The last bean (part 3)

Generation 3

Just like before, gen3 had a special significance as it carried on the bloodline of my past 2 gens of beans, and the sense of achievement of sucessfully raised 2 generations of bean plants which produced much fruit.

But that was not to go on much longer. Gen 3 grew rather slowly. it also acquired some terrible condition where its leaves were very loosely atached to the stalks, so it fell off easily. it stopped growing at a smaller size, but flowered at the same time - 2.5 months. all the fruits came around the same time, and they were not many. it hardly produced any more fruit after its first season.

soon after, all its leaves started to develop a rough texture and darker green color. this also happened for gen1 and 2, but only much later in life. this means gen3 aged early. this time there was also a purplish tint... looks like diseased. not long after, a lot of its leaves had dropped, forming a litter of decomposing leaves below.

Gen 3 died even before it turned 4 months old, just shortly after the death of their parents which were definitely much healthier. gen3 left behind just bare stalks with few leaves, in different positions and leaning in diffren directions. rather unsightly. while gen2 still looked good after death. it had some leaves, lots of pod stalks to tell of its fruitful history, and even some unbloomed flowers.

There were only enough gen4 beans to grow in 1 small container. not enough to carry on with the usual 2. i gave a spare pod to Claudia as part of her bd present, with hope that she would carry on the bloodline somehwere else, away from the whatever bugs and diseases. but she delayed a month, then just buried the pod in a pot of soil... and nothing came up from it.

Gen 4 in its growing days.

Generation 4

Even greater uniformity this time, like clones. and they fared yet worse than gen3. they stopped growing after 4 sets of leaves. usually flowers come only after 5 sets are up. a few of them bore fruit. but infant mortality rate was high - alot of them dropped before fully developing. in the end, there were only a pathetic 3 pods, and each contained a pathetic 1 seed each.

Age then catched up on them real soon and its leaves all shed like its parents, even thouh they did not have the fragile leaf condition. also by before 4 months old, they were totally barren. i figured theres no point keeping them, so i didnt water them and they turned into dry brown stems. even the branches fell off. at least they looked better than gen3 cos they were all same height, straight, and slightly leaning in the same direction. there were unbloomed flowers on some of them.

I gave up hope on those 3 gen5 beans. i doubted their survival and progress. i kept them in my room and one day they just... disappeared.

so this is the approximate harvest of beans from each generation.
Gen 1 - 60
Gen 2 - 105
Gen 3 - 20
Gen 4 - 3

So this is all thats left of my bean family. dried plants that i still look at in remembrance of them. too bad i pulled out the gen1 plants after each of them died. so no momento.

i still have no good answer as to why there was the drastic deprovement between gen 2 and 3. well maybe it really is what despick suggested - changes in soil quality over the seasons. NOT overcrowding cos gen2 was more crowded than gen3. but theres a pattern - increased uniformity in each successive gen. maybe theres not enough genetic variation, so the quality deproves.. sth lidat, cos cross breeding is supposedly to result in better offspring. this problem could be due to me growing only the first few beans of which some would come from same pod, or same plant.

Ah well... the green bean family is now history. But i have recently started another 2 families of beans. theres red beans and some unknown bean. same color as soya bean. and the unknown bean is doing much better than the red beans. i shall see how they would progress.