[ambodach]

Circumstances have been this autumn that I have only just now got round to dismantling this year's runner bean frame - yes, I know that's digracefull, but then I've only just got the garlic bed dug over and planted too, so everything is behind.  I do have a vaild excuse but let's not go into that.

Anyhow the bonus is that all the pods left on the runner plants have filled out to produce fine seeds for next year.  My question is this - each good seed is 4 to 5gms in weight, but when I went back to the seed packet, I am getting 5 runner bean seeds to 5gm; now I suspect it is a bit obvious that my seeds are still full of moisture - a little obvious with the damp autumn we have had, so what is a recommended way of drying them?

Many thanks,
Rob

[mumofstig]

On newspaper on a sunny windowledge, works for me 

[snowdrops]

At this time of year I’d put on newspaper or kitchen roll in the airing cupboard or ver a radiator but not on it as it’ll be too hot in direct contact with it.

[ambodach]

Thanks guys - just out of interest, what is the advantage of the newspaper/kitchen roll as any moisture that goes into that will just keep the seed moist; at the moment I have got them in my living room in a nicely segrated plastic tray from Costco . 

Part of this is an experiment to see why there so much of a difference between the seeds I have collected and those from a seed supplier - an effective 5 to 1 ratio is much higher than I expected, but maybe that is the norm for bean seeds.

[New shoot]

Bean seeds do dry out the longer you keep them as well.  They are viable for several years, so I often keep old self saved seeds longer than 1 year.  They get noticeably more wrinkled and smaller, but still grow.  The ones you buy have probably been stored a lot longer so will be smaller than fresh saved seed.

If you dry them on kitchen paper, you won’t really see any moisture on it.  You just need to keep them with as much air circulating as possible, so laying on paper of some sort is the usual advice.

[ambodach]

This is more of an 'out-of-curiosity' experiment a little bit, but I went back to my original post (18th Nov.) to see when I had laid the runner bean seeds out onto kitchen paper, and did another weigh of some of the larger seeds to see how much they had dried out.

These larger ones were weighing in around 5gms each and were straight out of the decaying pod so would be carrying about as much moisture as they would have wanted; they are now half that in 3 weeks - that is around 2.5gm.

Just curiosity!!