Beans produce perfect, self pollinating flowers and therefore crossing, while possible, is rare.

Using a store bought bean intended for eating has a very high probability of growing true to type.

knittlin, I started a thread on the pea and legume forum on pantry beans, I wrote a little report on my results. I will be bumping up the thread to give folks an update.

To summarize for you I will be using the Magnolia beans brand baby limas again, all else that I tried I will not use again. I have not had experiences with the beans you mention, but of course i would go for it. Whatever beans you grow from the pantry will be most likely bush beans rather than poles.

Here is a link that might be useful: recent adventures pantry beans

That's what I'd always heard, Justaguy, but recently (within this past year) I've been reading where some people are experiencing a good bit of crossing, as much as 25% when the varieties are planted in close proximity (less than 20' apart) in arid areas where there isn't much for bees to forage. I'm mostly looking for anyone with first hand experience of crossing or not to see if what I've read is just supposition or fact.

Thanks for the info, Cabrita. I'll probably go ahead and try it, atleast with a few types. But, for the "record", did you find all your beans that you were able to harvest were true to type? Just like the ones you planted? Best I remember, the ones we planted from pantry beans when I was a kid were, and the pantry pintos I planted a few years ago were. I'm thinking because those beans were grown in massive fields of many acres each, that cut back on the crossing.

I'm concerned about the ones from Purcell because I just can't see them planting that many types of heirloom beans in hundred-acre fields, one variety per field, know what I mean? I'm thinking more like one acre of Orca next to an acre of Cranberry next to an acre of ... which would mean higher crossing rates (if what I've been hearing lately about beans crossing is true that is).

So, anybody experience their beans crossing? If so, how many, how far apart were they planted and is your area dry?

If you grew an acre of each kind it should be easy to select your seed from the middle of each plot. I seriously doubt you'd have crossing problems that way. The last time I had any regular (p. vulgaris) beans cross was back in the 80s when I grew about 15 or 20 varieties in rows, in series, one kind right in line, next to the other. Perhaps there was 8' of row for each variety. I think the next year I found perhaps three crossed plants. That was in NJ.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Nothing scientific but I plant black beans, pintos, and black-eyed peas every year. Have always read that beans self-pollinate anyway as mentioned by the other person above and I've never experienced any crossing. At least nothing obvious to the eye. They all started from a mixed bag I bought at the store several years back and I just save some to re-plant every year.

The different varieties bloom at different times anyway and you can always space your plantings to make sure the bloom time is different.

knittlin, as far as I could tell they came true to their parents. I cannot tell with the chickpeas since they have not even flowered yet. I also forgot I did plant the common (pantry) black eye peas a couple of years ago, and that was also very good. It was the first time I had them as shellies and they were delicious, too bad it takes so many of them to make a pound of beans.

Lately I try not to plant from the same species close together, but with only 1/4 of an acre I cannot separate my species completely. However, I have many flowering bee attracting herbs (cilantro, mint, marjoram, thyme, oregano, rosemary, sage, lavender, borage), citrus flowers from the lemons, lots and lots of roses, still have tomatoes and eggplant flowering too. I have lots of bees! I put barrier crops all over the place, but with such small space I must have had bees transport DNA from one bean to another....bees have a radius of travel that is over a mile, don't they? I have not noticed any obvious crosses, except at first I was growing three varieties of P. vulgaris pole beans together, and the wax beans sometimes got a little purple tinge probably from the purple pole beans. I am not trading those seeds since I have only barely enough to replant (a bug got in the bean envelope and destroyed/ate a bunch of them, darn!). I am making an effort to only plant different species of pole beans together now. I also figure other gardeners will have similar problems unless they have a huge farm, and getting 1-2 % or so half breeds does not bother me.

George, I wasn't thinking of growing an acre each ~ just thinking that maybe that was the size of plots the eating beans Purcell sells, so maybe they were more likely to have crossed. But I do appreciate the info on your experience with beans ~ good to know that you had little crossing when planted so close.

Same with yours, Grandma44 and Cabrita. Good to know you had little to no crossing, too. Thanks for letting me know.

I think I'm going to just go for it and keep a close eye on all the seed coat colors. I'll likely try it with some that are really different at first, so will be easy to tell if there are any changes.

Thanks again, all! :)

"just thinking that maybe that was the size of plots the eating beans Purcell sellswere grown in, so maybe they were more likely to have crossed./i