Dry legumes

[raymondo]

I've grown beans, mostly Pinto, for dry seed for some years now and have decided to diversify a little. This season I'm beginning to trial broad beans and soup peas. The broad bean I'm trialling is Early Long Pod, which I think is just Aquadulce by another name though I'm not certain about that. I have two soup peas I'm trialling, both climbers. One I bought as Blue Podded Capucyner and the other, Subfrufrum, was given to me. Both seeds are the colour of chocolate and I believe both have two-tone purple/pink flowers. It will be interesting to see if there's any taste difference.
With these three legumes, I'll have something in the ground growing pretty much all year. Broad beans I can sow in autumn for late spring/early summer harvest, peas I can sow very early in spring for an early/late summer harvest and beans I can sow late spring/early summer for an autumn harvest.
Anyone else growing legumes for dry seed? If so, which, and which varieties?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

For dry legumes I grow red kidney beans, and a landrace of snap-beans that I allow to grow into dry beans. I am looking for a race of peas to use as a soup pea. I need to find something that is more resistant to weevil.

I'm intending next week for my CSA baskets to make a 50 beans soup that includes my landrace shelling peas, but I want to cook up a batch first to make sure they go well with the beans.

[garnetmoth]

Just started this year, Grunt sent 2 great pole beans that did well for me (Ive got trials from others for next year)- Blue Victor did the best, big like a pinto, will likely cook some up this week.

Ive read that Scarlet Runners make a good dry bean and am thinking about trying the variety Carol Deppe recommends in The Resilient Gardener- Blackcoat Runner this coming year. Ive got some dappled shade that some beans did OK in, but blackcoat is supposed to be more shade tolerant.

the last 2 years its been very wet until its snapped into hot, and I have gotten such a mediocre turnout from peas, Im not considering them seriously. Would LOVE to know about good productive short season peas that can tolerate a bit of warmth.

I also looked for Deppes Fast Lady blackeyed peas, we have great luck with the vignas here- I have a red podded yardlong bean that we adore.... Anyone have a suggestion for a prolific blackeye pea?

[12540dumont]

All of the beans in the Italian Heirloom Bean Trial are dry beans. As soon as I can, I'll finish up this year's report with photos.

There are some bush beans, but mostly poles.

I will say this: of the bush beans, Ireland Creek Annie and Cannellini Luchese were the most productive.

Of the Runner beans...Insuks Wang Kong, Painted Lady and Bianchi Spagna all did well. I'm waiting to see if any of the roots overwinter and resprout.

I sent out Insuks Wang Kong to my CSA. The report that I got back was that they had the faint taste of chestnuts.

Back to planting onions!

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

This was also the first year for me with regards to beans. I've grown some here and there before, but next year i think i'm going to plant a few dedicated rows for them. I guess my method of throwing beans in random places didn't work too well. I'm mainly going to focus on growing a few varieties that are native to the four corners area.

Four Corners Runner Bean (got it from native seeds)
Anasazi Bean
Four corners gold bean (aka zuni gold, and closely related to the Anasazi bean).
New Mexico Black Appaloosa (didn't get a good crop this year)
New Mexico Red Appaloosa (didn't get a good crop this year)
Rio Zape ("hopi string bean")
...maybe the Great Northern Bean (the flavor is hard to beat )

This year the Zuni Gold bean did the best. I'm actually surprised at how well it did, considering i didn't water them at all. This one is a good desert bean. The four corners runner bean did pretty well too. I ate some of these in the "green" stage, and they were pretty tasty (not the pod though). Anasazi produced a few, but not a whole lot. I didn't get any beans from the others. Hence i think i will try planting them in rows, possibly with a trellis, but not necessarily.

I grew that red Biskopens pea this year. It was the only one growing fine in the middle of summer, so it definitely can take full summer heat. But it didn't produce seeds until late july or something. It might make a good soup pea.

[extremegardener]

I like pole beans for dry beans. I have some rare local varieties that I've been growing for 30+ years - Dolloff, Smith's VT Cranberry, and Littleton that are all very early and quite productive here. Dolloff's my favorite, big lima shaped delicious beans.
I also really like Blue Shackamaxon (originally from Pennsylvania area, Lenape Indians), though it's borderline getting them to the dry stage here. They are tiny black beans (think rice beans), cook quickly and taste great. They also are fine as green beans, very productive, and the plants are attractive, purple flowers and pods.

[raymondo]

I hadn't thought of runners for dry beans until I read Deppe's book. For the time being at least, my garden is too exposed to drying westerly winds for good pod set on runners. I've tried them a number of times and get virtually nothing. Perhaps once I get some windbreak plantings well-developed.
Cowpeas, and other vignas, struggle to ripen seeds here. Frost seems to be upon them before they get there, except for the local black-eye. I think the variety is Banjo, developed here in Australia. I grow them every other year.
Beans I want to trial this year include Coco Blanc Nain (Dwarf White Coco) and Hopi Black. Come sowing time if I have the energy (I'm currently working more or less full-time) I'd like to add a few more - Anasazi, Vermont Cranberry and Pink in particular.
While productivity is important, my main interest is eating quality - flavour and texture primarily.

[12540dumont]

Ray,
I'm with you taste is all. I can't wait to taste some of these Italian Beans, alas, I can't do till next year. My seed increase from 20 beans has turned into a quart jar of each. Finally enough to plant! Leo thinks we should sneak out 1/4 cup of each and stuff ourselves.

I grew Fast Lady beans here. The gophers love them. I told Carol that from my 50 foot bed with 2 rows, there's about 1/2 dozen plants left. Garnet, I'll bundle them up and send them to you. There's no point in feeding the vile voles. It'll be a few weeks till they are dry.

I've received lots of new runners that I can't wait to try. Next year they all go up on the bean house. I hope they naturalize there and come back every year. I have one Scarlet Runner that has come back for 3 seasons, so I have high hopes on finally finding a perennial bean.

Pictures really soon. As soon as I collapse from marathon harvesting and planting.

[garnetmoth]

Holly :-) thanks! We have voles and chipmunks, no gophers that I know of.

Ray- I didnt know runners would grow well here until I went to a seed swap- it gets hot and humid here, but rarely windy.

Im mostly interested in productivity- we dont have a big garden.

I spent some time last night with Seed Savers Yearbook, I think 2 of their soup peas are listed as SSE acessions. I think Iowa gets about as hot and rainless but humid as here. Sounds like the Biskopens pea would be worth trying.

Last year I had a lousy time with common vulgaris beans, but limas did fine. I just need about 100 more row-feet for beans! argh!

[Leenstar]

I would love to try to grow beans for dry beans. It seems like it takes up tremendous space for me to get enough to have a meaningful crop.

I grew and really loved Hidatsa Shield Figure. I grew it amongs corn in a 2 yard x 3 yard plot and had about a cup and half of dry beans that while tasting great, took up significant garden space for quite a while.

I also read an article in Organic Gardening praising dry beans and recommended growing varieties.

Am I doing something wrong? Do I just need more space if I expect to be able to grow dry beans for any significant use?

I grew Kentucky Wonder Pole bean. The green pods are decent. I feel like I have had better. I am getting a decent amount of dry beans on the last remnants of the plants now. I am tempted to try them as dry beans. Anyone ever use these as dry beans with any culinary success?

[grunt]

Any bean can be used as a dry bean. If you are limited for space, pole beans are the way to go = one pole with 8 or 10 lines coming down from the top, and a 3' X 4' space will give you lots of beans.

[atash]

Yes, scarlet runners are good dry beans. In fact you can get stringless types from Europe and use them both ways.

BUT unlike Common Beans they reputedly don't self-pollinate, which makes sense for their conspicuous flowers. You might be getting failure to set due to lack of pollination--especially lacking their favorite pollinator: hummingbirds. I know that there are nectar-seeking birds in Oz but nothing quite like a hummingbird.

They also seem to be more sensitive to high temperatures as regards pollinating than common beans.

The Fast Lady beans Garnetmoth mentioned might be good matches for your climate. They're related to black-eyed peas, being just a bit smaller and lacking the black eye. They grow warm being tropical in origin, but the variety she mentioned is an unusually early type.

I would think Chickpeas would be a very good match. Chickpeas grow fairly cool; in their native lands they're typically grown during the winter rainy season (in India in the winter DRY season; India is too hot to grow them in summer), and they can tolerate some frost. They grow quick, and they don't need any staking because they grow on short bushy plants.

Another cool grower is the "soup pea"--what common peas used to be before the trend to eat them immature took hold. Not quite as easy as chickpeas but I think yields are good. The yellow type has a cleaner flavor than the green but they're both good. They require soaking and preferably slow-cooking. Used to be the primary source of protein for common folks in northern Europe. To this day in Scandinavia, pea soup is ubiquitous on Thursdays.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Leenstar:

Seems like you are doing just fine in the dried bean department. Commercial farms with the most ideal fertilizers, and spray regimes get about 0.07 to 0.10 cups dried beans per square foot. Your yield was 0.03 cups per square foot. So there may be some room for improvement, but at best you could expect 5 cups from your plot, and average would be around 2.5 cups for that size plot.

For what it's worth, (I wasn't planning on doing this calculation, so I didn't make the measurements carefully, but) the yield of my snap/dry bean landrace was about 0.03 cups per square foot this year. My kidney beans were planted in one long row, but yield on them works out about the same.

My grandfather regularly fed us soups made with Kentucky Wonder pole beans. I'm not the person to be asking about the culinary suitability of them, because it's been 30 years, and because to me every food is good, and while there might be subtle nuances to me for some foods, beans are beans. Kentucky Wonder is one of the components of my dry bean landrace. I can't separate them out at this point, but there aren't any beans in it that I find objectionable in a soup.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Oct 17, 2011 23:45:47 GMT -5 atash said:

BUT unlike Common Beans they reputedly don't self-pollinate, which makes sense for their conspicuous flowers. You might be getting failure to set due to lack of pollination--especially lacking their favorite pollinator: hummingbirds. I know that there are nectar-seeking birds in Oz but nothing quite like a hummingbird.

I hadn't thought about them being pollinated by humming birds. I saw several native and a few honey bees pollinating mine though. I actually saw a hummingbird this year, but strangely enough it was not visiting my runner beans, but was visiting one of my corn plants. Maybe it was eating the pollen, or was attempting to see if it had nectar. It made my day seeing it though.

So can runner beans be cooked in a crockpot just like other beans? I'd like to try it sometime.

[steev]

That hummingbird may have been after insects, they will eat a lot of the smaller ones.