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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 23, 2014 10:41:44 GMT -5
Didn't think it was that one. Black got some of those as well, and he is DROWNING in the things! It's just I am getting some more of the mottled ones for everyone (not just me) and if it turns out they won't actually produce here, maybe I ought to switch over to the other.
BTW while I have of course not eaten any pods or beans from this (need all the seed I can get) I tend to suspect they don't taste particularly good as pods or shellies. The plants are short (like maybe 5 inches to the highest leaves) which means the pods are within easy grasp of any squirrel or chipmunk. The last time I had a cowpea with low pods, I got no mature seed from any but the pods at the very tippy top because the critter pulled off and ate all the rest. This time they haven't touched one.
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 23, 2014 11:18:12 GMT -5
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 And the answer is, YES! Pod #8 is flat red (#9 is white again, I think that the one or two white seed plants on the red side must be very strong producers) |
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 23, 2014 16:39:48 GMT -5
Just went out again, and found pods #10-#15, appx. (now that they are really coming in it's hard to remember how many pods I have picked. I'm usually focusing on making sure that seed from different plants goes in different pockets, so I can keep it discrete).
Only odd thing is that except for one pod that was red no mottled again which was no surprise, as it was a twin pod to the last one (same pod cluster) they're ALL white no mottle. Looks like mottle is even more recessive than I thought (unless there are three or four mottled less plants in each cluster and they are so fecund they are producing 80-90% of the pods. I'd say I might be picking too early but 1. the seed isn't shriveling (which it does if it is immature) and 2. I know from last year that rice beans with a red base start coloring up LONG before the seed fills the pod.
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 29, 2014 14:25:16 GMT -5
Finally, a few more pods with mottled seed (red) By now we are probably on pod #50 or so. Each day now, I go out and collect the 4 ripest clusters of pods, 4 usually being the maximum number of pockets I have available to keep the pods separate until I can shell (the pods tend to be created and fertilized in spurts, so if one pod in a cluster is ripe, the rest in that cluster are usually ripe enough to pick as well. Plus doing it by cluster makes it easier to keep beans from the same cluster together, since keeping ones from the same plant is hopeless currently). This is a different plant that the last red mottled on. The mottle is lighter and in any case this one was on white side I think (I don't think I took any pods from red side today) I also don't think there were any I had to stoop for, so this one probably made it up the pole. On the other hand the cluster was only 2 pods which still gives some support to my theory that the mottled don't reproduce as heavily as the unmottled (or possibly why the amount I find in my searches keeps seeming to go down each season).
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 30, 2014 13:31:47 GMT -5
And today there was a white with mottled......on the RED side.
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Post by blueadzuki on Oct 8, 2014 7:01:50 GMT -5
As of yesterday, the whole of the rice bean crop is harvested (well, except for the volunteers in the front flower garden, but those are so far behind everything else that if any of them make salvageable seed ere freeze, I'll be surprised. Now begins the last fun part. This moring the first of the tiny number of ADZUKI'S I managed to grow was ready  Unfortuately, the total amount this year will be tiny. Except for one plant all of the others have only one pod (that one has two) Next year I'll start the plants a bit earlier and a LOT farther back in the circle (with no support structure more or less all of them crept over the line of the stump, and got their tops whacked off by the gardeners. |
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Post by blueadzuki on Oct 10, 2014 16:06:51 GMT -5
Two pieces of news
1.As of this morning, the last of the adzuki bean pods are harvested and drying. All of the one's I planted were and still are more or less the same color, so I don't really see a point in doing more pictures. 3-10 seeds total from each plant (maybe next year when I plant them in a safer place, I'll get better numbers (though the very nature of how adzukis reproduce means that getting more than a tiny number of plants that can hold their own production wise against the rice beans is probably pretty remote. I really DO think these ones are probably all green manure/fodder species, where their value to the farmers using them is in their green biomass, not their seed production.
2 More importantly, I will actually be able to keep going with the experiments. With the still quite high rate of non-producers (seeds that don't grow, or grow but don't flower) and the sheer difficulty of finding material, I never really have enough seed to be really "safe" or stable, and getting more is always uncertain. But Today, luck returned. I was over at my local branch of H-mart, and not only did they have bags of rice beans (they usually don't; it's not a big crop in Korean circles) but the brand they had ACTUALLY had off adzukis. It probably wont be enough to give me oodles of seed (it never is) and likely won't last long term (in my experience, the companies that pack the "right" kind of rice beans for my need only do so when the can't get the "wrong" kind, and, as soon as the "wrong" king become in season again, they switch back.) But it will probably buy me another year. Plus it re-stablazes my supply of the rice beans themselves (remember, I'm fairy sure that these, and only these, are short enough season to actually produce up here, so if they ever disappear permanently (if production/demand of the others ever got to the point where enough could be grown of them to cover the whole of the export market year round, I think they might) there goes any ability of me to supplement what I can grow myself.
The mix in these seeme to be similar to the old version I saw three or so years ago, in that it actually has a fair amount of RED adzukis as well as the other colors (the stuff last year and from the bin didn't; the off colors were all the adzukis there were in there. Same tenecies as last year though, less and less mottled and black, more and more tan, cream, and green (in fact there seems to be quite a lot of cream and green this year) still a small number of extra tiny mottled mung beans too. I even found a wild soybean this time (couple more years and I may have enough to be able to risk planting them!).
As for the rice beans themselves usual mix for the type. There may be less mottled than last time, but that seems to be the trend now
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