I bought a packet of Red Swan from Heritage Harvest Seeds and have it on next year's grow list. They have it listed as 55 days for snaps, yours are even earlier. Let us know how they taste.

Annette

Red Swan was one of the beans developed by breeder Robert Lobitz of Minnesota. He had a huge collection of beans, soybeans, and other crops. When he passed away several years ago, there was a coordinated effort to preserve his collection. I elected to save many of his soybeans, while others chose to focus on his beans. Several of those beans have since been introduced commercially.

Robert was the one who got me really interested in soybeans, so I don't regret my decision. Still, it would have been wonderful to explore the beans he had developed.

SSE also sells Red Swan. Ditto on reporting the taste, I'm curious what it got from the Pinto side of its heritage.

I tried the Red Swan beans today. Flavor is surprisingly good! Most of these are going to be saved for seed so I can grow a row of them next year.

DarJones

Thank you Zeedman for the information about Robert Lobitz. He also developed Golden Valley which is an extremely early bush dry bean with large shellies. Robert listed it in the SSE Yearbook until 2006. That same year Don Kellums started listing it. He gave it a DTM of 60 days.

Last year I was able to obtain 6 seeds, resulting in five plants. The feeble plants languised in the chilly June and July. When summer weather arrived the last week of July, they took off and some of the pods were turning yellow by early August. This was about three weeks ahead of Giant Red Tarka. The crop was surprisingly good. - Dick

"...When summer weather arrived the last week of July, they took off and some of the pods were turning yellow by early August. This was about three weeks ahead of Giant Red Tarka."

That's impressive, given how early GRT is... especially if the shellies are a decent size. I might want to try "Golden Valley" one of these years.

Zeedman I would rate the 3/4 inch Golden Valley shellies as large as opposed to very large or jumbo or huge for GRT.

It's not too late. Shall I pop a packet in the mail? ;-)