Selection Of Varieties And Agricultural Technology Of Beans

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Vegetable beans are a rare guest on the table

The value of culture

Our gardeners began to forget something about beans. Now they are planted extremely rarely, except to scare away moles. I'll tell you right away: it doesn't help! But beans were known back in the days of Yaroslav the Wise. For many centuries it was one of the main garden crops. But ever since people mastered potatoes, beans, as they say, "stayed on beans."

And in vain, because beans are plants of high nutritional value. They contain up to 37% of vegetable proteins, 50-60% of carbohydrates, vitamins A, B

₁, B

₂, PP, C, there are sugars, pectin substances, as well as many trace elements. In terms of calorie content, beans are 3.5 times higher than potatoes.

Because beans are high in proteins and dietary fiber that stabilize blood sugar levels, hunger is not felt for long after eating them. Therefore, studies have shown that people who regularly consume beans weigh almost three kilograms less than those who do not consume them! They contain a lot of such fruit carbohydrates as fructose and glucose, they are useful for patients with diabetes mellitus, since the body does not need insulin for their absorption and processing.

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And one more property of them was recently discovered by British scientists: the beans contain a substance that inhibits the growth of cancerous tumors. What a valuable garden plant it is!

Vegetable beans are an annual cross-pollinated plant. It is pollinated by bumblebees and bees. The fruits of beans are called beans - this is what we commonly call pods. The leaves of young beans are fleshy, tender; when ripe, they are rough, dark brown. Seeds are large, differ in color, size, shape in different varieties. Both unripe beans and ripe seeds

are eaten

Beans are one of the most cold-resistant vegetable crops. Seeds begin to germinate at + 3 … + 4 ° С, and the seedlings tolerate frosts down to -4 ° С. The best temperature for fruit setting is + 18… + 20 ° С. Beans are long day plants. With a short day, flowering and fruiting are greatly delayed. They give crops in cold rainy summers - this is just a big plus for our region. In dry summers, only the lower beans are usually tied and the upper buds fall off.

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The soil

Beans are most fond of heavy clayey soils well fertilized with manure. They are cultivated on lighter soils, but they must be necessarily moist. Peaty-boggy soils are also suitable for beans. They need to be fertilized with copper, otherwise the beans will give many stems and few seeds. Tillage depth - on a shovel bayonet.

The root of the beans is taproot, extending into the soil to a depth of 1 m or more. Due to this, they deeply loosen the soil and not only do not deplete it, but, on the contrary, significantly improve, increase fertility due to nodule nitrogen-fixing bacteria. When preparing the soil for the beans, it is necessary to provide these bacteria with conditions for active life, so that the process of assimilation of nitrogen from the atmosphere by the plant is normal.

This means that the soil should be loose, saturated with moisture, but not waterlogged and not acidic. In the spring, it is useful to add organic fertilizer to the garden bed - half a bucket per 1 square meter of area, as well as superphosphate, potassium salt - 1 tablespoon each - and, if the soil is very poor, add 10 g of ammonium nitrate - all this per 1 square meter. It is good to add ash under the beans, which activates the activity of nodule bacteria.

The best precursors to beans are potatoes, cabbage, beets, turnips. The beans themselves are excellent predecessors, after which everything grows. Often beans are sown in rows of potatoes under a shovel or in a hole when planting potatoes (sideways) for 1-2 seeds, as well as in rows of cucumbers. My experience has shown that beans thrive in potatoes, but the potatoes are small.

Vegetable beans varieties

Before in Russia there were many varieties of beans, now there are few left. Among them, the following are the most common in the Northwest region.

Russian blacks - the most common zoned variety, medium early, low, a little more than half a meter. On a plant there are up to 16 not very large beans that do not crack. The seeds are dark purple. Harvest - up to 0.5 kg per 1 m2.

Belarusian - mid-season, fruitful variety up to 1 m high. The beans are harvested in the phase of waxy ripeness, as they crack when ripe. Ripe beans are light brown.

Windsor greens and

whites are medium early, fruitful, with wide pods, famous for their very tasty large seeds. Ripen in July-August.

VirovskieIs a mid-season disease-resistant variety. Seeds are large, white, tied from the first knot, especially tasty in milk ripeness. The plant has up to 28 beans.

Bobchinskie - medium early sugar variety - 60-65 days from full germination to technical ripeness. Plant height up to 60 cm. From 7 to 15 beans 6-8 cm long are tied on the plant. Bean leaves are fleshy, very tender, sugary. The seeds turn black-purple when ripe.

Beans of the Belarusian and Windsor varieties have a particularly pleasant taste. When cooked they turn brown, but they still have the full flavor typical of beans. Unfortunately, many modern beans, which retain their white color during cooking, do not have such a taste and aroma.

Sowing beans

The beans should be sown as early as possible, as soon as the bed is free of snow. In the North-West region, it is good to sow them in the first decade of May, when the soil is still wet, since a lot of moisture is required for the seeds to swell and the initial growth of plants.

Bean seeds are sorted out before sowing, removing damaged by pests and diseases. It is also possible to heat seeds before sowing for 3 hours at 40 ° C (on a heating battery) or in hot water (50 ° C) for 5 minutes with rapid cooling in cold water. Before heating, seeds must be kept in water at room temperature for 4-5 hours. Warming up the seeds will significantly increase their germination.

Sow in an ordinary way, between rows 50-60 cm (for Russian blacks - 45-50 cm), in a row seeds are sown every 10-15 cm. 20-25 germinating seeds are sown per 1 square meter, the planting depth is 6-8 cm on lungs soils and 4-5 cm - on heavy. It is very important not to thicken the crops.

Care

Crops are required to be kept loose and free from weeds. During the growing season, 2-3 inter-row loosening is carried out to a depth of 8-13 cm, they are stopped at a plant height of 50-60 cm. During the second and third loosening, the plants are spud, which helps to strengthen the root system, increase the resistance of plants to winds. At the same time, the beans are fed with mineral fertilizers. If the soil has been well filled in the fall, no fertilizing is required. When the fruits are formed and grow up, they carry out the so-called chasing of beans - pinching the tops of the stems. This helps fight black aphids, which love young, delicate leaves, and also increases the flow of nutrients to the seeds. If the plants shed flowers and young ovaries, then they suffer from a lack of water.

Harvesting the beans

Bean harvesting is started depending on their purpose. If the fruits are intended to be eaten raw, whole (grains with valves), they are harvested when the valves are fleshy, juicy, tender, and the grains inside reach a size of 1 cm (it is not necessary to collect earlier: the fruits are bitter). Or when seeds in milk ripeness reach full size for a given variety. Such grain tastes better than ripe grain. The pods are broken out by hand selectively, as needed, starting from the bottom. This is done very carefully, trying not to damage the stem of the plant.

Only beans with ripe seeds are suitable for seeds and storage for the winter. They begin harvesting for seeds when the pods turn black. The stems are pulled out and ripened in sheaves in a ventilated room or under a canopy. Threshing is carried out manually, husking seeds from the valves.

Bean harvest storage

Ripe seeds can be stored well in the kitchen after drying in a glass jar. Fresh unripe beans are better, of course, to immediately carry from the bush to the kitchen. They are stored in the refrigerator for several days. If you do not have time to eat them during this time, you can freeze them by placing them in bags.

Read the next part. Bean Recipes →

Lyubov Bobrovskaya

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