finally finished shelling and sorting
the soy beans and weighed them. 44lbs.

all told we grew about 80lbs of dry beans
last season. i don't think i'll grow soy
beans next season and use those spaces for
pinto beans and other beans.

a few dollar experiment turned out well
as the spaces where i grew most of the
dried beans were those i'd previously left
bare for the last half of the season. kept
the weeds down, soaked up extra moisture
when it happened to rain, provides some
nitrogen and protects the soil. a good deal
for the price. probably keeping the worms
and other soil critters happy too right
about now as they are slowly decaying.

i learned a lot about a dozen more kinds
of beans i'd not grown before and will likely
keep adding to the selection of varieties as
i get a chance.

should have better luck next year with
many of them as they won't be planted as
late and the ground will be higher (so they
won't flood) and also they won't be planted
with soy bean patches shading them as much.

as a cover crop to keep weeds down soy
beans were by far the best. they grow
big with wide leaves. the pinto beans
and pink beans grew as vining plants and
twisted around themselves. i didn't stake
any of them. the green peas were self
supporting and did well enough. only a
little rot where things got crowded (the
soy beans growing over the red beans in
one patch and the soy beans growing over
the dark red kidneys in another).

dark red kidneys should be picked as soon
as the pod is dry enough if there is a lot
of rain in the forecast. otherwise the
beans at the bottom of the pod can start
getting black mold on them and then the
mold will spread up the pod. pink beans
seemed similar. the light red kidneys did
not have that kind of trouble, but they
were also grown in a spot with better
air flow so that could have been the factor
there. next season should be better for
that as there won't be soybeans towering
and crowding.

blackeyed peas do not like any moisture
on the pods at the end of the drying of
the pods. i gave up and turned under the
last of the blackeyed peas because i didn't
like how they looked.

red beans split the pods easily so had
to be picked gently.

borlatti beans are huge when shelled
fresh. didn't actually cook and eat them
at this stage but should give it a try
next year. very productive plants.

butter beans take a long time to get
to harvest, but they are wonderful fresh
off the plant. if i'd planted these a
month earlier they'd have finished nicely.

for the fresh eating green and wax
beans the nice thing that happened was
that some of the green beans developed
pods that were much easier to shell
the dry seeds from. i put these in a
separate package for replanting hoping
to continue this effect. i sure hope
it does breed true as the shelling of
the green beans takes a long time as
those pods are very tough and hold the
seeds tightly.

for peas and pea pods i'll have four
to six varieties to play with next year.
not sure where i'm going to put them, but
it will get figured out. we like
peas and peapods so much that we could
easily not plant anything else.

when i was digging up many of these
patches this fall i was able to observe
the root structure of many of these beans
and again by far the soy beans seemed to
be the biggest improver of the soil if
you base that upon how many roots and how
big the root clump was. unfortunately
it was not a fair and controlled experiment
as the soy beans crowded out many of the
surrounding bean patches. next season i
will have a much better spacing set up
because i won't have soy beans at all and
i have the experiences with the other beans
from this season to use in my plantings.

for next spring and early summer i'll
have several tulip patches that had beans
planted over them to monitor to see if the
beans added organic matter and nutrients
increase diseases. already i was able to
tell from leveling two different gardens
this fall that the beans made the bulbs
under them quite happy in comparison to
a garden that did not have beans planted
over them. how that will carry through
is a question to be answered, but i have
my planting maps and notes ready for
the spring tulip season. if things
look to be going ok then i will have
yet another garden to put beans over for
the summer.


songbird

PhoenixWench wrote:
....
Great info - especially as I plan to do beans next year for the first
time in years ;-)

instead of trying to find each of those
beans in seed packets i went out and bought
a bag of mixed soup beans. sorted them by
color/size and planted each in their own
patch.

the soybeans were purchased separately (as
i wanted a guaranteed organic bean for making
soymilk). and before going through all the
work of growing, picking and shelling i did
make sure they worked and tasted right.
soybeans i grew the previous year were field
beans and didn't taste quite right (probably
grown for oil or feed and certainly glyphosate
diddled genetics).

the more reading i do on various things i
find out how many varieties of beans there are.


BTW - I ran across an article that startled and slightly alarmed me, as
it was news to me - while eating peas right out of the pod in the garden
is OK, beans - notably soy and kidney beans are toxic raw!

AWTTW - http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/2385/

i've eaten soy beans out of the pods raw
without ill effect, but when i get back on-line
again i'll see what the link is talking about.
i know a lot of people who eat them green as
edamame (boiled a little).

i would not ever eat a light or dark red
kidney without cooking it at high temperature.
slow cooking kidneys can be trouble if the
crock doesn't get hot enough (it can actually
make the toxins worse).

hm, only other "bean" i know about being
troublesome is the hyacynth beans, but we
don't grow those for food (some people do
and they process them before eating to get
rid of the toxins).


I'm sure the more experienced gardeners here knew that, so this is meant
for the newbies and less experienced - like me ;-)
Happy New Year!!!

thanks! almost here already... eek!


songbird

On Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:20:03 -0500, songbird
wrote:

finally finished shelling and sorting
the soy beans and weighed them. 44lbs.

all told we grew about 80lbs of dry beans
last season. i don't think i'll grow soy
beans next season and use those spaces for
pinto beans and other beans.

a few dollar experiment turned out well
as the spaces where i grew most of the
dried beans were those i'd previously left
bare for the last half of the season. kept
the weeds down, soaked up extra moisture
when it happened to rain, provides some
nitrogen and protects the soil. a good deal
for the price. probably keeping the worms
and other soil critters happy too right
about now as they are slowly decaying.

i learned a lot about a dozen more kinds
of beans i'd not grown before and will likely
keep adding to the selection of varieties as
i get a chance.

should have better luck next year with
many of them as they won't be planted as
late and the ground will be higher (so they
won't flood) and also they won't be planted
with soy bean patches shading them as much.

as a cover crop to keep weeds down soy
beans were by far the best. they grow
big with wide leaves. the pinto beans
and pink beans grew as vining plants and
twisted around themselves. i didn't stake
any of them. the green peas were self
supporting and did well enough. only a
little rot where things got crowded (the
soy beans growing over the red beans in
one patch and the soy beans growing over
the dark red kidneys in another).

dark red kidneys should be picked as soon
as the pod is dry enough if there is a lot
of rain in the forecast. otherwise the
beans at the bottom of the pod can start
getting black mold on them and then the
mold will spread up the pod. pink beans
seemed similar. the light red kidneys did
not have that kind of trouble, but they
were also grown in a spot with better
air flow so that could have been the factor
there. next season should be better for
that as there won't be soybeans towering
and crowding.

blackeyed peas do not like any moisture
on the pods at the end of the drying of
the pods. i gave up and turned under the
last of the blackeyed peas because i didn't
like how they looked.

red beans split the pods easily so had
to be picked gently.

borlatti beans are huge when shelled
fresh. didn't actually cook and eat them
at this stage but should give it a try
next year. very productive plants.

butter beans take a long time to get
to harvest, but they are wonderful fresh
off the plant. if i'd planted these a
month earlier they'd have finished nicely.

for the fresh eating green and wax
beans the nice thing that happened was
that some of the green beans developed
pods that were much easier to shell
the dry seeds from. i put these in a
separate package for replanting hoping
to continue this effect. i sure hope
it does breed true as the shelling of
the green beans takes a long time as
those pods are very tough and hold the
seeds tightly.

for peas and pea pods i'll have four
to six varieties to play with next year.
not sure where i'm going to put them, but
it will get figured out. we like
peas and peapods so much that we could
easily not plant anything else.

when i was digging up many of these
patches this fall i was able to observe
the root structure of many of these beans
and again by far the soy beans seemed to
be the biggest improver of the soil if
you base that upon how many roots and how
big the root clump was. unfortunately
it was not a fair and controlled experiment
as the soy beans crowded out many of the
surrounding bean patches. next season i
will have a much better spacing set up
because i won't have soy beans at all and
i have the experiences with the other beans
from this season to use in my plantings.

for next spring and early summer i'll
have several tulip patches that had beans
planted over them to monitor to see if the
beans added organic matter and nutrients
increase diseases. already i was able to
tell from leveling two different gardens
this fall that the beans made the bulbs
under them quite happy in comparison to
a garden that did not have beans planted
over them. how that will carry through
is a question to be answered, but i have
my planting maps and notes ready for
the spring tulip season. if things
look to be going ok then i will have
yet another garden to put beans over for
the summer.


songbird

Thanks for report. The only beans I planted this past season were
Cannellini that were started late in a small raised bed. I am
thinking about more dried beans next year. You are inspiring me to do
more. I tried lentils a couple of years ago and they got flooded out.

I have already decided to limit the varieties of tomatoes and peppers
next year. A very large majority of the tomatoes will be Viva Italia
since I can and make various sauces and other things with them. Better
Boy and Early Girl for slicers and Jelly Bean for salads. Bell and
maybe jalapenos for peppers.

Just hope I am up to doing what I want to grow next year and taking
care of what I do manage to grow.

--
USA
North Carolina Foothills
USDA Zone 7a
To find your extension office
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/index.html

"songbird" wrote in message
...
finally finished shelling and sorting
the soy beans and weighed them. 44lbs.

all told we grew about 80lbs of dry beans
last season. i don't think i'll grow soy
beans next season and use those spaces for
pinto beans and other beans.

a few dollar experiment turned out well
as the spaces where i grew most of the
dried beans were those i'd previously left
bare for the last half of the season. kept
the weeds down, soaked up extra moisture
when it happened to rain, provides some
nitrogen and protects the soil. a good deal
for the price. probably keeping the worms
and other soil critters happy too right
about now as they are slowly decaying.

i learned a lot about a dozen more kinds
of beans i'd not grown before and will likely
keep adding to the selection of varieties as
i get a chance.

should have better luck next year with
many of them as they won't be planted as
late and the ground will be higher (so they
won't flood) and also they won't be planted
with soy bean patches shading them as much.

as a cover crop to keep weeds down soy
beans were by far the best. they grow
big with wide leaves. the pinto beans
and pink beans grew as vining plants and
twisted around themselves. i didn't stake
any of them. the green peas were self
supporting and did well enough. only a
little rot where things got crowded (the
soy beans growing over the red beans in
one patch and the soy beans growing over
the dark red kidneys in another).

dark red kidneys should be picked as soon
as the pod is dry enough if there is a lot
of rain in the forecast. otherwise the
beans at the bottom of the pod can start
getting black mold on them and then the
mold will spread up the pod. pink beans
seemed similar. the light red kidneys did
not have that kind of trouble, but they
were also grown in a spot with better
air flow so that could have been the factor
there. next season should be better for
that as there won't be soybeans towering
and crowding.

blackeyed peas do not like any moisture
on the pods at the end of the drying of
the pods. i gave up and turned under the
last of the blackeyed peas because i didn't
like how they looked.

red beans split the pods easily so had
to be picked gently.

borlatti beans are huge when shelled
fresh. didn't actually cook and eat them
at this stage but should give it a try
next year. very productive plants.

butter beans take a long time to get
to harvest, but they are wonderful fresh
off the plant. if i'd planted these a
month earlier they'd have finished nicely.

for the fresh eating green and wax
beans the nice thing that happened was
that some of the green beans developed
pods that were much easier to shell
the dry seeds from. i put these in a
separate package for replanting hoping
to continue this effect. i sure hope
it does breed true as the shelling of
the green beans takes a long time as
those pods are very tough and hold the
seeds tightly.

for peas and pea pods i'll have four
to six varieties to play with next year.
not sure where i'm going to put them, but
it will get figured out. we like
peas and peapods so much that we could
easily not plant anything else.

when i was digging up many of these
patches this fall i was able to observe
the root structure of many of these beans
and again by far the soy beans seemed to
be the biggest improver of the soil if
you base that upon how many roots and how
big the root clump was. unfortunately
it was not a fair and controlled experiment
as the soy beans crowded out many of the
surrounding bean patches. next season i
will have a much better spacing set up
because i won't have soy beans at all and
i have the experiences with the other beans
from this season to use in my plantings.

for next spring and early summer i'll
have several tulip patches that had beans
planted over them to monitor to see if the
beans added organic matter and nutrients
increase diseases. already i was able to
tell from leveling two different gardens
this fall that the beans made the bulbs
under them quite happy in comparison to
a garden that did not have beans planted
over them. how that will carry through
is a question to be answered, but i have
my planting maps and notes ready for
the spring tulip season. if things
look to be going ok then i will have
yet another garden to put beans over for
the summer.


songbird

Thanks for the run down.
I garden using two principals, one put forward by George Harrison "We have
around 40 seasons to get things right" and two learn from others mistakes as
we don't have time to make them all ourselves.
Having said that if your looking for a small bean for next season I can
recommend the adzuki bean. It has grown well for me here in Western
Australia, where we have what is known as a Mediterranean Climate and
watering has become an art.

Mike

Bloke Down The Pub wrote:
...
Thanks for the run down.

I garden using two principals, one put forward by George Harrison "We have
around 40 seasons to get things right" and two learn from others mistakes as
we don't have time to make them all ourselves.
Having said that if your looking for a small bean for next season I can
recommend the adzuki bean. It has grown well for me here in Western
Australia, where we have what is known as a Mediterranean Climate and
watering has become an art.

i'm in USDA zone 5, (mid-Michigan USoA). here
there is usually enough to too much moisture at
times (we did have a near drought last summer with
high heat for about 7 weeks so it does happen we
do get dry spells, but they are usually not that
severe).

the red adzuki is on my list of additions to the
varieties i'd like. i also heard of a black adzuki
bean that would be interesting to try.

if adzuki beans are sensitive to fungi from being
rained on later in the pod drying stage it would be
good to know.

if i could find someone who sells variety packs
of bean seeds like the soup bean mix i bought at
the store for a few $. i'm going to see what the
health food store has come spring as for a few $ that
worked well to get the varieties from a few to a
dozen and a half quickly.

i'm using the following list as a reference
for types to look for:

http://www.foodsubs.com/Beans.html

of course, i have no real plans of finding all
the different subvarieties as it looks like there
are thousands.

it's funny, i'm so tactile that once in a while
i like to run my hands through the pile of beans.
it's like sorting buttons or what i like to do in
the fabric section of the store. get my hands
right in there and let them talk.


songbird

The Cook wrote:
....
Thanks for report. The only beans I planted this past season were
Cannellini that were started late in a small raised bed. I am
thinking about more dried beans next year. You are inspiring me to do
more. I tried lentils a couple of years ago and they got flooded out.

you're welcome. i forgot to mention
all the fun i have with the colors, shapes
and textures. OCD therapy sorting.


I have already decided to limit the varieties of tomatoes and peppers
next year. A very large majority of the tomatoes will be Viva Italia
since I can and make various sauces and other things with them. Better
Boy and Early Girl for slicers and Jelly Bean for salads. Bell and
maybe jalapenos for peppers.

most of what we grow will be for fresh eating
this year, but i'd like to put in a few sauce
tomato plants to add to the extras we put up.
for sweet peppers next year we'd like to grow
some of the red peppers for a change of pace.

have you grown the red kind of jalapenos?


Just hope I am up to doing what I want to grow next year and taking
care of what I do manage to grow.

i hope so too. i gained about five days of
weeding time each month by redoing the tulip gardens
and surrounding pathways and another edge along a
different garden. it won't pay off for a few more
years in terms of overall time put in, but the
incremental gains are nice as that time can go
towards other similar projects next season. i'm
trying to keep the list short though. it would
be nice to have a shorter list, but i like to
fiddle so ...


songbird

On Sat, 31 Dec 2011 13:57:00 -0500, songbird
wrote:

The Cook wrote:
...
Thanks for report. The only beans I planted this past season were
Cannellini that were started late in a small raised bed. I am
thinking about more dried beans next year. You are inspiring me to do
more. I tried lentils a couple of years ago and they got flooded out.

you're welcome. i forgot to mention
all the fun i have with the colors, shapes
and textures. OCD therapy sorting.


I have already decided to limit the varieties of tomatoes and peppers
next year. A very large majority of the tomatoes will be Viva Italia
since I can and make various sauces and other things with them. Better
Boy and Early Girl for slicers and Jelly Bean for salads. Bell and
maybe jalapenos for peppers.

most of what we grow will be for fresh eating
this year, but i'd like to put in a few sauce
tomato plants to add to the extras we put up.
for sweet peppers next year we'd like to grow
some of the red peppers for a change of pace.

have you grown the red kind of jalapenos?

Jalapenos are like bell peppers, leave them on the plant and they turn
red.
--
USA
North Carolina Foothills
USDA Zone 7a
To find your extension office
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/index.html

On Sat, 31 Dec 2011 12:12:44 -0500, songbird
wrote:

Bloke Down The Pub wrote:
...
Thanks for the run down.

I garden using two principals, one put forward by George Harrison "We have
around 40 seasons to get things right" and two learn from others mistakes as
we don't have time to make them all ourselves.
Having said that if your looking for a small bean for next season I can
recommend the adzuki bean. It has grown well for me here in Western
Australia, where we have what is known as a Mediterranean Climate and
watering has become an art.

i'm in USDA zone 5, (mid-Michigan USoA). here
there is usually enough to too much moisture at
times (we did have a near drought last summer with
high heat for about 7 weeks so it does happen we
do get dry spells, but they are usually not that
severe).

the red adzuki is on my list of additions to the
varieties i'd like. i also heard of a black adzuki
bean that would be interesting to try.

if adzuki beans are sensitive to fungi from being
rained on later in the pod drying stage it would be
good to know.

if i could find someone who sells variety packs
of bean seeds like the soup bean mix i bought at
the store for a few $. i'm going to see what the
health food store has come spring as for a few $ that
worked well to get the varieties from a few to a
dozen and a half quickly.

i'm using the following list as a reference
for types to look for:

http://www.foodsubs.com/Beans.html


Nice List. Maybe we can manage to swap a few. My email is correct if
you want to talk.
--
USA
North Carolina Foothills
USDA Zone 7a
To find your extension office
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/index.html

The Cook wrote:
songbird wrote:
....
i'm using the following list as a reference
for types to look for:

http://www.foodsubs.com/Beans.html

Nice List. Maybe we can manage to swap a few. My email is correct if
you want to talk.

yes, it's a good start to work from.

thank you for the kind offer.

unfortunately i don't have any kinds that
are unusual to trade. most of what i have
can be obtained by going to the store and
grabbing a bag of mixed soup beans.

similarly the wax, green, peas and soy, i
don't think i have anything unusual there yet
either.

just missed a supply of the christmas lima
beans, those would have been a nice addition.


songbird

The Cook wrote:
songbird wrote:
....
for sweet peppers next year we'd like to grow
some of the red peppers for a change of pace.

have you grown the red kind of jalapenos?

Jalapenos are like bell peppers, leave them on the plant and they turn
red.

ah, ok, i did see a package of seeds for
them and they were red instead of green
so i was wondering if they were a different
variety or not. the sweet green peppers
we grow do not turn red when they get
older, they turn dark brown and they taste
rather icky too.

however, getting back to bean lore. i've
forgotten a few things and will likely remember
a few other things as time goes on.

soybeans have a lot of dust and small
hairs. some varieties seem to be hairier
than others.

when the beans ripen in the pods for some
of them the pods may get damaged or splotched
with fungi, chewed on by bugs/rodents, etc.
the correlation between the condition of
the pod and the condition of the dry beans
inside is not very high unless the pod has
actually been punctured.

there were many times when picking where i'd
miss a pod and only come back and find it
dragging in the dirt or otherwise splotched
and full of fungi on the outside. get the
pod open and find out the beans were perfectly
fine.

that is yet another reason why i think
organic methods are just fine. if i wanted
less splotchy pods i could stake the plants
to get more pods off the ground or out of
the close growing plant vines that some
varieties have. and yes that would actually
help for some of the harvesting and i'd have
perhaps a better result, but the thought of
dealing with even more staking and working
around the stakes is not high on my list
of good things to do. so i accept that i
might lose a handful of beans here or there
to fungal damage or more rodent damage from
them being on the ground and call it good.

sometimes i'd open a pod and find one bean
damaged or growing fungi and the rest of the
beans in the pod would be fine. other times
it was a loss of the whole pod to fungi. i
kept all those beans apart from the rest in
the buckets and now i have an entire bucket
of layered shells, fungi beans, other odd
beans i didn't want to eat and worm castings
(as a source of other fungi spores, bacteria
and the rest of the soil critters). they'll
not have worms put in there because i'm out
of covers for buckets and don't want to make
any more (as that would encourage me to keep
even more buckets of worms for the worm farm
and i'm short on space right now sooo... ).

other sorts of damage and oddities were
tiny dark spots (like the start of a fungal
growth or perhaps where a bug was inside
eating outwards). those went into the bucket
to be worm food too. some beans were split
like they had grown and then stopped growing
while the skin on the bean formed and then
we had a rain or something and they grew more
and split out of the skin. others had a
crackled or rough texture on the bean. i'm
sure they are edible so i didn't pick all of
them out. and then there are the times when
i'd accidentally toss a good bean away or
flick it with a shell and it'd land by a
good bounce in the wrong bucket. i wasn't
going to sort those back out again. worm food
they are.

and some beans are not all the way done or
they are aborted (hot weather i'm sure played
a big part in this last season). end up being
little specks of bean. and then some are just
very tiny beans and i don't want a lot of odd
sizes when cooking them. i could get different
sizes of mesh and screen them, but i've not
gotten to that stage yet. if i start selling
or handling more than a few lbs here or there
i'm probably going to have grade them.

other fun stuff, designing a bean shelling
"machine" in my head as i work on different
things. i figure i could protype it with
cardboard to get the shape and airflow figured
out and then when that is working i could
cover that with fiberglass. for air flow
there are plenty of energy efficient house
fans that would do the trick. to regulate
how much air isn't tough using a slide with
slots or holes. for crushing the beans
out of the shells before putting them in
the machine it is probably much easier to
do it with the pillowcase stomp method for
the harder beans. softer beans would need
a gentler kind of threshing setup. that
would be harder to do with simple stuff like
cardboard, but perhaps messing with some old
bike parts i could rig something up for not
too much $. all told a fun project if i can
get to it someday. then there is the dust
that comes out that you have to be very
careful with. the stuff can build up static
and/or explode if sparked. so either you
have to do it outside where there is enough
airflow to take care of the dust or you have to
filter the air and clean the filters in between
batches of beans.

in comparison the real easy method does look
more appealing on the costs involved. crush
the pods in the pillow case by walking on them
(it's a fun dance . then use the tossing in
the air when there is enough of a breeze to
blow the empty shells and chaff away. the
downside is that you don't get all the beans out
of the pods and you lose the pods and chaff to
the wind and so don't retain that material for
feeding to the worms or you can try to capture
them, but then that adds a little more work
collecting them again. this is a fairly quick
method too when the conditions are right. i think
i could have processed the whole harvest this way
and spent much less time shelling. but then i
would have been out of my therapy sessions.

next season i'll likely be doing this second
method as the design and building of a boxy machine
with the ducts and cardboard would need space
that we don't have. sheets and pillow cases i
already got. still it is nice to daydream
sometimes. like what i'm doing about a model
railroad to sort the beans by color and grade them
for me. that would be a lot of fun too. i do
miss my railroad.

in my even more funnier moments i dream about
having mice and chipmunks working for me collecting
the beans right from the plants. after finding a
few piles of peas and beans in odd places. too
bad both of them can carry diseases you don't want
in contact with things you might later be eating.
for a fully manual labor situation though having
natural critters doing some of the work could be a
good thing if you can find the right kind of
critter. worms are certainly the perfect critter
for helping take care of the empty shells and dust.

and then i can wander off those tracks and start
daydreaming about crossbreeding and what characteristics
i'd try for... one thing i think soybeans are so
popular for is because they are almost round and so it
makes processing them much easier. what doesn't roll
is discarded as it is likely defective, rotten or too
small.

ok, it is more fun to think about how to make a
green model railroad for beans. like a big tower
to store the beans in that could act as an electricity
generator too. hahaha. bean power... well, past
the bedtime, but it has been fun wandering around
the noodle tonight.


songbird

On Mon, 2 Jan 2012 03:09:02 -0500, songbird
wrote:

The Cook wrote:
songbird wrote:
...
for sweet peppers next year we'd like to grow
some of the red peppers for a change of pace.

have you grown the red kind of jalapenos?

Jalapenos are like bell peppers, leave them on the plant and they turn
red.

ah, ok, i did see a package of seeds for
them and they were red instead of green
so i was wondering if they were a different
variety or not. the sweet green peppers
we grow do not turn red when they get
older, they turn dark brown and they taste
rather icky too.

Get California Wonder Bell peppers and Jalapeno N. You may have to
start these inside The instructions on my envelopes say to start
indoors 8 weeks before last frost. Set out when soil temps are at
least 55°F. It probably takes 75 days to mature fruit.

You should probably check with your county extension agent for
varieties that do well in your area.

--
USA
North Carolina Foothills
USDA Zone 7a
To find your extension office
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/index.html

Derald wrote:
songbird wrote:

other fun stuff, designing a bean shelling
"machine" in my head as i work on different
things.

In the 1970's, I worked with a fellow who had a home brew shelling machine
for cowpeas. I remember a contraption with a hopper that fed a wringer from an
old-fasnioned washing machine. He, too, used controlled airflow for winnowing.
The arrangement was a small-cage fan into a square-section duct with the
"Venetian" blind style dampers at the fan end. The trick is to provide adequate,
evenly distributed, easily regulated airflow over a fairly large area.

three pieces of cardboard with stripes cut in them
would work fine. four (giving a second axis of
movement) would provide even finer control, but is
unlikely to be needed.

it's the dust that is the hardest thing to deal
with effectively. the field combines just blow it
out their asses. when changed to an in place
operation then the risks of explosion and fire get
a bit too high for my comfort level. static
electricity can build up quickly and easily so there
is likely a need for a conductive coating or ground
wire mesh system embedded. hmm, yes, i think it is
a good idea to let this one pass for the simpler
method. i don't really want to get into even more
epoxyness. i have enough experience with that
already through doing seamless flooring for chem
labs, etc. and don't really want to be breathing
more of those fumes if i can help it... these days
concrete, stone, wood and dirt are about as
complicated as i wanna get...


I forget
how the rollers on the wringer head were adjusted. He abandoned the project
because in order for his mechanical marvel to work, the peas had to be too ripe
for his taste. For dried stuff, the stomp-the-pillowcase trick might be perfect.

so far it really is the simplest, low tech,
quickest, cheapest method, but you have to be
patient for the wind to get calm enough (around
here that is often a challenge).

shelling green peas in the pod would take a
whole different method than stomping. ew.
that'd be a mess... hahaha. green toe jam...


songbird