Mark Reed

I glanced at the video, and I imagine it works fine although much of it is unnecessary. I just put mine in trays of damp sand and put them outside in the sun, and cover with plastic if a cold snap threatens, or in an unheated cold frame. I do that about mid-May and generally mid-June or maybe a bit sooner I snap off the slips trim off extra roots and stick them in the ground. Sweet potatoes slips are not nearly as finicky as seems to be commonly believed.  

I don't know what zone I'm in anymore, I'll just say 6-ish.

My potting soil is just a mix up stuff I find around the place. Maybe a bit of compost, a little plain garden dirt, some partially composted leaves or grass clippings. It gets pretty brick solid when dry too but the snake plants don't seem to mind. I take them out in spring on the porch and when the trees leaf out pretty good, I set them on the ground under so that they get direct morning sun but not much else through the day.  In winter they go to an unheated room upstairs with east windows and are watered very little.

Still overwatering, that's my guess. I let those suckers dry up, only water a couple times over winter when they are inside. Rarely if ever when outside over summer. I have to divide and repot them every couple of years. In late spring outside they grow bloom stalks with tiny flowers. Maybe lack of light too, they look kind of shoved in a dark corner. Cool painting.

Judith, I rarely watch a posted video, but I did glance through that one. It was from a university in Louisiana; I think they developed the variety Evangline and some others as well. The segment about vertical verses horizontal planting was interesting, showing in their example an increase in "market sized" roots by planting horizontally. I'm sure that is completely true in their example of a giant field planted and harvested by machines, but it is also totally wrong from my perspective. Just another case of "it depends" that would take a hundred pages to fully examine. The genetic makeup of the species is extremely complicated and does not follow simple Mendelian inheritance rules, that they don't breed true is an understatement.

The varieties they tested were Bayou Bell, Beauregard and Orleans. I've grown all of the them and they are descent sweet potatoes, but none of them met my criteria for continuing with. He also said that, in their tests, the biggest difference in yield was between irrigated and non-irrigated fields rather than between planting orientation. I grow mine in pots as small as 3.5 gallons and get an average of around four pounds of uniform roots per pot, more or less depending largely on how diligent I am in keeping them watered.  Last year thirty pots yielded about 135 pounds.

As far as the size of slips, they don't have to be large. Ideally for me a single healthy node below ground is actually best but I normally plant two below ground unless the single one is developed in an optimal way, and I plant vertically. I also like a slip to have few if any actual roots when I plant it. Just a nice healthy stem with a node or two below and at least one healthy growing tip and keeping it well watered for a few days, seems to be all that's needed and in fact I think better for production. The overall length of the slip might depend a lot on the internode length of the variety. A slip for a large vine with long internodes might be six or seven inches, or maybe even more. A plant with shorter internodes might be fine at just three or four inches, I have planted them even smaller than that.  

I've had good luck with growing potatoes in large tubs like I mentioned above. I switched tactics a bit by just using good compost in the bottoms, with the potatoes barely buried and then filling to the top with loose material, crass clippings, pulled weeds and so on with just a bit of compost mixed in. That makes it so I don't have to lift to dump the tubs, I can just put on gloves and dig the taters with my fingers.

Our area is getting hotter and drier in recent decades and potatoes are much harder to grow than they used to be. Using the tubs makes it easier to keep them well watered. They also do best with a bit of shade cloth and might work better if the tubs were white instead of blue, black is even worse.  A patch of corn or some other tall plants to the south can help too.

From your description of your season, I'm guessing sweet potatoes might do well for you too. At least here they are much more tolerant of the hot and dry spells. Sometimes I hear people say, "I don't like sweet potatoes". I think that's kind of funny because there are jillions of different kinds, they can't be judged by sampling just one kind or by just one method of preparation. Many will produce a respectable crop in 90 days or even a bit less as they don't really mature like most crops. Roots just form pretty early on and keep growing until frost or harvest puts an end to it.

I agree, migration and trading may play a role, but I think when it comes to appearance of bean seed there just are particular colors and shapes that commonly show up. Actually, the same colors and patterns show up on beans of very different shape and size. It's easy to get focused on just the appearance of a bean seed when it is really only one of lots of traits. Beans that look exactly the same can have very different growth habits and so on.

Like Joseph's, one of my consistently and reliably productive beans are Pinto beans. Except I don't really know what a Pinto bean is. Basically, I think it is just a tan colored bean with darker mottling except lots of beans look exactly like that that they are not at all the same. My Pinto beans came from a store-bought bag that got lost in the back of the pantry for several years and instead of discarding, I planted them, and I've grown them ever since.  

I don't know that environmental conditions explain the issue with the more colorful beans, I just don't have any other ideas on it. Not sure how to describe our climate either, you ask about forty years too late for that. We have four seasons, or we used to, but they aren't as clearly defined anymore. It gets hot here, 35 C isn't uncommon, and it can get hotter. It gets cold too, -25 C is possible although, thankfully not very often or for very long at a time. We have longer and more frequent periods without rain now, but it can also rain 15 cm in a couple hours so. Same in winter, not much snow anymore but it can still do it pretty dramatically. Ice storms are much more common than they used to be, as is large hail. Overall, it has become less hospitable to beans, the whole species, and I've began supplementing them some with cowpeas, (Vigna unguiculata) which seem more tolerant of conditions and more productive.

There does seem to be common patterns and colors that show up in beans. For example, a cross between a white and black bean may result in a brown bean or a speckled bean that looks exactly like some other completely unrelated bean. Another reason trying to keep track of it all is just way too much trouble to me.

Another mystery with my beans is that apparently my conditions are not compatible with more colorful beans. I plant blue beans or red beans or whatever, but they just seem to select themselves out.  Only way to keep them is to plant them separately and give special attention like more watering or picking off bugs and you might sense a theme here, but again that's just more trouble than it's worth.

And another thing, I prefer a bean that climbs but not to excessive heights. Something in the range of four to six feet keep them up away from the ground and easier to pick but not so giant that I have to build tall trellises. I find a nice what I call semi-vining bean and the next year it turns back into a giant vine. Even bush beans do it sometimes. I have no idea what causes it and my efforts at selection against it have mostly failed. I found a bean called Refugee that supposedly dated back to the late 1700's, and it had a great semi-vining and branching habit. It crossed and threw a bunch of new semi-vining offspring, and I thought I had hit the jackpot but since then they have all turned back into big vines.

There are probably others but the only crop I know of where the xenia effect can be easily seen is corn and even there it isn't always so. The seed coat is the same on all seeds from an individual plant but like Christopher said a lot of non-genetic factors can cause differences in appearance.

The embryo inside the seed is different though and sometimes you'll see odd looking seeds even though the seed coat is the same. They are maybe fatter than the others or shaped a little different.  I think that might be due to a mismatch of the crossed embryo with the mother seed coat, which I guess could be due to the xenia effect, but it also might just be another non-genetic thing. In any event sorting them out and tracking them to see for sure is again, more trouble that its worth to me.

From what I understand.

Lima beans are supposed to easily cross pollinate with each other, over more than twenty years, mine never have.

Runner beans are supposed to easily cross pollinate with each other, same thing, over more twenty years, mine never have.

Common beans are only rarely supposed to cross pollinate with each other, mine do it all the time.

Due to this fact I get four or five new hybrids every year

New crosses are generally not identifiable in the year the cross occurred. The F1 crossed seeds will look just like the other seeds from the mother variety. All the beans from growing the F1 seeds will look the same but probably different than the mother. Growing the F2 seeds can yield a bunch of different kinds, I've confirmed as many as six and it may be more. That segregation goes on for years, but I don't know how many years. The result is that it is a lot of trouble trying to keep track for sure. It is hard enough if just one actual cross has happened but if two or three have happened and you grow it all in a mix it becomes pretty much impossible, I just gave up on it.

I grow some of my beans as individual semi-isolated varieties for specific uses. It is only when I find an off-type in one of them that I know a new cross (rather than on going segregation) has happened. I pull them out of the individual variety and add them to the mixed-up group the next season. I don't try at all to keep track anymore; it's just more trouble than it's worth. As they keep segregating, I just let nature take its course and figure the best adapted make the most seeds each year and thus get replanted the most.

Why the other species that are supposed too easily cross, never have is a mystery to me.

There was lots of Johnson grass, big, what I think are European thistles, what I call horse weeds, but others call giant rag weed, and burdock when I first moved here, some on my side but especially on the abandoned farm across the road. I didn't have any fences then and laying those big thistles in the garden paths helped keep the rabbits out. All of them made fine mulch and compost. That was twenty-five years ago and now there is just a little bit of Johnson grass and burdock left; I kind of like them and keep them for the nostalgia as there isn't enough to be useful anymore. Some horseweeds are still over there too, but too far away to mess with. I have been thinking of importing some of the thistles from up the road a way, because I think they are pretty, and the bumblebees love them.