Colored Bean Pods

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I've been going through the common bean patch this summer, and marking pods that have interesting colors. Eventually I'd like to pull them together and call them "Decorative Bean Landrace". There were some really pretty colored flowers as well. I'm wishing that I would have marked some of those: It's hard to mark things while I'm moving irrigation pipe. It looks like there would be sufficient variability in the common bean genome to create a cultivar with red pods.

Here is what some of the pods look like: There was also a green pod with purple speckling that didn't make it into these photos. The pod that looks black is really a dark purple.

[templeton]

Rattlesnake pole beans have a green with purple speckles pod. Sfter reading Jim's post about bean crossing from a year or two ago, it looks a bit daunting.
T

[galina]

[quote author="Joseph Lofthouse" source="/post/91187/thread" timestamp="1376264674". It looks like there would be sufficient variability in the common bean genome to create a cultivar with red pods.




[/quote]





Not sure what you mean, Joseph - Borlotti beans have red pods and there are many others.
Just one example
tinyurl.com/pg5fal8

And what about Robert Lobitz's Red Swan bean? Well that is more a pink/purple, but very different from traditional purple beans.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Nov 16, 2013 1:53:14 GMT -5 galina said:

Not sure what you mean, Joseph - Borlotti beans have red pods and there are many others.

Nice!. I really need go get out more.

[DarJones]

Remind me to send you some Red Swan beans when I have time Joseph. Bush, red pods, very good flavor. Only thing I didn't like was having to get down on my knees to harvest. I prefer pole beans.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I grew pole beans this summer: Resilient Bean Breeder was about 2/3 pole beans. They grew sprawling on the ground. I'm sure not going to spend the labor to put up bean poles, and take them down. Harvest consisted of cutting off the vines just above ground level and throwing them on tarp before stomping. If I had my own place rather than renting I'd likely grow a coppicing tree to make bean poles, or I'd put up some permanent trellises on which to grow pole beans. I'm getting old enough that hiring a young kid to do the work is looking better all the time.

I did grow some yard-long beans on poles this summer. Picking them was a joy!

[zeedman]

Aug 11, 2013 18:44:34 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

It looks like there would be sufficient variability in the common bean genome to create a cultivar with red pods.

For immature pods, perhaps; some breeders (such as the late Robert Lobitz) give us reason to hope. The bean photo in the thread below (by a poster there) is really encouraging. It was bred by another poster there (a fellow legumaniac) who named it "Flamingo", for obvious reasons. I will be trialing it next year, so it will be interesting to see how early the color emerges.

Red-podded beans