Butter beans

[oldjerry]

Thanks Graham,I just want to grow some pulses I can dry,dont get me wrong ,runners especially salted, are excellent,but this is some thing thats become a bit of an obsession.Take care mate , Jerry.

[Millymollymandy]

I have just found a use for my dried borlotti beans - baking beans!!

[grahamhobbs]

A few more reflections on growing butter beans and other beans for drying

1. Sow them as early as you can (or would runner beans) but so as to miss frost/bad weather when planting out.
2. Plant as you would runner beans to climb up 7 or 8 foot canes
3. About 30 butter bean plants gave enough beans probably to fill 1.5 litre jar - but there were losses due to failure to ripen them properly
4. Butter beans if picked before fully ripened (pods completely dried on plant) quickly deteriorate, going brown and then mouldy. You must either cook immediately they are shelled or left in pods to ripen. For really white butter beans, the beans must be fully ripened in the pod ie. the pod fully dried before shelling.
5. Butter bean pods have tough skins, so i think it is probably safe to leave them on the plant, despite autumn rains, until they have dried.
6. Borlotti beans however tend to rot in their pods once the weather turns, so I would pick them and store them in a dry well ventilated space until they are dry. Borlotti don't seem to spoil if shelled a little 'green', but they then need to be dried carefully and quickly.
7. If you are going to store any beans dried, you must kill any bean weevils. This can be achieved by spreading on a tray and placing in a already hot oven at 175deg for 15mins, perhaps a bit more for large butter beans. This has the advantage of killing any weevils and drying the beans.
8. You either need to let the beans cool or you need to warm the jar you are going to store them in, otherwise condensation can form inside a cold jar, which will encourage mould.
9. If you want to save beans for sowing next year, these you cannot heat treat, but these should be put in the freezer for a couple of days to kill any weevils. When these come out of the freezer they will be damp and need to be carefully dried off. They need to be spread out (try to avoid beans touching) and dried quickly.
10. Do not leave beans just podded heaped up for any time, in a warm atmosphere they will sprout and/or go mouldy very quickly
11. Climbing Borlotti beans seem to give larger beans, a much bigger crop for the same area as low growing varieties, and probably a slightly bigger crop than butter beans.
12. In our climate, Butter beans seem to spoil more easily than Borlotti and require a good season to ripen properly. Makes me wonder why the English traditionally have eaten butter beans but not Borlotti - anyone know?

[oldjerry]

Great stuff ,thanks Graham,I've printed that off as well as you're last post,and put it in my notebook(don't trust meself not to press the wrong thing on this keyboard). Thanks again, OJ

[grahamhobbs]

Well I thought I'd managed to save one kilner jar of butter beans, having I thought dried them thoroughly, including a spell in the oven, but a few weeks after putting them in the jar they've started to go mouldy.
I am concluding that the beans need to thoroughly dry on the plant first (and then the oven treatment). This may be a problem in that the season may not be long enough, as a couple of pods I left on the plant still haven't dried fully and it's now December. Also I heard reports of squirrels eating beans left on the plants and squirrels are a big problem for us.
Next year I'll try and get some sown a bit earlier but I will probably concentrate on Borlotti beans as they seem easier to deal with.

[oldjerry]

D'you think pulling up the plants as whole as poss,and hanging them in a greenhouse/tunnel would be any good?

[grahamhobbs]

Old Jerry, that is obviously worth a try. I'll give the butter beans another go next year, but having eaten some ordinary runner bean beans last night which although a little bit smaller than butter beans are equally as tasty. Basically butter beans are a variety of runner beans, so if you plant a white beaned runner bean, such as White Lady (which is a very good runner bean), other than being slightly smaller they are essentially the same.
Butter beans are bigger, but have less beans per pod, the pods are short and rough so you can't really eat them at that stage, they are slower to set and take longer to ripen. So next year I will compare the butter bean with White Lady specificaly left to go to seed.