2021 Little Easy Bean Network - Bean Lovers Come Discover Something New !

[Zeedman]

Sometimes when I'm growing pole bean seed and I see that the pods are swollen full of seed and some pods have already begun to yellow out. I cut the vines at the ground level to stop water uptake. I also sometimes will take the time to trim away most of the plants leaves exposing them to sun and wind to speed up and enhance the drying process.

I concur with @Bluejay77 's comments. In my area, the garden usually gets a light frost or two before the killing freeze. For pole beans (which are most of the beans I grow) this has the effect of killing most of the foliage & vine tips, but not the stems or pods. Immediately following the first frost, the vines abort all the younger pods, and the remaining pods mature & dry at an accelerated pace. In a "normal" year, there will be at least another 10-14 days before the killing freeze, and for some pole beans, I may harvest over half of the dry beans during that period.

 

[flowerbug]

i'm pretty sure that windrowing bean plants is a common practice in some areas to get them to finish up and to be ready for combining after the plants/pods have dried enough (but you also don't want them to dry too much as for some beans that means more breaking of the beans as they are processed).

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Bluejay77

I never knew you could hasten the drying up of pole beans by cutting them off at soil level and then manually defoliating them; that's very helpful to know. I've gotta try this in 2021. I always felt like it was simply up to fate whether the poles made it to the dry bean stage or not, but to know that there are actually things that you can do to help them along, speed maturity, that will come in very handy as I plan to grow quite a few poles this year. I love having new leverage on my bean plants maturity time!

I've looked in older posts about your methodology for planting poles, and I can't quite remember right now...was it 3 or 4 plants to a single pole? What do you think that comes to in terms of inch spacing between those plants? It seems the standard spacing for poles planted in a line is about 6 inches.....??

Yep you can speed up the process of drying pole bean seed and beat the weather. If you consider that bean seed is mature enough to grow even when the pods are swollen but pods are still green. It's just a matter of getting those very mature pods and seeds dry. I do it when the yellowing process has begun and let the seed become quite dry in the pods. I get some very beautiful looking seed this way too.

Yes I plant 4 seeds to a pole. The planting distance is probably about 4 or 5 inches. The thing is 4 seeds I don't think is overcrowding those plants and they always seem to grow very well in a small group like this. Below is some pole bean photos from past years gardens. I plant them the same way all the time. Looks like they have created a pretty healthy looking bean jungle growing 4 to pole.

 

[Zeedman]

And on the other end you have the micro beans (like azuki, mung, rice, urd, mothe, and so on) where climbing is all, or nearly all there is (I've had some rice beans that went bushy but it seems inconsistent). I have NO IDEA how those are grown on a field basis (I think they probably just harvest the whole field en masse and then winnow.

Micro-beans, I like that term. Though with the exception of rice beans (where bush is definitely the exception) I question the prevalence of climbing. The mung & urd beans I grow sprawl much like scaled-down cowpeas, but show little inclination to climb. Moth beans tend to be mainly prostrate mat-forming plants. The adzuki beans that I grow are bush (either erect or prostrate) and show no twining tendency. Over the years, I've come across a few references of "climbing adzuki" in the U.S.; but after investigation, those occurrences turned out to be rice beans misidentified.

@Pulsegleaner , you have undoubtedly seen more Vigna cultivars (wild or commercial) than I have. I don't dispute that there may be climbing varieties of the micro-Vignas, only that I have yet to see evidence of their existence... I'd love to see some photos. It may be that just as varieties grown to seed in the higher latitudes are automatically selected for day neutrality, they may have been simultaneously selected away from pole or twining habit. I've tried to research this in the past using GRIN data, but unfortunately the descriptors for the "micro-beans" have little to no data on plant height & habit. In 2007 I grew several GRIN accessions of Vigna radiata collected in the Philippines (one of which I still grow), and they were all semi-prostrate bushes.

 

[heirloomgal]

Well, @Bluejay77 that is how I will grow my pole beans this year then. I have grown more bush beans in my gardening life than pole beans, and I've always wondered what the truly best spacing is for them. Those colourful pots in your photos, how many beans do you have in there? Have you found your dried bean seeds from those plants uniformly good-looking? I wanted to try some of that pot culture, because I have so many pots I could use to do it. But I'm worried that the beans would be malformed from drying out too frequently, my pots are also black so that contributes to drying the soil quickly too. One of my raised containers this year produced bumpy beans and I assumed it was from drying out as it was small and hard to keep well watered in the hot weather. But I'm not really sure it was that, since it was only a one time experiment.

 

[heirloomgal]

@Zeedman @Pulsegleaner There is such a diversity of bean types in your gardens. With the exception of the adzuki beans, I've cooked with most of those beans, though I've never grown them. I tried Pretzel cow peas this year but it seemed to me to have an awkward growth habit, not a pole (though I tied them up to one) but not really a bush either. It matured in time, but the beans inside were so tiny that it wouldn't be worth the bother to grow them for dry beans, and I didn't care for the flavor of them green off the vine. Do you cook with all these bean types - the mung, urad, mothe etc.? I haven't met many people who cook with those ones. I'm not sure what a 'rice bean' is....

 

[Pulsegleaner]

@Zeedman @Pulsegleaner There is such a diversity of bean types in your gardens. With the exception of the adzuki beans, I've cooked with most of those beans, though I've never grown them. I tried Pretzel cow peas this year but it seemed to me to have an awkward growth habit, not a pole (though I tied them up to one) but not really a bush either. It matured in time, but the beans inside were so tiny that it wouldn't be worth the bother to grow them for dry beans, and I didn't care for the flavor of them green off the vine. Do you cook with all these bean types - the mung, urad, mothe etc.? I haven't met many people who cook with those ones. I'm not sure what a 'rice bean' is....

I would, if I could get back enough seed to make wasting some on food feasible (with my pest problems it's all I can do to get anything back at all)

Most of the cooking of those is done in Asia, where most of them are from. being so small, most are split in Indian cooking and used as dal. In China mungs are sprouted to make bean sprouts, and are ground into a flour used to make bean thread noodles (a.k.a. glass noodles) azuki's are used to make sweet red bean paste

Rice beans are a relative of those, used mostly to make medicinal soups. they look a little like tiny azuki's but longer, and with a thick pair of "lips" on the hilum of the seed

Micro-beans, I like that term. Though with the exception of rice beans (where bush is definitely the exception) I question the prevalence of climbing. The mung & urd beans I grow sprawl much like scaled-down cowpeas, but show little inclination to climb. Moth beans tend to be mainly prostrate mat-forming plants. The adzuki beans that I grow are bush (either erect or prostrate) and show no twining tendency. Over the years, I've come across a few references of "climbing adzuki" in the U.S.; but after investigation, those occurrences turned out to be rice beans misidentified.

@Pulsegleaner , you have undoubtedly seen more Vigna cultivars (wild or commercial) than I have. I don't dispute that there may be climbing varieties of the micro-Vignas, only that I have yet to see evidence of their existence... I'd love to see some photos. It may be that just as varieties grown to seed in the higher latitudes are automatically selected for day neutrality, they may have been simultaneously selected away from pole or twining habit. I've tried to research this in the past using GRIN data, but unfortunately the descriptors for the "micro-beans" have little to no data on plant height & habit. In 2007 I grew several GRIN accessions of Vigna radiata collected in the Philippines (one of which I still grow), and they were all semi-prostrate bushes.

You are more or less right. Most are more running type than twining type. Part of where I have problems with telling which is which is that many of my plants that make seed do so when they are very short (like two or three permanent leaves short). At that height, nearly EVERYTHING is still capable of standing up on it's own. I have seen rice beans that went full bush (developing multiple branches and getting to two or three feet tall) but again, that is the minority.

I also suspect that many of them are somewhere between semi runners and opportunistic runners. That is, they will climb if there is something to catch onto, but will make a very short upright if their isn't.

Actually you remind me of another big one. Your strain of lablab bean (and a few others) are bushy, but most are climbing vines.

 

[heirloomgal]

@Pulsegleaner
So you grow them for market? Not to cook and eat for yourself? I ask partly because the whole green mung beans I used to cook with I remember being absolutely delicious as a really thick dal. Especially with butter, garlic, onion, slices of lemon floating on top and a dollop of sour cream. It was my favorite dal of all, much more so than the tiny red masoor dal or the yellow split one, and if I had some of those freshly dried from the field I can only imagine how much MORE delicious that soup would be. I found that the white urad dal was really, really good too - a full, rich, satisfying flavour that was almost meaty in taste. I've never tried urad dal beans with the black hull on, because in my neck of the woods that is pretty hard to find. But gosh, those were some really good eating. The smell of urad beans dry toasted in a pan make people wander around looking everywhere for 'what smells so good'.

I tried adzuki beans once or twice I think, which isn't a fair trial, but I remember them adding such a sweetness to my broth that it tasted a bit like I had added raisins to the soup!

 

[Blue-Jay]

Well, @Bluejay77 that is how I will grow my pole beans this year then. I have grown more bush beans in my gardening life than pole beans, and I've always wondered what the truly best spacing is for them. Those colourful pots in your photos, how many beans do you have in there? Have you found your dried bean seeds from those plants uniformly good-looking? I wanted to try some of that pot culture, because I have so many pots I could use to do it. But I'm worried that the beans would be malformed from drying out too frequently, my pots are also black so that contributes to drying the soil quickly too. One of my raised containers this year produced bumpy beans and I assumed it was from drying out as it was small and hard to keep well watered in the hot weather. But I'm not really sure it was that, since it was only a one time experiment.

I have mostly two bush plants in those pots sometime three in a larger pot. My seeds from those plants are much smaller in quantity. Sometimes a little smaller in size. I water them about every other day in the hottest weather. I've pot grown bush plants when I want to get some new seed from having a small quantity of something newly collected. I don't think I'm going to grow any potted beans this year. No need for it this year.

 

[Zeedman]

@Zeedman @Pulsegleaner There is such a diversity of bean types in your gardens. With the exception of the adzuki beans, I've cooked with most of those beans, though I've never grown them. I tried Pretzel cow peas this year but it seemed to me to have an awkward growth habit, not a pole (though I tied them up to one) but not really a bush either. It matured in time, but the beans inside were so tiny that it wouldn't be worth the bother to grow them for dry beans, and I didn't care for the flavor of them green off the vine. Do you cook with all these bean types - the mung, urad, mothe etc.? I haven't met many people who cook with those ones. I'm not sure what a 'rice bean' is....

Moth beans I've only grown once, out of curiosity. The pods are too small to make picking by hand practical; and because the plants are ground hugging, the dry seeds will rot if rained on. I never got enough seed to actually do something with them. Tepary beans have similar mat-forming habit & susceptibility to rot, but with bigger plants & higher yields. Both have deep tap roots to help them succeed in arid climates - where they are best grown.

Green gram ("mung beans") and black gram ("urd") likewise prefer a climate which is dry when the pods mature, but the pods are large enough to harvest by hand. DW makes a thick lentil-like soup from the green gram, which is one of our favorites & we eat it regularly. But we've only grown enough of our own to make two batches. We tried using un-hulled urd beans in that recipe, and I found them hard to digest (to the point I would never try that again). The hulled urad dal is much more palatable, but we have to purchase that. We grew the urd last year, but the dry seed yield was only enough for seed saving... I'd really like to try them as sprouts. The dry pods & seeds of urd beans have much better resistance to moisture than the more-susceptible green gram.

As for the adzuki; we really haven't done much with them yet. The "Buff" variety I grow is very mild & thin skinned, we have added that to the mung bean soup & it wasn't bad. We planted enough last year to do more experimentation, but because of weed pressure, only ended up with a hand full of seed. We plan to re-grow it again this year, hopefully with better results. The red and purple varieties are probably best suited to using as bean paste; but we have yet to try the Oriental recipes which use that paste.

My three attempts to grow rice beans were all failures. Most varieties (or all?) are photo-period sensitive, and will not even bloom until the equinox (which for me, is about two weeks away from my frost date). Two of the three varieties I planted were rampant pole types; heavily branched, and very dense foliage... denser than any other pole bean I've ever grown. They would probably be able to smother any weeds grown nearby (as they tried to do to an adjacent trellis 3' away). I was able to observe their yellow flowers, but there was no time for any pods to mature. I was given a bush rice bean in a swap, and it made beautiful spreading bushes... but didn't even make flower buds before frost. There are no commercial sources of rice bean in my area, and DW has no experience with them, so we may never taste them.

I tried Pretzel cow peas this year but it seemed to me to have an awkward growth habit, not a pole (though I tied them up to one) but not really a bush either. It matured in time, but the beans inside were so tiny that it wouldn't be worth the bother to grow them for dry beans, and I didn't care for the flavor of them green off the vine.

Pretzel sounds like a yardlong bean; and the descriptions I've read implied that like most yardlong beans, it is pole habit. Not many of the yardlongs I've tasted were palatable raw, and even the best ones are a little too dry to eat many of them raw - nothing like common snap beans. They are best lightly stir fried, used in soups, or pickled as dilly beans. I grow a true bush variety with a very short DTM (50 days to first pods) which would probably do well in much of southern Canada; but the seeds are too small for it to be useful as a dry bean.