On 12/02/2015 1:58 AM, songbird wrote:
Paul Drahn wrote:
...
Several years ago my gave up on buying packages of Blue Lake pole green
bean seed. Usually 3 out of 8 plants would be some other kind of bean.
So now we let some of the pods mature and save their seeds for next year.

i've never had that poor of results from
seed packages of any kind. i don't buy too many
each season so perhaps i avoid it that ways.

last year the thick podded snap peas were
not very good for germination, but a few did
come up, and then got repeatedly eaten by the
woodchucks, so i will have to buy those again
this year to try again.

my eating bean varieties are wax and several
types of green, but here or there within them
there will be a reversion to another type (bush
bean that ends up growing into a vine, pod is
stringy, pod is wrong color or shape, beans when
shelled are obviously not true to type).

i try to keep the fresh eating varieties in
their own patches separate from the other shelling
or dry beans that i grow. it doesn't always work
as the bees are doing their thing, but it does
help.

at the moment i have more varieties and cross-
breeds than i'll ever be able to grow out and
test. my classification and sorting work is at
a stall for a while. for each named variety that
i used to have i've now got a half dozen to a few
dozen variants/cross-breeds. it's interesting to
see what i think is going on and then try to grow
them out and see if the cross-breed will grow true
to the new pattern, shape, size, color, texture,
form, habit, ...

i need a lot more room.

How many people are you feeding 'Bird? You must have a huge harvest.