I got some French green lentils from Sand Hill Preservation but there's nothing about their culture. Has anyone grown these?
Growing French Green Lentils (Verte du Puy)?
No, but I hope you will post how you do with them. I eat lentils all the time and am interested in growing them but haven't got the faintest clue how to do it.
Well, if I can't figure anything else out I'll just plant them in rows and let them come up and then shell them when they dry.
Leslie
I found this on what looks like an English site, although they weren't talking about French green lentils specifically:
Quoting:
We grew both lentils and chickpeas from packets meant for eating, last year. Both germinated and grew well despite the awful "summer". I shan't bother again as the yield isn't particularly high for the space taken up by the plants. There are only two lentils per pod. If I had a huge area, things might be different.
I was looking for them for cooking, but they may turn out to be like the White Coco beans I grew last summer - not much yield and a lot of work for only a quart of dried beans. One DOES have to make decisions about the best use of time and space.
Leslie
Yeah, I hear ya about the space and time thing. I haven't seen white coco beans before, but they sound delicious. I am trying the blue this year, but I was actually growing them to eat the pods. For dried beans, I figure other places have way better conditions than I do. Our summers are warm but they also tend to be wet, which is not good for drying beans, the way I understand it. I'm focusing on pole beans instead, where you eat the whole pod. I like them a lot and grow them on bamboo poles that lean against the patio roof, so that saves a lot of space. I hope I will get a bunch to freeze this year. Lentils I've been buying by the 25 lb bag online.
Sounds like you have a great setup for your pole beans. I hate the bother of staking, but I love Fortex beans so I have to. I have a French bush bean called Pelandron that's really productive; it's not really a filet bean but it's very tasty. I save seeds from that every year. I grew the coco beans because they're supposed to be the favored variety for an authentic cassoulet, but they were too much trouble and actually it turns out I'm just as happy with canned organic cannelinis in my cassoulets anyway.
I also save pea seeds but I've never tried eggplant or peppers.
Leslie