It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to plant them, so being the impatient one that I am... (well, it's not really impatience, it's just that if I don't do something at the moment that I am thinking about it, then a million other things pop up and I forget about the original thing and...anyhoo...) I decided to try planting the dried beans that were in our pantry. The pintos were a generic Walmart brand, and I had Sugar Baby pick the black beans from a bag of 15 bean soup mix.
The beans grew beautifully! I think they probably should have been supported (as in pole beans) but they were planted so thickly that they became woven together and held each other up for the most part.
We left them in the garden long enough for the plants to dry out and then put all of the plants - stems, pods, roots and all still intact - on our covered porch to dry out even further for another week. I had read online somewhere that you can tell when they are sufficiently dry when you are unable to dent them with your fingernail. It was really hard to wait - we were eager to shell them and see what we had.
We began shelling them in an organized fashion... neat little piles of beans and neat piles of already opened pods...
Then everyone wanted to join in! It became way less organized but way more fun. We chatted, joked and tried to convince ourselves that we had really saved a lot of money by growing them. In the end, we admitted that we hadn't really saved a lot, but it was such a fun experience that we are planning to do it again next year. And maybe add chick peas to the mix.
Lily (formerly known as Queenie) shelled a lovely little bowl of black beans.
The boys had ideas for more efficient ways of shelling the beans. Sammy decided to beat - thresh them.
It actually worked rather well.
There was a lot of chaff/debris left with the beans this way so he found a way to winnow it away.
It worked!
It's funny - we had never appreciated the beauty of dried black beans until we grew our own.
And pintos too.
We ended up with a gallon of pintos and a quart and a half of black beans. That was from about a cup of pintos and maybe a fourth of a cup of black beans that we planted originally. It was a pretty decent yield and a very pleasant memory to boot!
This time I tried gourds. Gourds grow really fast and effortlessly on my part. Every year, several of them spring up voluntarily around the yard from seeds that were left from the year before.
