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

[Ridgerunner]

@marshallsmyth or @Bluejay77 I need some help. What is your procedure to start hard to start beans. I got 6 Cape Sugar Pole beans and planted 3 of them, holding three back just in case. "Just in case" happened, they are not sprouting. What do I do with these final three to improve my odds?

 

[897tgigvib]

The Adzukis are doing very well. I put them at the end of Bed 1. So far they are slightly smaller plants than the vulgaris.

I went to town today and got another hundred feet of fencing to make bean cage/poles with.

 

[897tgigvib]

Ridge, Russ may have a different idea, but my method is to use the
VERY MOIST PAPER TOWEL IN A BAGGY method.

Get a couple of paper towels, and do this kind of like a procedure.

set the 2 paper towels on a large dinner plate for neatness. Pour a little bit of good n warm water on them. Not a whole lot, but enough to get them good n wet.

Set a few bean seeds generally toward the middle, but not too close to each other. Now fold carefully a few very simple folds, good n loosely. Just small enough to fit into a good sized baggy.

Close the baggy, but not tight or sealed.

Set the baggy into a shoebox and set a thermometer in with it.

Do all these things as gently as a surgeon. Luckily none of this involves anything difficult. Usually on top of a refrigerator will get you 75 to 85 degrees, but you're shooting for 80 degrees. Might want to do a few thermometer in a shoebox tests first to find the bingo perfect spot. Keeping that temp good n steady should be just right.

Each day open the baggy and make sure it is MOIST BUT NOT SOPPING wet. I call it good n moist. Seed wants air too, so don't seal the baggy.

This is the low tech method for testing germination rates. The high tech method is basically the same but involves a humidity and temperature controlled machine with lots of drawers on it, the size of a large appliance and costs thousands of dollars.

Hopefully you'll see the paper towel bulging in a week or so.

With beans, plant the sprouted seeds soon as they make their first root.

The root may grow into the paper towel. Don't try to separate it from the towel! Beans are root tender. Root hairs you can't even see break off easily.

Just carefully tear the paper towel, use scissors where needed, separate one out, and plant it root down in the soil and hole you have prepared. Try to make it look like it sprouted there. Let those cotyledons want to just come right up as normal as can be.

Do it optimally because beans are touchy about transplanting, but it is indeed doable. Be in surgeon mode.

"Doctor Ridge to pediatrics. Doctor Ridge to pediatrics please".

 

[897tgigvib]

Oh, and when you plant it in the soil it may well have paper towel still attached. That's fine.

 

[journey11]

DD6 and I sprouted beans for a science experiment and this is very close to what we did as well. (We put ours in glass baby food jars and put a damp, crumpled papertowel in with them, and the beans against the glass where you could see them.) Definitely want to check them every day if not twice a day. They may sprout very quickly under those conditions. Seeds need water, warmth and oxygen to germinate, so this is one way to give them the best of all 3.

ETA: Marshall, do you think it would help to put them in a peat pot and baby them for a bit before setting out in the garden? I know they don't transplant well, but with a peat pot, you could plant the whole thing without disturbing them.

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Marshall, good to hear! I'm not sure whether or not I'll have enough room to get some of my adzukis in this year, can't wait to see what the plants look like at full maturity.

I transplanted some of my beans this year, and direct sowed others. The transplanted ones are doing very well compared to the others. The direct-sowed beans couldn't make it through my hard, crusty soil and any that did were diseased with I-have-no-idea-what-titis. I do not think that transplanting a few would be a bad idea.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Thanks, Marshall. I di something similar a few years back with one that is supposed to be hard to start, but wanted to confirm the method. As we've discussed before, when you only have few they get pretty precious and you want to give them your best shot.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hi Ridge,

What I have been told by seed technicians at Seed Savers Exchange is that sometimes seeds become what they call "hard seed". With age they don't want to uptake any water. So you can take a nail clipper and on the side of the seed opposite of the eye just nick out a little piece of the very thin skinned seed coat. Don't cut into the material below the seed coat. This little nick out of the seed coat is a place where water can enter the seed, and hopefully wake up that little embroyo plant in the seed. I think I have some seed right now that won't germinate and I'm going to try it with these seeds I have. Don't know if it actually works. I've never tried this before. You might want to try it on one seed and see if you get results.

I'm not surprised some of us are finding some seeds that won't germinate among this African collection of beans. Many of them look dark to me and could be old enough that they just won't grow anymore.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Thanks, Russ. I'll certainly try that on one seed. I realize as a gardener you understand when something doesn't work out, but that doesn't mean I won't try.

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

All three of my Prescott's Heirloom beans have germinated. One is a little bit pale with brown spots on the cotyledons, otherwise they all look good.