Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: cornishgirl on August 18, 2010, 19:21
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Hello from a very soggy Cornwall. I am growing cannellini and barlotta beans for the first time this year and so far they are doing well. I want to have them primarily as dried beans rather than fresh. Is it best to just let them grow on (and dry) or will I get a better crop if I pick what is available and use fresh and leave the ones later in the season to "dry on the vine"? I guess the same question applies to runners, but I always use these fresh?
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when the little bunches of beans get big enough to eat the seeds inside, then take the bunch off and hang it somewhere dry and airy, then if you are lucky the plant may produce some more for you :)
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Oh thank you, better start picking!!!!
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Just eaten my first barlotti beans of the year. I have to say they are the most flavoursome variety i have tried. I had them fresh in a slow cooker with chicken and passata.
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I pick mine before frosts and take the whole plants just pulled up and keep them in the shed at home. I put them in the lotty shed but the mice got to them :ohmy: You know when they're ready for pulling up as they look dead and start to go dry and crispy. Once in the shed you can put some baskets or trays under them to catch the beans as they drop out once the beans start to dry out, the beans just open and the beans pop out :) so no need to bother shelling them. You know they're ready if you've allowed them to pod naturally. Once they're all out of the pods I finish off drying them indoors (not in the kitchen or bathroom though) you need somewhere dry. Once fully dry you put them in glass jars in the kitchen where you can admire them. They're so pretty it seems a shame to eat them :)
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I much prefer the fresh beans so I do not dry them I freeze them, so they taste like fresh ones.
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the more you pick the more that grow, so pick pick pick , then leave alone to save sedds for next years crops ,
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When you talk about eating fresh do you mean fresh shelled beans or can you eat barlotta in their pods?
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Both, you can eat the whole lot when young or leave the beans to mature and then pod them.