2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[Zeedman]

The "Madagascar" limas are beginning to produce heavily now. Quite a bit of dry seed already, and a couple large bowls of butter beans.


Lots of limas still hanging. "Gigandes" runner beans are yellowing, pole beans "Blue Marbutt" and "Grandma Gina" are beginning to dry, and "Bird Egg #3" has reached shelly stage... so I hope they all survive the possible frosts Tuesday & Wednesday. I may break out a lot of tarps to be safe, especially for BE#3 & Gigandes.

 

[flowerbug]

Yeah, milk has a way of flushing them out.

floaters! i've found them in oatmeal that i've been eating from but i've never actually found them in the oatmeal itself after cooking. so i figure it must have all gotten turned into food anyways. as we say around here quite frequently it all comes out brown... (most of the time!)...

and yes, it's your fault for using that f word... hahaha!

 

[flowerbug]

i just finished getting the bag of Yellow Eyes shelled out and sorta sorted (the sort of the first sort). a nice crop considering how little space. 2nd year in a row of nice crop of them from the same garden. most pods good quality, most seeds well formed not too many rejects.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

When I was a kid we'd occasionally get a box of cereal or some flour with weevils in it, and finding them in your beans is nothing like finding them in a half eaten bowl of cereal.

It was miller moths for us, or more accurately their larva. It's how I learned not to eat any cereal that had fallen outside of the inner bag, no matter HOW little was left inside. Mueslix with little white wriggling worms in it is not fun (though possibly some extra protein).

As for beans, there was my ordeal that started when one of the people I buy from found out about my interest in actually GROWING Bambarra groundnuts (as opposed to simply eating them, which is what most people were buying them from him for.) and offered me a bag he had picked up in Mali (as opposed to Ghana, like his normal stock.) for free because it had some insect damage. I said sure (I could pick the good seed out and plant it, and thus widen my gene base.)

Well, I got it, and boy had it been ravaged. I must have lost 4/5 of the bag getting the eaten seeds out.

It was, however, at this point, I discovered the big problem, that a fair number of the weevils that had caused the problem were still ALIVE in there, and, being able to fly, quite a few of them managed to escape my fingers and establish themselves IN MY ROOM, feeding on loose groundnuts I had scattered around (fortunately, these weevil species seem to be species specific, so they couldn't transfer to any of the other loose seed, like the lablab beans [which have their own weevil*]. It took me MONTHS to get rid of them, by basically tossing out any groundnuts that weren't boxed up (fortunately, the non boxed up stuff was white "junk" material I was just using for germination tests before working with the ones I actually wanted to grow.

I also had to deal with the WEEVILS parasites, some sort of tiny fly (at least, I saw a lot of tiny flies come out of the bags, and since I know of no sort of fly that eats beans, I have to assume they were eating the weevils.)

*As I kid, I even encountered a kind of bean weevil with strong enough jaws to handle living in, and getting out, of a seed of New Guinea Creeper (Mucuna benetti) which has such a thick seed coat you need a HAMMER to break it.

 

[meadow]

Good heavens! I'm having flashbacks to my older brother hiding bugs in my food!

How does one deal with weevils to keep them from infesting the beans in the first place?

I think I mentioned earlier that pea weevils showed up in the drying soup beans. Fortunately the peas were in paint strainer bags, and the weevils cannot get out. After all of this talk about bugs, I got up the nerve to go back into the plant room (yes, I've been avoiding it) and, lo and behold, the Sutton's Harbinger peas also have pea weevils. Zeedman's Mesa peas have been spared (so far) probably due to having been grown under netting.

So now I'm eyeing the drying beans and half expecting to see bugs popping out at any moment.

 

[flowerbug]

i need a drone in my room to get after the millers when i'm computing in the evening my screen gives off just enough light to attract them, but when i get up to find them and get them they fly away because i have to turn on the light. sometimes i can track them down and other times i can't.

i learned last year to not bring in any boxes or flats from the garage because one of those was full of millers hiding in the creases. it took me several weeks to get those all hunted down.

i saw a miller flying around last night. i hope it's hanging out in one of the bean bags i'm going to be taking out to bury in a few. sometimes i keep the bean pods to use in the worm buckets, but i'm pretty much midway in bean picking and shelling and there'll be plenty of bean pods yet to come.

 

[Blue-Jay]

How does one deal with weevils to keep them from infesting the beans in the first place?

If your bean or pea seed is dry enough and have not any weevils eat their way of the seed yet. Put your seed in the freezer and freeze the seed for about 4 days. That should take care of the weevil problem.

 

[meadow]

If your bean or pea seed is dry enough and have not any weevils eat their way of the seed yet. Put your seed in the freezer and freeze the seed for about 4 days. That should take care of the weevil problem.

But then don't you still have the dead weevil inside? I'm thinking of the beans that I want to eat. Is there some way to prevent the beans from getting infested in the first place?

For the peas, those weevils seem to be pretty specific to the crop. Since we've never had them here before, I'm thinking that I can just avoid growing peas for a year or two and the problem will be solved.

But the weevils that affect beans sound like they are more of a problem... ? This is all new to me though. I've grown beans and peas here many times (and in California too), but never had weevils before.

eta: and I don't even know if the beans have weevils; the pea weevils have just gotten me wondering about it

 

[Pulsegleaner]

i need a drone in my room to get after the millers when i'm computing in the evening my screen gives off just enough light to attract them, but when i get up to find them and get them they fly away because i have to turn on the light. sometimes i can track them down and other times i can't.

i learned last year to not bring in any boxes or flats from the garage because one of those was full of millers hiding in the creases. it took me several weeks to get those all hunted down.

i saw a miller flying around last night. i hope it's hanging out in one of the bean bags i'm going to be taking out to bury in a few. sometimes i keep the bean pods to use in the worm buckets, but i'm pretty much midway in bean picking and shelling and there'll be plenty of bean pods yet to come.

Millers I can deal with. It's those "crazy cockroaches" each summer that drive me batty, since I have no idea WHERE THEY ARE COMING FROM (if they actually LIVED in the house, either we or the Terminix guy would have noticed more of them by now, but neither of us have). They're about a third of the size of a regular Oriental Cockroach, fly EXTREMELY readily (I am aware normal cockroaches can fly, but these fly everywhere, they NEVER scuttle or run) and are ATTRACTED to light (it's been a while since I saw one now, but I think they also don't have the two little "whisker" things on the end of the abdomen regular cockroaches have.) Oh and I once saw one hiding out in the door well of the car, so they are definitely coming from outside the house.

 

[jbosmith]

But then don't you still have the dead weevil inside? I'm thinking of the beans that I want to eat. Is there some way to prevent the beans from getting infested in the first place?

For the peas, those weevils seem to be pretty specific to the crop. Since we've never had them here before, I'm thinking that I can just avoid growing peas for a year or two and the problem will be solved.

But the weevils that affect beans sound like they are more of a problem... ? This is all new to me though. I've grown beans and peas here many times (and in California too), but never had weevils before.

eta: and I don't even know if the beans have weevils; the pea weevils have just gotten me wondering about it

I think bean and pea weevils are the same thing? Grain weevils can also attack beans but I don't think it's their preferred crop. Your best bet is to avoid them in the first place by freezing anything you might plant.

I only get weevils in my community garden plot. I don't replant those beans and often I pick them, shell them in the garden, and put them directly into bags that go into a freezer til I'm ready to can beans. The large scale damage doesn't tend to come until they've been sitting in boxes for weeks and have had time to reproduce.

You'll know if you have weevils because the beans will have some swiss-cheese-like holes in them and there'll be little patches of bean skin laying under them as if someone took a teeny tiny hole punch to them.