What to do this week
It is getting to be dry-bean time, especially since we may be getting excess rain (or even frost) very soon, making it a tricky time of year for beans.
You may have planted dry beans deliberately. Certain varieties of bean are specific to dry beans after all, like navy beans or soldier or yellow eye, but you can eat the seeds of any beans that you happen to have allowed to get too mature. You may have had enough green beans at one point this summer, and let the rest go unpicked. Now you find yourself with over-mature green beans that you don’t want to waste. These are completely edible, and dry-able.
Over-mature beans (Photo by Madeline Yakimchuk)
There are a couple of things you can do with these beans now. If you have over-mature green beans, or even dry beans, you can start shelling them and cooking them in soups and stews. Or, you can let them dry completely so you can store them properly for the winter.
Take a good look at the condition of the bean pods: they don’t have to be hard and crispy to harvest. Look ahead to any expected frost, or impending week of rain. You might not want to leave the plants in the ground for that. Frost is never good, and a lot of rain brings the danger of mold. If the pods are getting yellow and starting to soften, and you are worried about the weather, you can pull the whole plant up by the root and hang it under shelter to continue drying.
You want to pull the whole plant, including the root, because that will slow the drying and maturing process, giving you a result closer to what you’d have had if you’d been able to leave them to dry in the ground. You can pluck the pods, or maybe even cut the plant at the base, but it isn’t as effective when you are drying down a little bit early.
You want to make sure that there is good air circulation around the stored plants, so don’t put them on the floor to dry. Even a table or counter isn’t a good idea. If you only have a few plants, you can bundle them with a bit of twine and hang them in your garage. If you are like me and have lots, you can put them on trestles — or use chicken wire strung between saw horses — in a shed or garage where they have overhead protection. Whatever you can invent will work.
If you pile them, then every day or so for the first week fluff up the plants, or turn them over, to ensure they dry evenly and don’t develop mold. You want to make sure that the air is getting to all parts of them.
It won’t be long, especially if there is some warm weather, until the plants get quite crispy. After you’ve fussed with them for the first week, they will likely be dry enough to continue the process on their own. You can get back to them in a month, or two months, whenever you have the time, and get on to threshing them out and splitting the pods. You can store them in jars at that point, and make baked beans all winter.
Featured image: Iannetti pole beans, brought to Cape Breton from Britolli, Italy by the Iannetti family of Sydney Mines in 1902. (Photo by Michelle Smith)
Market gardener, farmer, workshop leader, seed-saver, political candidate and mother, Michelle Smith has spent over 30 years coping with the challenges of our bioregion and in the process has built a store of practical and technical knowledge. The Inverness resident has served on the board of Seeds of Diversity Canada and represented Alternative Producers with the Federation of Agriculture but can do nothing about her hair. She is pictured with a head of Club Wheat, a seed that shares her approach to hairdressing.
Backyard food gardener Madeline Yakimchuk caught the food-security bug in the early ’90s through Cuba’s Urban Agriculture Department, taking her first permaculture course and planting her first garden. She can often be found discussing food security, nurturing a plant-based lifestyle or trying to give away vegetables. Professionally, she is GRYPHON media productions but sometimes uses la bruja in her volunteer work, most notably in managing the garden column, which begins life as a telephone interview.
[signoff]
