pb&j nebula gene pool shell and dry bush bean

As seed keepers, students at Troy Howard Middle School in Belfast, ME, rogue out any bean crosses as they shell heirloom varieties each fall. As plant breeders, they can’t resist growing out those crosses to see what happens! Dubbed “weirdo beans,” these glorious mutts spin out a ragtag rainbow of patterns, habits and ancestral forms. Like middle schoolers, they are colorful, unpredictable and, well, kinda weird. From the ranks of these hybrid misfits, Troy Howard proudly presents the PB&J Nebula Gene Pool! Lightly selected for vigor, yield, disease resistance and bush habit, but maintaining a high degree of diversity, these beans outyield almost all the other beans in the school’s collection. Parentage includes a bean called Tarahumara (presumably from the Rarámuri of Mexico, though the lineage is not certain), Bumblebee, and unknown others. The predominant forms are a range of peanut-butter browns and a constellation of jelly-colored nebular swirls with unexpected variations here and there. Great potential for selecting out new varieties—just keep them free under the OSSI pledge! F5 generation. Seeds grown and packed by the students—we split the proceeds. OSSI pending.