The Little Easy Bean Network - Get New Beans Varieties Nearly Free

[Blue-Jay]

Here is my pole beans growing on single poles. Maybe not the most efficient system for growing pole beans, but I've always done it this way and have gotten comfortable with it. First photo is 4 row of poles in the ground on May 27th. I had put in a total of 8 rows of pole beans. All the seed has been planted around the poles and I'm just waiting for them to grow and emerge from the soil. Second photo is the pole beans climbing up the poles on July 16th. Third photo is the pole bean patch about at it's peak August 24th. Last and fourth photo is some dry lima pods hanging on the vine ready to harvest September 20th.

Someone made a comment about worrying about the poor little bean plants getting too much hot sun and too much humidity. Beans are basically heat loving plants. Better to have some heat and sun than not enough of it. My beans last year in 2012 went through almost continuous 90 + heat and baking sun everyday from the time they were just little bitty plants first coming out of the ground in early June right on into August. One of the hottest, driest summers I've ever grown beans in during my lifetime.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I read a lot about letting the beans dry on the vine, then beating them in a garbage can or such to harvest the beans. I cant do that. All it takes is for it to set in wet for a few days and they start sprouting in the pod, especially where they touch the ground. Or they rot. Some people live in a climate where they can wait until they dry on the vine, but they might wind up doing a lot of irrigating other crops. Its a trade-off.

When a reasonable amount are really dry and mature, I go through and pick the dried ones, leaving the rest to mature. I hull them, which is a slow laborious process, and dry them on this, made from a couple of 2x4s and window screening.

If I had more screens or less pods, maybe I could let the pods dry and try crushing them to harvest the beans. Its at least something to consider. For those that do harvest the beans by letting them dry totally on the vine and harvest them by beating them or crushing them, how hard is it to separate the beans from the trash? Is it really worth the effort?

Russ, I know you can extend the harvest of green beans by keeping them picked off. Do you figure you increase your harvest of dry bush beans by picking them off? I find with these black turtle beans that if I pick them too early they dry purple, not black. To me, that is a sign I got them too early and they are not mature. If I let them mature enough where Im confident they dry black, the plant seems to have decided it has reproduced and shuts down producing more flowers.

I guess the same question on pole beans for dried beans, especially since I got those Jeminez from you.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Often bean seed is mature enough when they reach the shelly stage to have the ability to germinate and grow. Not really a good time to harvest them as they of course have to high of a moisture content to store without molding and decaying. Also the seedcoat pigments aren't very developed at that point. Black beans will often look more purple at that point. Some varieties of black beans might even look rather blue when the seed is in the shelly stage. Last year I did harvest my Rio Zape beans which are very late here in the shelly stage. The pods were fairly moist but getting kind of flabby and rubbery. The day I harvested them we had a hard freeze that night which destroyed any bean seed left out in the garden that was not dry enough to take the freezing . I spread them out in a spare bedroom on cardboard and kept every single pod seperated from each other with a very tiny amount of space and let them dry slowly at 70 degree room temperature for about 3 to 4 weeks. After I shelled them I was amazed the seed was well filled out, and not all shriveled and drawn in, plus normal pigmentation had developed in the seedcoat. Putting seed in a sack and hitting them with a stick and then winowing the beans in the wind or in front of a fan to seperate the pod material and chafe from the seed is a method of quickly processing your dry seed and getting them seperated from the pods and ready for storage. However the results are a fairly amount of broken and cracked seed which will probably be only be suitable for the stewing pot. The broken and cracked ones will probably dry out too much by the next season to grow. I hand shell all my seed. I don't like to break and ruin precious heirloom seed. I started hand shelling last year around the third week of August all the pods I had picked recently and continued this process all the way to late October. So for two solid months I was either in the garden picking dry pods or sitting at my dinning room table from 6 o'clock in the morning to 10 at night hand shelling pods, but I love it.

As far as keeping the dry pods picked to make the beans produce more pods and increase their production. I don't know about that. I think the plants will set most of their pods then when the pods begin to dry the plants are at the stage were they begin to die off and drop their yellowing leaves. I don't think you really get much more out of them. I think most bush beans will give you about 20 to 30 pods in a season. I'll have to watch it anyway.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I have raised beans in flowers pots that are 9 inches deep and 10 inches wide. Only one seed to a pot that size. It is recommended that you have 12 inches of soil depth for container raised beans. The plants need room too. You can figure a fully mature bush bean planted in your garden outside will spread nearly a foot wide. If planted in your garden bush beans can put roots down into the soil nearly two feet or three feet deep. Pole beans raised outside in your garden can grow a root system that will be 6 feet in the ground or more. That's a lot of soil the plants are deriving nutrition from, and beans roots systems grow sideways and spread out too. My container raised bush bean will only grow about half the number of pods from one grown out in the garden, and it will be a smaller plant too. This year I'm growing three of them in pots because all the seed I had of a variety was one seed and I didn't want to chance that single seed to the outside enviornment where I might lose it. I might wind up with about 20 seeds from each plant that I can grow in the garden next year.

 

[897tgigvib]

Ya know, I believe I'll do some of that single pole planting next year for some of the pole varieties. I didn't set up planting for that this year. Pole beans I have are in rows, so I'll put an 8 foot tall 1x2 every 3 or 4 feet and run a low and a high horizontal twine across them, with more twine up and down. Last year I did some informal teepee setups with twigs and branches. Looks nice and works, but this year it's more varieties and fewer of each. I do have the teparies on single poles that are about 2 foot high, with several plants around each. They short pole with my conditions.

 

[bj taylor]

I got my beans yesterday! j.carrolls west Virginia pole and old time fence pole. I've never grown beans before. they're going in the ground today or tomorrow

 

[897tgigvib]

Those are some cool looking Limas!

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hey BJ !

Glad to hear the beans arrived. I was getting concerned about the postal systems performance. Set up some poles for those beans they are good climbers. They'll probably climb 10 feet or more. Especially in your climate. In Texas they will have a longer season to grow than they do here.

Anyway very happy you got the beans.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Marshall I also screw in 4 - 1 & 5/8 inch dry wall screws up the length of the 1x2's so when the beans climb the poles they can't be shimmied back down during a wind. The dry wall screws catch the vines and hold them in place up and down the poles. After you get the screws in be careful handling them. The screws are sharp on the heads and unforgiving if you wack any exposed flesh.

 

[the1honeycomb]

There are so many things to learn I love this site!!! I hope next year to grow limas! We are buying a small piece of property next to us and plan to build a larger garden there!!! I have never grown pole beans either so I have to put those on my list!!!

How long do the coco beans need to mature!?