Drying beans

I'm growing beans for drying for the first time this year. The varieties are Alabama Black Butter Beans, Lima Beans and climbing Borlotti beans. When is the best time to pick? How do I dry them? any other tips! Thanks in advance.

I'm not sure about those kinds of beans, but I let my blackeye peas dry right on the vine. If I'm observant, I will pick them just before their dry pods shatter. Then I will take them out of their shells and lay them out to dry some more. By the time I am ready to store them, they are so hard and dry that you cannot dent your fingernail into them.

If they are like other beans, leave them on the vine until the beans are loose in the pods.

I have grown black Turtle Beans. After they have fully matured and dried on the plants, I harvest them. My hubby shucks, and stores the beans in jars. I try to grow enough to last through the winter - hubby likes them in chili.

I tried growing white coco beans for cassoulet and got so few for my trouble that I decided to go with bought cannellini beans from then on! How do you do it, Honeybee?

greenhouse_gal - Turtle Beans don't take up much room, althoughn they do need support. I've planted them amongst asparagus, plus here and there about the garden. I do the same with Soy Beans, which need no support. Just stick in a seed where there's a little space.

Sometimes it's hard to walk through my garden without stomping on something - especially when the volunteer melons get going!

I'm growing Lima Beans for the first time. Plenty of blossoms (for sometime now) and no pods yet. Any ideas as to why no pods?

Mine seemed to take a long time to develop pods, and then even longer for the pods to fill out a little bit so that I knew they were worth picking and shelling!

I have Kwintus pole beans and they have been wonderful- heavy harvests every day. Many of them have gotten away and grown too big, so I am leaving them on the plants to make seeds. Will too many cause production to be lower? Do they need to be left on to dry or can I pick them to let the plants produce more? I can just lay them out somewhere to dry.

I think that leaving the mature beans on the plant may trigger a slowdown so that you'll get fewer new pods. When I am drying beans, either for eating or saving seed, I do let them dry on the vine and then I pull the whole vine and take them off that way. But I usually don't do that until the end of the season.

I think I will remove the ones that have started turning yellow and let them dry naturally-

SusanKC - my limas are doing the same - but from what I remember last year - they flowered lots while the weather was horribly hot - especially night temps being about 75. Once we started getting cooler nights, they suddenly started setting pods. That's what's happening here with limas - our temps have been terrible this year, but we just had some cooler evenings (it dropped to 68 one morning - I was COLD!). And the limas have some pods. :-)

We've had really hot weather this summer so maybe it's been too hot for them. It's been cooler this week. I'll leave them in and see if they start setting pods as the temps cool down.

With the green beans where I want to save seed (haricot verts), I target just a plant or two and don't pick those once they start producing well. Now they haven't made many more new beans since I stopped picking, whereas the ones I pick every other day are still making new beans.

darius -

Honeybee... I look for the best looking, healthiest, best producing plants to target, and always try to save two plants... just in case.

I do something similar for tomatoes, but with the fruits not the plant. I save the seeds from several of the very best tomatoes of each variety. What's nice about saving the tomato seeds is that I still get to eat the fruit!

I know there is info for fermenting tomato seeds somewhere- can someone direct me to it? Thanks

I recently read an article that said fermenting tomato seeds was not necessary. Their germination rate with just drying the seeds was the same as fermenting seeds. Sorry but I don't remember where I read it.

This is pretty much how I go about it; the photos are helpful:

http://www.jardinpotager.com/recoltetomate.htm

I squirt the seeds in a little jar, fill with water, and then put the top on loosely so nothing falls in but air still gets to it. After three or four days there will be a film of white-ish mold on the top of the liquid and some seeds will be floating while others will sink. I rinse out the water, allowing the floating seeds to go down the drain, until there are no bits of tomato left and just the heavy seeds on the bottom. Then I put them on filter paper in the shade and let them dry out for a few days. Once they're dry I put them in a labelled envelope. But don't bother if it's a pain. I'd also love to know the name of them if you have that. If it's a known variety maybe I can get them some other way.

Leslie

"I recently read an article that said fermenting tomato seeds was not necessary. Their germination rate with just drying the seeds was the same as fermenting seeds. Sorry but I don't remember where I read it."

darius, I highly disagree with that, mainly from too many years fermenting and/or not fermenting. Not only does fermenting isolate the viable seeds from the non-viable but it also inhibits the carry over of certain diseases that will be on the seed coat.

Jo, I have a seed fermenting tutorial on my personal page, complete with pics if you want to check it out. Also on the Tomato Forum there is a Sticky that may lead you to others.

Shoe

Shoe, et al... I was merely passing on the comment, LOL. Myself, I have some seeds fermenting in a pint jar on the porch, put out yesterday. I like knowing the non-viable seeds are mostly washed away. :)

"Shoe, et al... I was merely passing on the comment,..."

No worries here, darius, I know you know what you are doing. I tend to keep in mind others who may come along and read that post and feel it is the gospel, so to speak. Always best to point out all avenues, eh?

Was thinking of you last night, was watching a cooking show called "The Kimchi Chronicles"! Hope you found a good recipe you like.

Shoe

Here's a link to Horseshoe's way of fermenting tomato seeds:

http://davesgarden.com/community/blogs/t/Horseshoe/1109/

I checked out Horseshoe's blog but for me it's easier to squirt the seeds out of the tomato and just put the seeds themselves, in their gelatinous coating, in the jar; I use babyfood jars for the purpose. Much less material to hassle with and the process takes up less space in the kitchen.