Andy Ross

1 year update! We squeezed in two plantings this year. Since I only mentioned one last time, here are the ancestral varieties:

-Good Mother Stallard: https://shop.seedsavers.org/good-mother-stallard-bean
-Sawaroame: https://www.nativeseeds.org/collections/common-beans/products/pc047
-Vayo Wapibawi: https://www.nativeseeds.org/collections/common-beans/products/pc023
-O'odham Pink: https://www.nativeseeds.org/collections/common-beans/products/pc063
-Purple Hopi: https://www.nativeseeds.org/products/pc102
-Sonoran Canario: https://www.nativeseeds.org/products/pc082
-Rattlesnake: https://www.nativeseeds.org/collections/common-beans/products/ts305

The good news is that my suspicion was right: my wife's reluctance to grow anything but Good Mother Stallard was largely due to the fact that it was the first heirloom variety we tried. Because it tasted so much better than the commercial varieties we grew up with, she was led to believe they were uniquely exceptional. And while their flavor in fact quite excellent, they are not unique: we are in agreement that the Sawaroame, O'odham Pink, and Purple Hopi are every bit as delicious (Purple Hopi is my personal favorite). The Vayo Wapibawi and Rattlesnake are not as exciting flavor-wise, but the Vayo Wapibawi seem to put out new pods for quite a while, and the rattlesnakes grow like gangbusters (in warm weather). Since these are desirable traits, I'm keeping them around to contribute to the gene pool.

The Sonoran Canario was the least exciting of all the varieties. I was intrigued to learn that they are traditionally grown in winter, so I kept them around until after the second planting of the year, when the weather was quite a bit cooler, just to see how it fared. But when it didn't seem to outperform any of the other varieties, nor did I see obvious signs of its influence in any of the crosses that have popped up so far, I decided to not plant it anymore.

Oh yes, crosses. Knowing that common beans have relatively low cross rates, I was expecting to have to wait years before I saw any noticeable differences, but boy was I wrong! I saw one obvious cross after first harvest, and four more after the second!

Generation 1, minus Sonoran Canario (I can't seem to figure out how to attach images):
https://drive.google.com/u/0/drive-viewer/AKGpihbOjHXNF8oKBbtSYcEEdeEOmJed7lBCPQ8oDkTOYS9Vyzx_CQkOVN8FY8UVrqRPak83UJ5jXbMMJMQsz4nJn8pfPFQrVoiz2g=s1600-rw-v1

Generation 2, minus Sonoran Canario and Good Mother Stallard:
https://drive.google.com/u/0/drive-viewer/AKGpihYoTVa9qHfqNnW6OPymxRD2idm0ZEds8KXrz7z4jDucYFzwncFcBGHYUysqQWTjVrnC-OJvpkEMSLIk_toUPyimxDbASZcE7w=s1600-rw-v1

The second planting (with the cooler weather) saw noticeably more powdery mildew crop up than the first, and it was over-represented on the Good Mother Stallard plants. So I decided to try developing two landraces: one for warm weather, and one for "cold weather" (you know, by Los Angeles standards). I'm using the harvest from the second planting as the base for my cold weather landrace, and since we no longer fear for the flavor of our landrace without Good Mother Stallards, I removed them from the mix. And while I may change my mind in the future about maintaining a separate cold weather landrace, for now I've decided to give it a true trial by fire: I just made a third planting of the year (planted November 24)! We'll see what it manages to produce over coldest part of year. We do typically get a few frost days per year, so that may be too much for them to endure. I guess we'll find out!

Lastly, a picture of the trellis I settled on (after trying a few different configurations of bean poles). I have four drip lines running the length of the bed, corresponding to four rows of bean plants. Two rows of plants share one row of twine trellises, equaling roughly four plants sharing a single twine as they climb to the sky (the theory being that close quarters will encourage crosses).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DidB_zFySfpRRIuns8HQ5j82xqY3Ez-d/view

hans muster wrote:Have you looked into cowpeas, Vigna unguiculata?

And otherwise, if you and your wife are disagreeing: you can still have one part of the garden with the variety she likes, and one part with the new landrace. If inbetween the two P. vulgaris you have a bed of cowpeas, the likelihood of them crossing is really low.

We looked into them a bit, though our experience eating black eyed peas didn't really interest us enough to plant them. Do you have a favorite variety?

Jake Esselstyn wrote:It sounds like the Good Mother Stallards are close to what you want. They were productive and you like the flavor, but maybe you could develop something similar that needs less water and/or has better mildew resistance. You might start by planting mostly the Stallards and fewer of the other varieties. That way you can potentially keep what you like about the Stallards while tinkering around the edges. Happy hybridizing!

Thanks! I'm a little disappointed in one other aspect of the Good Mother Stallards though: they have a small number of seeds per pod. We averaged about 4 per pod in the last harvest, with 3 being more common than 5 (our grocery store pintos averaged 6-7). I'm hoping that some crossing could help bring that number up.

What varieties do you grow, if any?

Hi, I'm new! New to the forum, and new to the notion of a landrace.

A little background on me and my agricultural motivations: I'm a city slicker (Los Angeles) with a backyard garden. My wife was diagnosed a few years ago with Celiac disease (a.k.a. the only medically-recognized diagnosis to avoid eating gluten). Of course that was a pretty big drag: along with the expected downsides of not being able to eat (for example) real bread, there also came a lot of unexpected side effects - like learning that most commercially-produced beans are inter-planted with (or at least harvested alongside) wheat. That means one of our favorite foods (not to mention a great way to eat healthy and cheap) suddenly became a lot more expensive.

That was the moment that our mostly inactive backyard garden became serious: we decided to grow our own beans, ideally enough to supply our family of 5 for the whole year. (As time and space permits we're also dabbling in tomatoes, corn, zucchini, and potatoes, but beans are our main focus.) Neither she nor I fancy ourselves "serious" farmers, but I figure that since we're probably going to be in this venture for the rest of our lives, we might as well put in the time to educate ourselves and do it right. At first we considered just planting some pinto beans and black beans from the supermarket, but instead I turned to the interwebs for some recommendations. I ended up ordering some Good Mother Stallard seeds (of which I had read glowing reviews on Rancho Gordo) and we quickly fell in love with them, so we set about figuring out how to grow them effectively.

Our first attempt at growing last year barely yielded as many seeds as we planted: our clay soil is nutrient-poor, and my hand irrigation was inconsistent. So I began composting in earnest (both hot composting and trench composting) to gradually improve our soil, but to jump start the process I built some raised beds and filled them with commercial soil; I also invested in drip irrigation. As a result, this year has been much more fruitful: not only did we get enough Good Mother Stallard beans to enjoy for several months, but leveraging our long growing season, we also branched out and grew some Pinquito beans we got from my Aunt in Santa Maria, some Pinto and Cranberry beans we got from the supermarket, and even some Scarlet Runner beans and Black Tepary beans. Now of course the runners and teparies are their own deal, but with four varieties of P. vulgaris in the mix, I started to wonder how I could grow them all in relatively close quarters without risking them crossing.

You might be able to guess where this is story goes at this point: my research introduced me to a "new" school of thought that, far from avoiding crossing, actively encourages it! I started telling my wife about landraces, but still being in love with the Good Mother Stallard beans, she was... less than enthusiastic. I think it's safe to say that she would have been happy to keep the Good Mother Stallards exactly the same forever. I read on about the advantages of genetic diversity for local adaptation (important to me for minimizing water consumption - we've spent most of the last 10 years out here in extreme drought), and about how a properly stewarded landrace could be more resilient to disease (which piqued my wife's interest due to the amount of powdery mildew which our Good Mother Stallard plants attracted). After a few weeks of consideration, last night we more-or-less reached our moment of truth and decided to throw ourselves into developing a landrace.

So we ordered a half dozen new varieties of seeds from Native Seeds Search (which you may know specializes in desert-adapted varieties) to add to the four we've already grown. We have no idea where this is going, but it should be fun! (I've requested Joseph's book from the library, but it's not part of their catalog so it may be a while.)

Have you tried cooking the different constituents of your landrace in the same pot? Considering the pretty big differences in size (and density too, I imagine), I'm wondering how that would work.