Red Noodle Yardlong Beans

[woodeye]

That's great chrysanthemum, they certainly look tasty. So glad that everybody enjoyed them...

[chrysanthemum]

I had a surprise this morning and not a happy one.  My red noodle beans have had some yellow on the bottom leaves, but overall they have looked healthy.  This morning, though, all of a sudden there was a lot more yellow going farther up, and the growing tip on the tallest one seems to have withered and died.  I’m not sure what the cause is, but it made me nervous this morning.  I had hoped to have more harvests from them, but now I’m wondering if I’ll just need to save seeds to try again next year.  We really enjoyed the one small harvest we had and had hoped to have more.  (The yellowing is only showing on the west side of the trellis, by the way, where the beans grew, flowered, and produced earlier.)

[amyinowasso]

Any one near you spray herbicide?

[hmoosek]

How strange you mention this. Last week my polecat peas looked healthy, now they are looking real bad too. I’m not sure what’s going on with them. EXCEPT, I put a small amount of tomato tone on them as I thought they might need a little boost.

[macmex]

I've had this happen several years running, with peppers. I suspect I have some kind of pathogen in the soil. I'd definitely save seed.

[chrysanthemum]

Sept 17, 2022 9:09:54 GMT -6 amyinowasso said:

Any one near you spray herbicide?

It’s possible that someone does.  I don’t know how far it can travel.  We live on the very back corner of a suburban neighborhood, and I only know the two next door neighbors whose homes are in the neighborhood, and I don’t think they spray any chemicals themselves.   I can’t really say anything about the properties behind us, but chemicals would have to pass through a whole bunch of trees to get to my garden.  Nothing else looks affected unless my wilting watermelons might have been a sign of something.  More of the beans have yellowed now, though none has died completely.

[chrysanthemum]

Sept 17, 2022 10:49:31 GMT -6 hmoosek said:

How strange you mention this. Last week my polecat peas looked healthy, now they are looking real bad too. I’m not sure what’s going on with them. EXCEPT, I put a small amount of tomato tone on them as I thought they might need a little boost.

I really don’t know what to say about that.  I’ve never used Tomato Tone, though I’ve read good things about it over on the Tomatoville Forum.  (I do use Holly Tone for my potted blueberries.  I don’t have the best track record with those plants.  I don’t blame the fertilizer, though.  I blame severe heat and drought.) I had the impression that it was hard to burn plants with Tomato Tone, but the discussions I’ve read focus on tomatoes, of course, not beans.  Are the Polecats turning yellow and having the tips die?  That’s what’s happening to even more of my beans now.  It has started on the eastern side of the trellis, too, where the beans were slower to develop.

[chrysanthemum]

Sept 17, 2022 11:46:52 GMT -6 macmex said:

I've had this happen several years running, with peppers. I suspect I have some kind of pathogen in the soil. I'd definitely save seed.

I have several pods that are looking “nubbly” (a word from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories).  I’m definitely leaving them on the vines to develop mature seed if they can.  The vines are continuing to yellow and to lose their growing tips.  I’ll have to research what might cause that.  I’ll be sad if I lose this area for beans because of something in the soil.

[hmoosek]

Sept 19, 2022 5:44:46 GMT -6 chrysanthemum said:

Sept 17, 2022 10:49:31 GMT -6 hmoosek said:

How strange you mention this. Last week my polecat peas looked healthy, now they are looking real bad too. I’m not sure what’s going on with them. EXCEPT, I put a small amount of tomato tone on them as I thought they might need a little boost.

I really don’t know what to say about that.  I’ve never used Tomato Tone, though I’ve read good things about it over on the Tomatoville Forum.  (I do use Holly Tone for my potted blueberries.  I don’t have the best track record with those plants.  I don’t blame the fertilizer, though.  I blame severe heat and drought.) I had the impression that it was hard to burn plants with Tomato Tone, but the discussions I’ve read focus on tomatoes, of course, not beans.  Are the Polecats turning yellow and having the tips die?  That’s what’s happening to even more of my beans now.  It has started on the eastern side of the trellis, too, where the beans were slower to develop.

The leaves went from green to sort of spotted and Raggy looking overnight. I haven’t been out to look at them today.

[heavyhitterokra]

I've had Mosaic Virus wipe out my entire crop of cucumbers here for several seasons running in years past.  All of my life, (at our other house in Hulbert) cucumbers had been a plant-it-and forget-it crop, growing like gangbusters to the point of almost becoming a nuisance in the garden, but here at this house, I was having failure after failure.

My old neighbor here was a County Agent; he told me that my soil here was too acidic for cucumbers to really thrive, and that fact probably set the stage for diseases to take hold because they were never really at their best and were probably already weakened by poor nutrition. After that, I got a soil test and have since that time added well over a thousand pounds of Lime to bring my pH back into balance. My pH used to be 5.4, now it's in the 6.0 range. (At least near the surface). The soil deeper down is still acidic. 

Though cucumbers still don't grow as crazy as they did back in Hulbert, I haven't lost another cucumber crop to the Mosaic Virus since I added all that Lime.  Was that just coincidence?  Who knows?  

I know Chrysanthemum's soil is not acidic, but maybe something else in the soil there has 'tipped the scale' in favor of disease? Just a thought.

Just for kicks, I looked up the ideal pH for growing beans and copied it below:



Growing beans in home gardens | UMN Extensionhttps://extension.umn.edu › vegetables › growing-beans

Beans grow best in slightly acidic to neutral soil, pH between 6 and 7. Clay or silt loams are better for bean production than sandy soils, although good drainage is important.

[chrysanthemum]

Last I checked, the pH was right at 7.0, but it’s been a while. I should check again.

I agree that any kind of stress makes a plant more vulnerable to a disease.  It really works the same way with humans and the immune system.  I think even though it’s fall and these beans can take heat, they’re still stressed by our drought.  

Here’s a picture of some of the beans I’m hoping to use for seed.  The one on the end is the longest.  There’s a funny English word that comes from Latin, “sesquipedalian,” and it means “a foot and a half long.”  I think this bean is fully named Vigna Unguiculata Sesquipedalis, and I can sure see why it earned that subspecies name.  Even with the yellowing, we’re enjoying them in the garden.

[woodeye]

Mercy! That's a substantial bean you have there. I can see how one bean pod would go a long ways. Looks every bit of a foot and a half, I'd have to do the "Tale of the Tape" on that one...

[chrysanthemum]

I’ll have to see if I can get a youngster out there to hold them tape measure for me once I make sure the garden is coon-free.

[chrysanthemum]

I didn’t take a youngster out with me this morning since there had been a skunk in a trap this morning.  It didn’t spray me as I removed it from the garden area (hurray for black trash bags over the trap), but there was a skunk smell over much of the property this morning.  I therefore had to figure out another way to get an approximate measurement on the bean (and take a picture at the same time).  Here’s my best shot.



The vines are definitely dying down now.  I don’t know what happened, but I’ll definitely be trying these again.  They were a hit with the family.

[woodeye]

Thank You for the Tale of the Tape photo, 21 inches!