Allotments 4 All

Well I harvested three builders buckets of shelling beans today before stripping the beds out for garlic.... took all evening to shell the green ones, there's a couple of windowsill's wortth out to finish off drying and I've packed the shelled ones off into the freezer... a basic split of gigandas and everything else..... seems like a lot of beans....  WIth the drying ones I can tell almost all of them apart by sight except for the rose beans, and I already have plenty of rose beans of various types dried off (or bought in the case of Borlotti), so they can lal go to the eating pile, I expect to find at least a few of varieties I'm currently short of.... some annoyances, ...

Very few (and no dry) painted lima beans... I'll try another variety next year ....

Gigandas hide and TBF are probably best under cover so will try them in the polytunnel.... that said more productive than the Borlottis, guess they need a better year.
A lot of the dwarfs had a bad time of it, got enough dried Yinyang and Ernies Big Eye for seed but have had to buy some soldier beans to make up the lost strain.

The climbing kidney beans are still out on the plot but will come down next weekend... have a tiny handful dried, hope ther will be a few more...

The good points...

Good crop of Mennonite Stripe..... plenty of seed stock as a result as I managed to get them to dry...

A climbing miniature pinto is a nice surprise.... it's like a miniature borlotti but good fun and useful for cooking cos it's quick...

Bridgewater would be my recommendation to all new shelling bean growers, crops well in a difficult year and had stacks both dried and wet..

Also a fair mention to Cherokee Trail of Tears.... did well after a worrying start.

Experiment... well apart form the new varieties, I tried leaving a couple of CObra plants to their own devices to see if they made decent kidney beans.... don't bother, the pods get huge but the beans take forever to form.... it's why it's so good as a green bean I guess....

Well done. I popped some Lingua di fuoco borlotti dwarf beans in a small block this year. I hadn't properly grown shelling beans before. I've shelled a couple of pounds of them now and the beans are drying out on an oven tray on a warm spot and there are a few more pods still outside drying off. I love the speckled colours. I've definitely caught the bug! But next year I will grow climbing beans not dwarf bush beans and surround them with bulky crops like courgettes. My courgettes this year went in a row against my runners and I missed picking some in the undergrowth. That won't matter with shelling beans.

Have read the post with interest but I am not sure what is meant by shelling beans. Could someone explain to me please? We grew several types of runner beans and climbing french beans. Do either of these types come into the category.

Thanks Jeanbean

BTW my username is nothing to do with growing beans just a nephew's pet name for me

It's when you grow beans for the  bean seed inside, e.g. haricot beans, the ones you use for baked beans.  I grow a mix of climging beans, both purple French beans, ordinary English runner beans, borlotti beans (which you can eat whole, but I only grow for the bean seed inside, leaving them on the plant until completely dry) and a large amount of local 'shelling' beans, which look exactly like very short runner beans.  Some people shell them when they are still green, and freeze the fresh beans.  I prefer to leave them on the plant until completely dry and then shell them.  I freeze the beans for 24 hours, then store in a jar and use for soups and stews in the winter.

My current list is
Rose beans (all look similar, mostly v.subtle differences) BOrlotti, Bird Egg, Bridgewater, Climbing Pinto, Polish CLimber;
then
Painted Lima, Giganda, Box, Egyptian Pea-Bean, Minnesota Purple Mennonite Stripe, Cherokee Trail of Tears, San Antonio,  Climbing Red Kidney, Cobra (mostly as green, but tried leaving some too), Blue Lake,

dwarfs:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
Yin-Yang, Ernies Big Eye, Soldier and Flajoly.

I've already got some seed for another kidney bean next year adn a couple of short-season lima beans to replace the Painted one... it looks and tastes lovely but hardly crops at all in a bad year...

Green with envy, but I wouldn't have room for such a varied collection unless I gave over all my half allotment to them

I reckon you can grow Eleven varieties on a single 8-foot frame/double row... about six inches between canes leaned over to a common apex cane, two plants per cane, run the row north-south and at each of the fifteen stations  you make sure that the plants on the opposite side are the same and you try to make sure that you keep the ones that might be confused (the rose beans, Egyptian pea-bean with Box) away from each other
                                 South

2x Polish CLimber           -   2x PC
2x Egyptian Pea-Bean     - 2xEPB
2x San Antonio                  - 2x SanAn
2x Bridgewater                  - 2x Bridgewater
2x Lima                              - 2x Lima
2x Climbing Pinto              -2x CLimbing Pinto
2x Bird Egg                        - 2x Bird Egg
2x Climbing Kidney           - 2x Climbing Kidney
2xMennonite Stripe            - 2x Mennonite Stripe
2x Borlotti                            -2 x Borlotti
2x Giganda                        -2x Giganda

(double set for Borlotti cos it's big, double set widely spaced for giganda cos it's huge) YOu could fit some Cobras in anywhere in that lot pretty much but the obvious space would be between Mennonite Stripe and Borlotti.... you couldn't confuse any of them.....

chrisc

Crikey!
I'd never thought of mixing beans like that!

If you grow so few of each variety so close to one another, is there more chance of getting rogues?

I don't have a rogue problem yet and I've been doing it a few years... the only one that I've had so far was a plant of Egyptian Pea Bean that came up with black seeds adn pods.... adn that could be anything... it's slightly longer than the classic pea-bean shape but nothing like either of the black seeded beans I grow, pod shape is still definitely pea-bean  too..... will try again to find the room to grow a bunch next year to see if I can isolate down to a stable black strain, but that will need more isolation work as you have to harvest each plant seperately.... it might be a mutation or a cross-breed, but it's picked up no other traits as far as I can tell if it is a cross.... I get the usual odd invert in the rose beans, and I had a pod off the EPB's this year that I'd have thought was Box, they're way darker than normal EPB...

chrisc