I threw a commodity black bean in the ground about 3 seasons ago. It produced well and has reseeded itself better than any bean i have planted. I was amazed.
It depends a lot upon what species of bees you have around. Here I have enough of the squash pollinator small bumblebees and also the larger bumblebees and they will cross beans for me. It is not reliable in terms of what you might get as results because you do not know the parents (unless you only plant two varieties of beans at a time until they cross). Today I am just starting to learn how to hand pollinate beans so I can try to make some specific crosses for a change. Undirected crosses I have way too many variants to work with to see which will become stable. It is funny that we started out in similar ways with beans. Buying a soup bean mix. I no longer grow any of those though. I've found very good short season beans with plenty of vigor and I'm going to work on crossing those with some others just because it will be interesting to see what I can come up with. I've already found several early season cross breeds here too and those I've been sharing around as I can. I have a short season here too so that is also one of my criteria for selection. Longer season beans I send to people further south to evaluate for their climate.
i live near rape fields and 90% of what pollinates everything is tiny pollen beetles 😂 you dont even really see them ever except on bright clothes and inside flowers.
In my garden I dont trellace my common bean landrace I just let them survive without the trellace, and my beans were selecting for harder bean stems, because the ones that have thin stems would bend over to a degree till they break and snap over their own weight.
What do you do about cross pollution? I save my seeds. I DONT want them to cross pollinate. My squash cross pollinated and the next generation of fruit tasted terrible so I want to keep true to the seed I plant.
If so many of the beans are dented, not plump, and smooth, how can they be healthy for eating or planting? Most of the Landrace beans I've seen on the vids do not look healthy. Has anyone doing the Landrace method tested the beans for nutrient value/amounts as compared to commercial or home grown beans? Blessings. 8-2022
Many types of seed are dented or shrunken or dehydrated looking. This is not abnormal. It is a state of minimal risk for the seed, to stay alive during long storage. Not all seeds have this trait, but it isn't a bad trait to have.
Are you growing beans already, and curious if they are actually suffering from inbreeding depression? You can try growing some genetically diverse seeds next to them from the Buffalo Seed Company www.thebuffaloseedcompany.com/product/bean-common-dry-pole-25-seeds-/178?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false
I've got a few varieties. But the varieties I've got I wanna keep in stead of crossing them. Bushing black beans to make refried beans with, and green beans because I love eating green beans
Yes, you need the genetic diversity from crossing in order for the plants to be able to adapt and be e true landrace eventually. Beans are a really hard crop to get started in growing landraces because even if you plant them together, they're unlikely to be crossing. Consider a squash species or corn? They are highly outcrossing
