First Rice Bean Pod of the Season

[blueadzuki]

I am of two minds about this. On one hand, I'm glad I now have at least ONE pods worth of seed in the bank (with the long time it takes to get them to flower pod and ripen, and our possibly early frosts, seed is never a given)

On the other hand I am also baffled. as you can see this seed has no mottling, and mottled seed is all I planted this year (and I pre scarify and soak all seed, so there is no chance of seed from previous years hiding in the soil.). Moreover this plant is on the RED mottled side of the patch. So, In short I am now even less sure about my ability to predict seed color than I was last year after the "blue seed to red" incident

[flowerweaver]

They look healthy at least. Might some mottling show back up in the next grow out?

[blueadzuki]

Theoretically, but only in the sense that, now that I have no clue what is going on, ANYTHING could happen. Given how uncommon mottling is, I have to assume that "no mottle" is dominant over mottle, counter-intuitive as that is (I know the "wild type" pattern for rice beans is tan with HEAVY mottle, so I always assumed that mottle must be dominant, and was only so absent from the domestic population due to heavy rouging).

I suppose part of the answer will come as other pods come in from other plants. After this I suspect I will get a lot of red no mottle (i.e. "standard")

[blueadzuki]

Well, Pod #2 is in, and THIS one looks correct

 

BTW after this I'll probably just show the seeds themselves, rather than the empty pod too. All the pods look the same in what I have (i.e. at this time I have no beans with purple or streaked pods) Plus trying to take the pod in too is proving a little risky. I almost lost a seed this time, and I can ill afford that It turns out that, while domestic rice bean pods don't actually shatter of their own accord, they ARE on a sufficient "tripwire" that the least touch on a ripe pod WILL make them pop. So if I keep trying to take the whole pod in intact, I am more or less guaranteed to have most of my seed go flying.

And as a little bonus, This guy showed up in the front flower garden. Obviously it is from one of the times I tossed spare red seed out for the birds. At this point in the year, the odds of this one making mature pods before frost is remote, But I post it here to demonstrate something I have said before; that, when the season is right, rice bean plants can flower at ABSURDLEY small sizes.

[steev]

When I fail to pick teparies in the morning, they get drier and shattery, but I've learned technique that avoids loss of seed; those look like too-long pods for my technique to work, but early-morning picking might help.

[blueadzuki]

long is relative; a rice bean pod rarely gets much longer than the last two joints of your middle finger. What happened was that since I was assuming it wouldn't pop till I physically "unzipped" it, like that last one. I put them side to side and it turns out that there IS a significant difference between the two pods, this one is a lot lighter in color than the last one and, this is the important part, a lot THINNER. The first pod didn't being to curl until some time after it was split; this one did it immediately Since this is an actual mottled seed one (and since, based on some other things I think mottling may be associated with other primitive characteristics in rice beans)it could simply be that the pressure on the pod I exerted in picking, which is fine for a "normal" pod, is too much for a thin pod. Now that I know, I can modify my picking method to factor that in.

[steev]

Picky, picky. picky.

[blueadzuki]

And pod #3; found this morning. First from the OTHER cluster, so the first cream with mottled I've ever gotten from my own patch. This one was picked very slightly younger than the last two so it isn't totally dried down in the picture.

[flowerweaver]

Congrats--you must be quite happy about this one!

[blueadzuki]

Somewhat. I'd be overjoyed if I actually got some pinto seed back, (since it's the rarest color combination) But that seems unlikely. The only plant out there that could be pinto is one of the worst nibbled (besides the deer, it keeps sending its shoots outside of the circle, where the gardeners keep weed whacking them) and has not even a trace of flowers. So the odds of getting pinto this year are basically none. In fact, they are probably none period; as far as I can tell, pinto coloration only occurs in the LONG season rice bean strains, so it's quite likely I will NEVER see pintos show up here.)

[blueadzuki]

Pod #4 harvested today. Seed is more or less identical in appearance to #3, so I won't bother with a picture

About the only notable thing about this pod is the nature of the plant it came from. It actually seems to be one of the pseudo-gracilis. Rice beans officially come in five recognized subspecies, with gracilis being usually designated as the "wild" subspecies (much as nakashime is for the adzuki bean). Surprisingly examples of what appears to be several to all of these subspecies show up in the plating, so the farmers must sometimes used a cocktail (or far more likely since my seed stock comes bags being sold for food, the packers/exporters pool crop from many, many farmers all over China , who are growing a great diversity of types, and the "good" and "bad" times have more to do with various types coming into season at different times than any specific region (I've seen abundant evidence that at lest some exporters mix types together that would have had to come from very different sections of the country)

The pseudo-gracilis is my term for the smallest of the types. Actually it may really be gracilis but not having ever seen a verified specimen I am hesitant to make that call. Unlike the others, the G type never really puts any girth on as it grows. By the time they reproduce most of the others have thickened greatly (in some cases, to something around the diameter of a pencil) The G type are basically the same thickness as adult plants as they were as seedlings,about that of a strand of capellini (angel hair pasta). The G's are also the only ones that are pretty much FULL climbers. As I have mentioned most of the rice beans are somewhere between partial runners and full on bush. But even the climbers usually go up on their own a little bit before making vines and have some branching. The G type however basically always flops over immediately. In fact if planted on it's own, I rather doubt they would survive well, since they seem to also grow unusually slowly . Sandwiched in between the normal type, they can intertwine, but I've yet to see one make it to the pole (about two inches).

But the point I am trying to get at is that usually, the G-types don't flower here, or flower and pod very poorly. In fact, I found this one while I was removing G type vines (because the lash the other plants together they can make separation at harvest time difficult. I probably will keep doing this (at this point in the year, a plant that has yet to even flower is probably incapable of making mature seed before the freeze comes) But I will go a little slower, and leave the few that actually did make pods alone. Probably keep their seed separate though.

Actually this does bring up questions of what will happen when I plant the section of my box reserved for "wild type" rice beans; ones that are only 1/2 to 1/3 the size of the "normal ones" (somewhat tellingly the vast majority of the are also cream or tan with heavy mottle, so this one might be a wild that got in by accident) I think I may have to stick the pole in the dead center of the seedlings, or plant around the pole, which I normally don't do (I prefer to wait and see where the plants are twisting to, then place the pole accordingly.)

[blueadzuki]

Pods #5,6 and 7 in (three pods, two plants). All seem to be white. Pod #5 is from the white mottled side, so it looks like there is a no-mottle in there as well Makes me wonder if, as the season progesseds I'm going to start getting red no mottleds (i.e. "normal") out of the red side

Also first cowpea pod came in


Note, while the seed is currently sort of silver grey, and that certainly is a color mature cowpeas can be, my previous experiences (and my memories of what the seed I planted looked like) leads me to assume that these peas will darken as they dry and wind up a sort of pinky brown (the color I think is called "clay") with the spots going black.

[steev]

What cowpea is it? I've had rather good results from those you got me from Seed Zoo, last year (except the cultivar of which the gophers have eaten 75% of the plants' roots off; only 2 plants left, and those show no signs of bloom).

The P vulgaris from them are as unwilling to grow for me as any other P vulgaris; I don't blame them; perhaps I did something unspeakable to their tribe in a past life; would it hurt them to show a little forgiveness, if so? Just saying.

[blueadzuki]

Dunno, like pretty much all of the cowpeas I've planted so far it came from some seed I pulled out of some other sort of bean (it's a medium to large cowpea, so probably either Thai mung beans or the blackeyed pea bin which I'm not sure where it is grown. Probably the black eyed pea bin, since I don't think that any of the six or seven kinds of cowpeas that show up in the mungs looks like this.

Do you happen to remember what the seed of the one from the Seed Zoo looked like, was it the little mottled one, the little red one or the big brown one? I ask mostly because I am ordering some more cowpeas for someone else, and if the one we are planning to get is too long season for you, it's probably too long season for us.

[steev]

Not the little red one, but I'll have to check this week-end.