Bean plans - foiled!

[goodlife]

Well..." if you don't try...you won't learn"...playing with your seeds is good fun and as long as there is nothing truly 'difficult varieties to get hold of' used in mixes...nothing is lost if it doesn't quite work out how you expected.

Since you are growing for seed eating...the pod quality is not the issue here.

If you PM me for you address...I have couple 'seed' runner varieties to add into your mix..

[goodlife]

[Silverleaf]

Yeah, I guess I'll learn a lot by experimenting a bit, and have fun at the same time. The worst that can happen is that I won't get any beans to eat or save for seed (unlikely) and since I wasn't even interested in growing runners until a couple of weeks ago, I don't have much to lose. ;)

I'd love some seeds if you have a few spare goodlife, thank you very much for the kind offer! :)

[Robert_Brenchley]

I don't think saving the last pods for seed is likely to select for late developing plants because they're all planted at the same time, and seeds are presumably saved from all the plants. The fact that those particular pods developed later won't affect the genetics.

[galina]

I don't think saving the last pods for seed is likely to select for late developing plants because they're all planted at the same time, and seeds are presumably saved from all the plants. The fact that those particular pods developed later won't affect the genetics.

Robert,

this one is not about genetics, but about environmental adaptation (which is only very loosely linked to what eventually will become a variety with different genes).  And yes, there is a danger of making early varieties into later ones.  I take the HSL and especially Pippa Rosen's (Beans and Herbs) opinion on board on this issue.

I have myself seen the effects of adaptation with seeds from abroad.  Very often (but not always) a variety from abroad that was borderline initially, adapts beautifully when grown from own-produced seeds.  The genetic material hasn't changed noticeably, but now the variety is adapted and productive.  Doesn't always work, but I have learned not to dismiss a variety in it's first growing year for these reasons.

[Silverleaf]

I guess the idea is that within a batch of plants there will be differences in flowering and thus pod-producing time. Some will be earlier, even if only by a few days, and some will be later. If you eat all the early pods and save seed from the late ones, there will be proportionally more seeds from late plants - your early plants might even have finished producing by the time you get to leaving the pods for seed production. Either way you're selecting for lateness, because you're eating more of the early ones and saving more of the late ones.

[Silverleaf]

Seeds arrived from Goodlife today - how exciting! They are really lovely and I've enjoyed just touching and playing with them. I don't remember ever seeing them in real life but I must have done as a child because my dad used to grow them on his allotment.

They seem weird and huge and chunky after the tiny French beans I'm used to. But very interesting.