Tarahumara Pink Green Bean

16 years ago

I posted this on the Oklahoma Gardening forum, where I mainly hang out. But you folks might be interested in it. This is a very interesting bean.

George

Tahlequah, OK

Here is a link that might be useful: Tarahumara Pink Green Bean

Featured Answer

fusion_power

16 years ago

Easily done George. We already know that most day length sensitive beans will only flower at about 12 hour days. Your area would be getting about 13 hours of daylight on Sept 1st. You might trick them by planting them on the east side of a house so that the house blocks the sun in the late evening. I've used that trick a few times to successfully grow daylength sensitive plants.

BTW, the Cherokee Squaw corn was fabulously productive. I sent about 7 gallons to Sandhill. As an FYI, you had a few crossed seed in the batch. I got a few plants that looked like Mesquakie Indian. I also saved a gallon of breeding stock seed. This is from plants that produced the best ears. Variation included most red cobs but some were white, most ears were a mix of white and purple, but there were a few almost all white ears and a few almost all purple. The plants were superbly healthy and productive.

DarJones

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Comments (9)

mauirose
16 years ago
Thanks for posting the great review!

i just placed an order with Native Seeds/SEARCH. They have so many beautiful and interesting beans that i had a hard time making the final selection. Tarahumara Pink Green Bean caught my eye but didn't make it to the final order. i feel sure that i will be placing more orders with them so maybe next time.

Good news about your job ; )
aftermidnight Zone7b B.C. Canada
16 years ago
Such a pretty bean, when you said it was a nice sweet snap I looked it up but the shipping charges to Canada are triple so hopefully someone will have a few to trade later on.
I have learned so much since I found this forum, although we've only eaten beans at the snap stage I'm going to venture into the world of shellies next year. I'm finding all the different colors shapes and patterns on various bean seed fascinating, or is it just me :o).

Annette
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Macmex
Original Author
16 years ago
Annette, this one might be really "iffy" in Canada, on account of being day length sensitive. If it only just makes it under the wire in New Jersey and Oklahoma, I imagine that it well might not make it in Vancouver. I could send you some seed sometime.

George

PS. I posted this with the option to receive e-mail notifications of follow ups, but I'm not. So "ping me" (anyone) if you really want my attention within 24 hours.
aftermidnight Zone7b B.C. Canada
16 years ago
George or anyone, how many hours of darkness do day length sensitive beans need, can't you just hear the wheels turning in my head :o).

Annette
Macmex
Original Author
16 years ago
Annette, I can't figure this out before going to work in a few minutes. Here's a link which someone here might be able to figure out. Calculate the length of day for the Tulsa, Oklahoma area on September 1, and that's about what this bean needs to flower. Then you could calculate the same length for your location and see if it falls during an appropriate time in the growing season.

Among day length sensitive beans there are differing degrees of day length sensitivity. I have seed to some which absolutely won't flower at this latitude, unless they are in a green house.

George

Here is a link that might be useful: USNO day length charts
Macmex
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks DarJones. In the future I will only grow one corn per year. 2010 will be Cherokee Squaw Year. 2009 was dedicated only to Mesquakie Indian Corn, simply because I was too busy to get in our second planting of corn. It was a very bad year, here, for corn. Yet Mesquakie Indian did produce, in fact, a lot more than I first thought. The ears were just not very well filled out and the plants were much smaller than usual.

I have seed to Oaxaca Cream, which is a day lengths sensitive greasy bean; the only greasy I've ever found in Mexico. I did manage to produce a little seed by doing what you suggest, and by planting it in a bucket. I had to bring the bucket onto our sun porch for three weeks, to finish the seed.

I have seed for Ixmiquilpan Cornfield, a small black seeded dry bean, from Hidalgo, which has refused to flower at all at this latitude. And, Tarahumara Pink flowers and produces well. But it simply comes in under the wire. So I do believe there is some variation in varieties.

When we came back from Mexico, in 2001, I had a fair number of native beans with me. But sadly, almost no one from the SSE requested the seed, and now, it is expired. My consolation is that most of those varieties are still growing in Mexico. It's just that most native peoples conserve what they have without really thinking about it. They just grow what they like and what they have. So such varieties are easily lost.

George
happyday
16 years ago
George, could you send your expired beans to Native Seed Search? Maybe they could still get some to grow.

Mesquakie Indian started out really well for me, but we had that disastrous hailstorm in mid July and I got no ears. Will try again next year, but there is field corn growing within a mile of here. Will I get cross-pollination?

Wishing you luck on the new job.
Macmex
Original Author
16 years ago
I always thought that we were good with 1/2 mile distance, and perhaps even less. But the official rule, as I understand it, is 1 mile isolation. On the other hand, one could plant later or earlier (or both) and then observe when the other corn is in tassle, and only save seed from the "time isolated" corn.

Andy, that's a good idea. I may do that.

Thanks, the job is going well.

George