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Post by steev on Mar 19, 2014 0:31:43 GMT -5
This is such a crazy year; last week I saw a volunteer bean-sprout on the farm; don't know whether vulgaris or lunatus. As with corn, I am tempted to plant some beans months before experience leads me to expect they won't be frost-killed. I have enough of some varieties to take a chance; one must boldly go where one hasn't gone before. Cold-tolerant Teparies, cowpeas, and Urd beans: here I come!
In any event, I've got to get the favas and garbanzoes planted; I have more peas I'd have liked to plant, but it just feels like that train has left the station.
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Post by imgrimmer on Apr 14, 2014 8:39:59 GMT -5
I have some so called ice beans (phaseolus types) it can be sown as early as march and tolerate some frost, when germinated. Until I couldn`t prove it, since I have them I always missed the last rost.
I like to test them for overwintering in ground, probably my winter temperatures are too low and wet and too many up and downs, I`ll see...
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Post by zeedman on Apr 14, 2014 16:45:38 GMT -5
Steev, what do you do with the urd beans? I've grown them, and they produced fairly well... but I couldn't find a way to make them palatable.
A crazy year indeed. Unless there are major weather changes in May, all of the things you are getting in early on the West Coast will be going in late here in the Midwest.
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Post by steev on Apr 14, 2014 18:46:59 GMT -5
As dry beans, they're useful mooshed into dal or as sprouts, like any of the small beans.
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Post by hortusbrambonii on Apr 15, 2014 1:21:23 GMT -5
I do have a bag of Urd beans from a Nepalese supermarket (if they're the same as 'Urid Dal', darkish brown thingies slightly smaller than mung beans)so trying some might be fun...
What climate do they need and how do they grow? Bushy plants or vines?
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Post by steev on Apr 15, 2014 10:12:35 GMT -5
I grow them sparingly irrigated in hot weather; they're bushy.
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Post by zeedman on Apr 15, 2014 17:13:57 GMT -5
In my climate they are a sprawling prostrate bush, somewhere between a bush bean & a cowpea in habit, with very dense foliage. Irrigating them sparingly probably makes them more restrained, which is a good thing (same can be said for mung beans).
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Post by steev on Apr 15, 2014 21:43:47 GMT -5
They're like other small beans, in that more water makes more plant, but less beans.
Oddly enough, the same seems true of star-thistle, if not many weeds.
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Post by 12540dumont on Apr 16, 2014 13:39:46 GMT -5
And why pray tell are you growing star thistle?
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Post by steev on Apr 17, 2014 0:05:09 GMT -5
I grow star thistle because it was there ere I was (in any sense) and because I am flawed and subject to the wrath, or at least, the piss-offedness, of God, which afflicts me with this scourge, as well as with gophers, which show no inclination to eat their fellow scourge.
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Post by flowerweaver on Apr 17, 2014 1:01:24 GMT -5
My pet donkey and Barbados sheep enjoy thistles as treats. In this way I turn scourge into fertilizer. Thankfully, we don't have gophers.
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Post by 12540dumont on Apr 17, 2014 19:44:51 GMT -5
Barbados sheep are goats in sheep's clothing  . Steev, I too would have star thistle, but Leo has a flamer and his own wrath. |
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Post by steev on Apr 17, 2014 20:53:35 GMT -5
I've read it reported that the first mention of star thistle in California was in Oakland; poor Oakland, it's gotten such bad press for so long; it's a wonder it isn't blamed for gophers (so far as I know).
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Post by blueadzuki on Apr 18, 2014 10:36:31 GMT -5
I have found both Fort Portal Mixed Bean and Bantu bean (Probably Fort Portal Jade as well, since it is very much like Bantu, but as the one year I planted it spring came in warm early, I can't actually verify that) to be astonishingly cold tolerant (I say "astonishingly" because Fort Portal, Uganda is actually only about one half degree away from the equator, so cold tolerance is NOT something you'd think would be likely be retained in the genes.) At temps low enough to stunt pretty much everything else, they will keep chugging along fine. In fact, last year, they were actually FLOWERING before it got to what I would normally call "Spring weather".
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Post by hortusbrambonii on Apr 18, 2014 11:57:03 GMT -5
Doesn't look bad that star thistle, where can I find it? |
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. Steev, I too would have star thistle, but Leo has a flamer and his own wrath.