Mrs. Platt's Young Botanists

Most people are now planning their spring gardens, but Mrs. Platt's class has already been hard at work growing kidney beans.  It is fun to watch them grow, and this type plant grows very quickly as we all know from reading the folktale Jack and the Beanstalk.

To follow are pictures of our young botanists and fun facts about beans.

Click on pictures to enlarge

Dry Edible Beans

Dry Edible Beans
Dry edible beans are used for human food.  They are an excellent source of protein, fiber and energy.  Dry edible beans are legumes because they enrich the soil with nitrogen, which is important for growing healthy crops and maintaining soil quality.  New World explorer Christopher Columbus found beans in Cuba during the sixteenth century and took them back to Europe, where they were considered to be a special treat.

A. Mature Plant
Dry edible beans have viny plants which either grow upright like a bush or spread evenly across the ground.  The more upright the plant, the more resistant it is to diseases.  The plants typically grow 24 inches tall.

B. Bean Pod
The bean seed grows in a pod.

C. Pinto Beans
Pinto beans are various shades of brown and tan.  Nebraska producers grow 60,000 to 70,000 acres of pinto beans in the western portion of the state.  Pinto beans are commonly  used in Mexican dishes, such as refried beans.

D. Great Northern Beans
Great Northern beans are oblong-shaped, plump and white.  About 100,000 acres of Great Northern beans are grown in western Nebraska, where the climate is cool and dry at harvest time.  Great Northern beans are used in soups and other bean dishes.

E. Light Red Kidney Beans
The light red kidney bean is large and kidney shaped.  These beans are often used in chili and are commonly sold at grocery stores.

Planting
Nebraska producers grow Great Northern, pinto and light red kidney beans.  The beans are planted in late May to mid-June.  These varieties are drought-tolerant, which means they can survive even if there is little or no rainfall.  Many bright, sunny days in western Nebraska help develop bean color, which is an important selling point.

A machine called a planter is used to place the crop into the soil.  The seeds are pushed into the ground about an inch and a half to two inches depending on the moisture in the soil.

Harvest
It takes 80 to 90 days for the bean plants to mature.  Harvest begins in early September, when the plants are dry and the leaves start to fall off the plants.  The bean stems are cut just below the soil surface with a special attachment called a knife and placed into piles called windrows.  The best time to cut the bean stem is before dawn, when dew on the plants help prevent the pods from breaking open and spilling the beans on the ground.  After four to five days or when the windrows have dried thoroughly, the bean plants are picked up with a machine called a combine and the beans are removed from the pods.

Dry edible bean producers make adjustments to their combines to protect the beans from being damaged.  Damaged, split or broken beans are not acceptable to canners or packagers.

Processing
Beans are brought to a processing station where they are cleaned and sorted for size.  Keeping the beans clean is very important because these beans are used for human food.

As much as half of the dry edible bean crop grown in the United States each year is sold to other countries.  Great Northerns go to France, Greece and Northern Africa; pintos are shipped to Mexico and Spain.

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