"gregpresley" wrote in

Fran, I guess I'm confused. Surely the cyanide compounds would only be a
problem if she was sprouting beans for the sprouts themselves?.....I would
think that any plant that matured and produced beans would have the normal
ratio of poisonous compounds, but maybe I'm not correct in this
assumption?....

AFAIK most of the dry beans need to have the steeping, rinsing routine but
that applies to already known bean varieties.

Thus current beans he/she is using are a known entity but if they are F1
hybrids then they could produce anything when he/she breeds them on. Open
pollinated varieties are pure strains - every bean is like every other bean
in the crop. When hybridisation occurs the plant breeders use genetically
different varieties in order to gain what features they think is important.

It the beans he/she is currently eating are F1s and then he/she grows them
again they will be F2s and they could have all sorts of different features.
A common one already mentioned is that they may not grow or sprout at all,
other features could include reversion to a very weedy ancestor or even a
super booper new variety whcih is even better than the old one, or they
could contain very high amounts of the toxin that is present in wild bean
strains. Basically it's alottery if you use F1s as all the good bad and
irritating could occur in differing plants within the one row. To my way of
thinking, it is not a good return on energy expended as you want to know
what you are going to get when you plant and then spend all that time
tending them up until harvest. That is why I think it is worthwhile trying
to find out if they are F1s or if they are open pollinated.

If they are open pollinated then I see no point in buying seed as he/she has
found a variety they like, but if they are F1s then it isn't worth the
effort of growing them.


"Fran Higham" wrote in can contain cyanogenic
glucocides which is a poison. This can be
ameliorated by the common practice of repeated adding and discarding
water
during cooking.

Now the offspring may just be a good bean and cause no problems but if
the
F1 turns out to have a lot of the poisons then that is obviously not a
desirable outcome for you.

I would advise that you find a source of open pollinated beans and stick
to
them or ask/search/do a googe hunt for the American Seed Saver group.