Question about beans

[Smiles Jr.]

I saw a question posted on another forum about bean plant selection for typical dried beans. There was no good answeres there so I thought I would ask her same question here . . .

How do we grow beans to get soup beans or chili beans? Like kidney beans, Great Northern, Navy, Pinto, red or white, etc. All I ever see on the seed store websites and in the garden stores are various kinds of string beans, lima beans or peas. They are great and I plant them every year but I would also like to try to grow our own beans for drying like we find in the grocery stores in plastic bags next to the rice.

Anyone grow their own chili beans?

 

[hoodat]

I used to get those from Vermont Bean seed Company but they got bought out by Jung who got bought out by (guess who?) #$@^* Monsanto so their beans are no longer available. You can plant the seeds you buy as dried beans in the store but they don't always come true.
The one I always liked is Rattlesnake beans. They are also known as Anasazi beans. They make green beans when young or you can let them mature and use them as dried beans. They do have strings though.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think your question is where to find dry bean seeds. This might be a start.

http://www.victoryseeds.com/beans_dry_bush.html

http://sustainableseedco.com/shell-dry-beans/

Toward the bottom on this one
http://www.heirloomseeds.com/beans.htm

Mixed in with these
http://www.seedman.com/beans.htm

I usually grow Black Turtle Beans and Lima beans. I also grow a fair amount of Blue Lake green beans, but after I have finished canning green beans, I keep a few picked off to get some green beans for fresh eating and let the rest go to dried beans. You can generally use dried beans as green beans if you wish and also let traditional green beans go to seed and use those as dried beans, but flavor or production may not be exactly what you want.

I personally think growing dried beans is not a huge value, especially for a small garden. They take up a lot of space for the production you get, are a pain for me to harvest, but mainly I cannot tell any real quality difference in the ones I grow versus the very cheap ones you can buy at the store. It would be interesting and probably pretty discouraging if I took my manhours in the process of growing and harvesting dried beans and divided it into the cost of buying the beans instead of growing and harvesting them to see how much per hour my labor is worth. If the quality were noticably different, I'd be happy to do it, but I really can't taste a difference. But my wife wants them so I grow and harvest them.

In some places they are easier to grow than here. If you live where the vine dies and dries up without getting wet, you can supposedly beat them in a trash can or such to thresh the beans. But the plants stay green and keep producing here until frost, so there are always some beans on there that are not dry enough for that method. If I wait for long after some of the beans are ready to pick them and it rains, the beans will either rot in the pod or actually sprout in the pod. I have to pick them as they get ready, shell them by hand, and put them on screens to dry. If you have just a few vines and grow bush varieties, you can hang them in a dry place and let them dry before threshing them.

One advantage is that if you pick the beans as they start to dry on the vine, the vine does keep producing pretty well.

Hopefully this answers your question. If not, please ask away.

I know I'm not blindly enabling and encouraging on this one, but personally I don't see a whole lot of value in dried beans. There is nothing wrong with trying them to see what happens. It may be a worthwhile exercise for you. Good luck.

 

[i_am2bz]

Thanks for posting the question, Smiles, I've wondered about this too. We eat a fair amount of red kidney, black, & Great Northern beans.

Also, thanks for the links, RR. For me, growing things are not so much about saving money or getting some kind of value vs. store bought; it's more about just wanting to know how to do it in case I had to.

 

[Smiles Jr.]

. . . For me, growing things are not so much about saving money or getting some kind of value vs. store bought; it's more about just wanting to know how to do it in case I had to.

That is exactly why I want to know. All I know is that I have never seen kidney beans, pinto beans, Navy beans, etc. in those familiar little packets from Ferry-Morris Seed Co. or Burpee Seed Co. at the garden stores.

 

[digitS']

I used to get those from Vermont Bean seed Company but they got bought out by Jung who got bought out by (guess who?) #$@^* Monsanto so their beans are no longer available. . . .

I'm not sure about that, Hoodat! I know that Jung's isn't anti-Monsanto like Fedco and some of the others but I also sure didn't know that Monsanto bought Vermont Bean Seed! (link) That would be a revolting development!

. . . not a huge value, especially for a small garden. They take up a lot of space for the production you get . . . .

Well, that's what I decided, too. I have grown Great Northern, Navy, and Pinto, Smiles. Also one other I'll tell you about. But, I can understand the idea of "grow them if I need to." I've got a "3 Sisters Corner" this year! There is Painted Mountain flour corn, which I've grown before, and what is probably Oregon Giant pole beans, which I've had for quite a few years now and will try as a dry bean out of that "Corner." Also, about 3 feet away is the row of Buttercup squash, which I have every year!

That dry bean variety that I'd like to tell you about is one that I grew many years ago and it was very, very productive compared to the Great Northern, Navy, and Pinto -- but, that was in my garden, Smiles. I am guessing that these different varieties have variable results depending on where they are grown. Click that VBS link above and you can see quite a few to chose from.

I grew Soldier Beans with just a very, very good yield! They were nothing really special at the table - I like Great Northern - but I was surprised how much better the Soldier Bean grew in my garden than those other choices!

Soybeans are what I'm growing these days. They are a Chinese variety called "Bei" and this will be their 3rd season here. I started out with 6 or 7 varieties and Bei turns out to be far and away the best - altho' a North Korean soybean is fairly competitive.

So, there's my advice -- purchase seed packets for quite a few different varieties and see which one does best for you. I mean, I don't see why you can't mix them later in the soup pot, anyway .

Steve

 

[Smiles Jr.]

Thanks for the great responses. DW brought home a small bag of Navy beans today and I have about 50 +/- on a tray in a damp towel. I'll determine the viability of them in a few days.

Now if these beans grow in my garden and I get some kind of pods (I don't have any idea what the plants will look like):

1. Should I allow them to reach full maturity (turning from green pods to brown pods and ready to fall off) and then dry the beans in the pods? When and how would I remove the beans from the pods?

2. Or should I remove the beans from the pods like I would lima beans or peas?

3. If I allow the pods to reach full maturity and they are ready to fall off the vine by themselves - are the beans dry enough for storage? Or is more drying required? How do I know when the beans are dry enough for long-term storage?

4. Could I strip the beans from the pods when green and dry them in a dehydrator?

I feel kind of stupid asking these questions as I have been a gardener for 35 years or more. I have never messed with soup or chili beans before.

This is fun.

 

[hoodat]

If you are growing them from store bought beans they will almost certainly be bush beans. You can't harvest pole beans with machinery. Just allow the pods to dry on the bush. If the pods start to split open you will have to pick them to kep the beans from falling on the ground.
I shuck them out like peas but if you have a lot of them you can thesh them out with a heavy stick. Beans from pods that are only partially dry are shelly beans. You cook them like dried beans but they cook faster. Don't try to dry shelly beans in a dehydrator. They will shrivel.

 

[Ridgerunner]

There are different ways you can do it. You can wait until the pods dry and harvest them then like Hoodat said. If they are really dry, you can thresh them or you can shell them like peas, which is what I do.

Or you can pick them when the pods just start to dry. On most beans, the pods will go from green to yellow to dried brown, but some can go from green to red or maybe some other color. Anyway, when they start to change color, you can pick them and shell them out. If you get them before they are too dried out, the bean plants will probably set new beans. The second harvest will probably not be as good as the first, but should still be decent.

You cannot store beans that are not dried out. What I do is put them on a wire frame to dry, then stir them once or twice a day. I made a frame out of 2x4's and window screen, probably about 4' x 4'. Just elevate that a bit so you get air circulating under it and put them somewhere dry for a week or two, remembering to stir them.

You can get weevils in beans. They will destroy what you have saved of there are any weevils in them. Some people put the dried beans on the freezer for a few days. Supposedly this kills the weevils. I just put the dried beans in a gallon sized ziploc type bag and store that in the freezer.

 

[Sore Thumb Suburbanite]

Ok, this is my first post, I'm brand new here and just found this site today by way of BYC (Back Yard Chickens to those of you who aren't familliar with the acronym-sp?) But I started gardening this year and I have planted soup beans... tiger eye and calypso (the calypso looks like a dairy cow-so cool), I got my seeds from Seedsavers.org an awesome heirloom seed site that I discovered in february whilst trying to find non GMO seeds. I am sure a ton of you know the site well.

So far tiger eye are super easy, disease resistant, fast growing and producing very well so far. I would highly reccomend them... also the reason I wanted to reply to this thread in the first place is because I just investigated the dry seed harvesting myself by looking the information up at my library via the book "Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners". I highly reccomend this book because it is very scientific, but easy to use and enables you to understand seed propogation--which helps you save your own seeds year to year. Bear in mind they suggest you grow huge amounts of everything to ensure purity...and that you bag this and that to prevent inter-pollination... but you can probably skate by with average seeds for a good number of years without noticing any negative effects...at least thats what I think at this point The book basically explains harvest methods for all different beans in detail too.

Anyway there is my two cents on soup beans... I think everybody else nailed the harvesting dead-on...so I won't repeat anything.

Good luck and hooray for being interested in dried beans (I think they are soooo cool!)