Our life living off the land in our log cabin, breathing fresh mountain air, and getting back to basics.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Harvesting Green Bean Seeds

It was a great feeling to be "working the garden" again so to speak, even though the garden itself is "resting" for the winter.  At the end of October we hung the green bean vines in the basement so the bean pods could dry.  Today we shelled the dried pods to save the seeds for our 2014 Spring garden. 
Some of the pods dried beautifully (note the one on the right), some shriveled up into nothingness (on the left)...
...and some got eaten by the mice (much to our surprise but we shouldn't have been surprised because the little scavengers will eat anything and everything available during the winter)...
It was easy to pull the dried beans from the stalks, and though the leaves look somewhat fresh, they were dry and crispy (just what we wanted)...
...we collected 3 separate baskets of pods...Striker, Pole and Bush beans...
...and carefully removed the seeds from the pods.
...and put them in a bowl, culling out any bad looking seeds...
...and stored them in clean, labeled glass jars with a small envelope of instant dry milk (a recommendation we read about but had not added those envelopes yet) which is supposed to soak up any moisture in the bottles.
Until spring, rest well bean seeds!

Thanks for reading my blog, you are the best f/f/r/s/f's, see you tomorrow,
Lise

6 comments:

Vicki Lane said...

A good feeling -- harvest.

Osage Bluff Quilter said...

Oh I admire your work, but I think I will stick to the wooden seed cabinet at the local hardware store. Unless they sell it as a collector item! Then I'd have a place to store MY seed packets.

Susie Swanson said...

We try to do that every year also. Those mice will eat you out of house and home. Hugs, xo

Dad/Pepere said...

I guess harvesting goes on during the winter months too! Hugs!

Lise said...

So true Vicki!

Ha ha Patti! But I must admit there is something to harvesting your own seeds...the test will be if they grow!

That explains why our mice are so chunky and keep coming back Susie! Hugs to you!

It feels good dad, especially with everything we have to be considering right now! Hugs back!

Powell River Books said...

Good harvest. For the last several years I've let my peas and beans dry on the vine outdoors. We've had enough good weather outdoors to let that happen. My peas have been reseeding for two generations now. My beans were a complete bust. They grew nice plants last year, but no beans set. Don't know what happened there. - Margy