The 2014 Little Easy Bean Network - Get New Beans On The Cheap

aftermidnight said:

Hi Russ, I would a few of your Weaver beans if you have enough to share, have you still got my snail mail addy or should I email it to you? Anything I can send in exchange?

Annette

Click to expand...

Hi Annette,

I got your address on a piece of software I use for printing address labels. I will send you some. Got lots of Weaver seeds. Grew them two years in a row just for seed.

Russ' Illinois Snap is real good fresh. We have them ready at the same time as the Rattlesnake pole beans. Now, the other green beans are ready to harvest (late planted bush beans)!

DW said, "just leave the pole beans to dry. You liked them in soup." Well, yes I did but I'm not sure I'm all that much in favor! You see, the Soldier and Jacob's Cattle beans we had last year were easy to pop out of their pods! (It helps to wear plastic gloves.) The Rattlesnake beans were tough!

I decided to crush the dry pods with a short piece of 2 by 4, then winnow! The way I can do this is to put everything crushed into a plastic bucket and climb the stepladder. Dumping the content of the bucket, in a little bit of wind, works fine. How high I go depends on the wind. I may need to collect what falls onto a sheet of plastic several times. Dumping them from various heights is about the best I can do.

@Bluejay77 , should this technique be employed for seed in heavier pods or for more contrary pods (like Rattlesnake)? There are shallow baskets that are helpful.

Steve
Edit: the small amount to be sent off in the mail shouldn't require this winnowing but for our larger crops of dry beans ...

@Bluejay77 , should this technique be employed for seed in heavier pods or for more contrary pods (like Rattlesnake)? There are shallow baskets that are helpful.

Steve
Edit: the small amount to be sent off in the mail shouldn't require this winnowing but for our larger crops of dry beans ...[/QUOTE]


Hi DigitS

Well Heavier Pods. I'm thinking of the ones that wrinkle and tighten around the seeds as they dry. If you don't like to take the time to shell them by hand. Takes some extra thrashing to open the wrinkled type pods. Those pods too are usually thicker and tougher These types of pods can be thrashed in a pillow case or burlap bag with a smooth stick like a piece of broom stick handle. You will wind up with an amount of your seed that is cracked and broken this way, but it's faster. Then of course you can winnow this when you are finished thrashing them. I have winowed pods in front of a real good strong fan. Maybe like a barrel fan. I don't really like climbing ladders. These days I hand shell all my bean seed. No broken or cracked seed that way. Cracked seed is not really good for planting. If I get broken and cracked seed in a seed packet it all gets weeded out. Winds up in the stewing pot. Since I don't have broken and cracked seed. Just about all my seed is good for selling, trading, giving away to someone to plant. However I'm retired and I got the time. You gotta do what you feel is the best method for the amount of time you want to devoted to shelling and processing your seed crop. I hope what I said helps!

I think there is a fairy up in my garden!! I planted 15 bush wax beans, and 4 of them are vining!! Someone is playing tricks on me I pulled them all out of the same package.

By the way @digitS,

So glad you like the Illinois Snap. I'm growing them too for snaps this year. They are very nice snap bean. When cooked tender they seem a little more solid or having more body to them when you put them in your mouth and chew on them. After having discovered the bean in my garden back in 1979. I had never tried it out although I knew it was a snap bean. Never realized what I had all these years until now. Also growing Buffy (which is very productive), Illinois Wax, Comtesse de Chambord, Bountiful, Fisher, Seminole, and Blue Jay for bush snap beans this year. About six feet of row space for each one of these varieties.

Bluejay77 said:

. . . If you don't like to take the time to shell them by hand. . . These types of pods can be thrashed in a pillow case or burlap bag with a smooth stick like a piece of broom stick handle.. . Since I don't have broken and cracked seed. Just about all my seed is good for selling, trading, giving away to someone to plant. . . I hope what I said helps!

Click to expand...

Sure does! I was a little embarrassed to admit to using a 2 by 4. It's a very short 2 by 4!

Don't do this with highly valued seed!!

The seed for Cascade Giant is available in our local garden centers. I wonder how the commercial outfits get common pole bean seed. Gracious! I wouldn't want to try to get a swather or combine thru a field of pole beans!

Steve

Illinois Snap is a fine green bean.

I was looking at them today, a little hungrily. We have a modest number of a French filet and the very common Jade coming on. It didn't make sense for me to use up next year's Illinois Snap seed.

I have had 2 servings of them. Yes, more body but also, plenty of flavor. They are several levels above Jade for flavor.

I'm not much of a fan of Jade. Healthy plants and productive but not much flavor. DW likes them. I don't care for that French filet - green threads on the plate ...

Steve

digitS' said:

I wonder how the commercial outfits get common pole bean seed. Gracious! I wouldn't want to try to get a swather or combine thru a field of pole beans!

Click to expand...

As I understand it, the difficulty of getting machines through fields of pole beans is part of the reason why they aren't grown as a commercial (green bean) crop.

digitS' said:

Sure does! I was a little embarrassed to admit to using a 2 by 4. It's a very short 2 by 4!

Don't do this with highly valued seed!!

The seed for Cascade Giant is available in our local garden centers. I wonder how the commercial outfits get common pole bean seed. Gracious! I wouldn't want to try to get a swather or combine thru a field of pole beans!

Steve

Click to expand...

Steve,

You can also put your thinner type pods in a cloth sack of some sort and just need it with your hands. Splitting open the pods this way. No cracked and broken seed this way. It's also fairly fast. Then winnow the resulting broken pods and seed mixture.

The thinner pods types are usually the smooth pods without wrinkling.

The Soldier and Jacob's Cattle beans were a dream beside those Cascade Giants, Russ.

@PhilaGardener there used to be commercial bean fields here and there still are near Walla Walla. The contraptions they have for harvest looks like something out of an animated children's show. How it separates stems from the green beans is likely an engineering triumph. Must have replaced about a hundred pickers.

Steve