Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Showbags of beans














Above is a moment I love; opening a dirty brown wet bean pod without knowing what's in it (yes, I forgot which bean I planted where, classic) and in it a perfect little bean, red, white, lemony, speckled or brown (above you see Canadian Wonder, which alas had interbean-intercourse with, I assume, the originally rather brown Lazy Housewife, now their children are either faintly rosé or kidneybeancolour with white speckles. No seedsaving this year). The borlotti on the right found a home way above the Danish yellow pumpkin and still take a while to have seeds that can be dried for next year's garden. Now all of the beans (Dutch brown and lemon bean, besides the two sorts that had too close an affair) dry on a sheet besides the laptop fan.
As the bean weevil had a great summer vacation and ate through pretty much every single of the hundreds of John's holy beans in my room and then expanded himself into every corner and bedsheet wrinkle of my bedsheet, I'll try the freezing thing this year: dry the beans until really really dry (somebody suggested the hammer test: crush one with a hammer. If it cracks it's dry. It's still too wet when it just crushes gently, well). Then freeze at least 8 days and dry again, put them in glass jars after and hope the weevils pack their traps and leave to other far away beans.

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