp, veggies, our napkins even the glazed inside of the pot (we eventually had to throw it away as no amount of cleaning was enough to get the stain out and it began leeching little amounts into anything ELSE we cooked in there (when making black chicken soup it's the CHICKEN that's suppose to be black, not the soup!)

[steev]

Started harvesting/threshing Little Tucson Brown teparies. They're about the golden orange of Sonora Gold, a bit larger, and the plants are the lushest of any tepary I've grown.

[flowerweaver]

Now that my tepary plants are dying down I've found bunches of dried pods I'd somehow missed. There's still at least one more gathering to be made. So far, I'm just a tad shy of 2 lbs, which I think is a phenomenal return off no more than 32 plants in a new field.

Joseph Lofthouse I'm not sure how yours can be gathered and threshed at once; mine have been ripening and drying down over many months. Had I waited until now to thresh I would have lost a good deal of my crop to shattering. Maybe having a longer season down here my teparies sensed they had more time? A few of them are even still blooming.

[steev]

Having built up a substantial store of BST, I've set some to sprouting, prolly do egg foo next Monday. I got decent seed increase in all my teparies, so if it rains enough to till adequately, I'll have patches of each next year large enough to comparison-cook as green, shelly, and dry beans. Think I'm gonna try the vinegar-for-color-retention method to see whether I can get more interesting cooked beans, like for salads.

The ripening time-frame is important to me because for dry beans, I'd prefer cultivars that ripen fairly tight, time-wise, so I can pull the plants, loosely bundle them in burlap, hang them to dry in the breeze (on my gibbet, of course!), and use a baseball bat to beat the tar and beans out of them. I have plenty of BST to justify that bulk approach; now I need some critters to eat the "hay" and residual seeds. Little Tucson Brown seems to ripen in a rush; its plant seems much less scrawny than any other teparies I've grown.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

flowerweaver: I typically harvest tepary beans after they get killed by frost. There are few that mature before then. This year the tepary killing frost is a couple of weeks later than average. The plants are still flowering. I noticed on Friday that some of the beans are rotting in the field. I would have started harvesting them earlier if I had been paying attention. They are so shatter-prone that I prefer to harvest vine-at-once because I am a bit klutzy handed to be able to shatter them into my hand and hold onto them long enough to get them into a basket.

[steev]

A five-gallon bucket works well for gathering these shattery pods; then I take them to the shade of the grape arbor and stomp them in the bucket with a 2' length of 2"x4".

[flowerweaver]

I am harvesting mine about every 2-3 days by gently holding the pod and using my thumbnail (granted, long enough to be my guitar pick) to break its connection with the vine. Although they occasionally shatter in my hand or the collection bag, most make it into the house. I think I am catching them right before that stage. They are definitely dry. All I have to do back at the house is put a little pressure on each pod and they pop open.

Next year I am going to plant some in a field again, but also a big patch down in the wash, where they might feel more at home. The tornado took out a very large oak down there and left some sun. I think I will use your method of harvesting at once with those, because if they shatter maybe they will colonize the area. Since I rotate things around in the field I don't really want teparies coming back to strangle the next crop! They did a marvelous job of out competing (even using for support) the pigweeds.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I harvested the tepary beans about a week ago. This is what they looked like. I lost very few to shattering or mold. They seem to be more rain resistant than many of the common beans I grow.

[flowerweaver]

Joseph Lofthouse for some reason mine have been ripening over a several month period. I would have lost half my crop had I harvested only at one time, either from lost opportunity (early) or shatter (late). Mine seem to be bordering on annuals, rather than ephemeral--they were planted five months ago, although they took close to a month to sprout. Some of them are still blooming and shattered ones are sprouting. Do they sense I have a longer growing season?

[hortusbrambonii]

I don't expect too much of a warmth-loving plant like Tepary-beans in our Belgian climate, but I'll have a small try with a few plants this year.

But my question is: are they inbreeding like Phaseolus vulgaris, or outbreeders like P. coccineus?

[steev]

Well, duh!

You may be in terra incognita, there.

Certainly they aren't vulgaris, but keep us in touch on your results.

Being a person for whom vulgaris are not successful, I am certainly interested in other beans.

[DarJones]

They are mostly inbreeders with little natural outcrossing, however, they are more likely to cross than most Phaseolus Vulgaris beans. I have 3 or 4 hybrid beans that are a result of embryo rescue crosses between species that I got out of ARS-GRIN a couple of years ago.

[kyredneck]

Description

Climbing, trailing or more or less erect and bushy annual herb, with stems up to 4 m long; roots fibrous. Leaves alternate, 3-foliolate; stipules lanceolate, 2–3 mm long, appressed to stem; petiole 2–10 cm long; stipels linear, up to 2 mm long; leaflets ovate to ovate-lanceolate, 4–8 cm × 2–5 cm, acute, usually pubescent below. Inflorescence an axillary raceme, 2–5 flowered. Flowers bisexual, papilionaceous; pedicel 3–7 mm long; calyx campanulate, 3–4 mm long, the upper 2 lobes united into one, the lower 3 triangular; corolla white, pink or pale lilac, standard half-reflexed, broad, emarginate, up to 1 cm long, wings up to 1.5 cm long, keel narrow, coiled; stamens 10, 9 fused and 1 free; ovary superior, c. 0.5 cm long, densely pubescent, style with a thickened terminal coil, with collar of hairs below the stigma. Fruit a compressed pod, straight or slightly curved, 5–9 cm × 0.5–1 cm, rimmed on margins, with short but distinct beak, hairy when young, 2–9-seeded. Seeds globose to oblong, 4–7(–10) mm × 2–5(–7.5) mm, white, yellow, brown, purple, black or variously speckled, dull. Seedling with epigeal germination; first pair of leaves simple.

www.prota4u.org/protav8.asp?h=M4&t=Phaseolus,acutifolius&p=Phaseolus+acutifolius

[hortusbrambonii]

Yes, bisexual flowers, just like both other species and I suppose all legumes even.
But P. vulgaris is mainly selfing (I wonder if it doesn't have a pollinator over here) and P. coccineus is generally outcrossing wildly so I wondered... Thanks DarJones

(My runners are a mix of common scarlet runners and I think a bit of 'scarlet emperor' and a Dutch heirloom called 'Stiense pronkbonen' that looks quite like scarlet runners but the one I had has quite small seeds. Maybe not the best trait to add to my gene pool...)

P. coccineus is generally working good here, as well as the P. vulgaris varieties that we grow. (More early ones I suppose) I tried some Chinese white Lablab too (hyacinth beans) but they hardly flowered.

So I wondered about maybe Tepary beans, as they are said to are tasty drying beans with other taste tha P. vulgaris. I have one variety from Vreeken, which I suppose to be growing here, and maybe I can get another one too... I was wondering if I should keep them apart from each other if I have 2 varieties. (I was wanting to try a few plants in between the other pole beans.)

I read something about a P. vulgaris x acutifolius cross (was it a Carol Deppe variety?) so that must be possible.

[hortusbrambonii]

Anyone who can tell me if Adaptive seeds' 'Sacaton brown' tepary beans are pole or dwarf type?