Dried bean harvests and our beany plans for 2021

In planning for the 2020 growing season we posted a discussion about growing beans for drying. We have always grown Borlotti and Butter beans; saving own our seed, but we decided it would be a great challenge to see if we could expand our range grown on our plot in Manchester!

* Jacob’s Cattle beans – a bicolour mottled bean that is a very old variety. Apparently the best for making traditional American style baked beans.
* Lima O Del Papa – a climbing bean that is bicoloured with a chestnut like flavour.

Unfortunately we didn’t manage to source the Jacob’s Cattle beans, but we did try the Lima beans. They didn’t have very good yields, but I have saved the beans and plan to try them again in 2021 in the polytunnel

We invested in a membership to the Heritage Seed Library Successes included Black Hopi beans and Coco Bicolour beans. Black Hopi beans are named after the Hopi people, a Native American tribe of north-east Arizona who used the black beans both for food and as a dye. They had a great yield from dwarf plans and we will certainly be growing more of these in 2021 from the saved seed. Coco Bicolour are very pretty beans with a good yield and we also be on the 2021 list.

We managed to find the Jacob’s Cattle Beans, but also plan to trial Kidney beans, Pea beans and Ying Yang beans.

In 2021 (from the Heritage Seed Library) we will be growing this collection.

Do you grow beans for drying?