I have been thinking for a couple of years that I would like to plant a garden of just beans for shelling/drying.  This year I finally did it.  Well I did not plant a whole garden, but half of a good sized one.  Since the organic seed beans were so expensive, I decided to try just buying a bag of black beans at the grocery store.  I did a germination test and got 100% germination, so I decided to go ahead with them (only $1.49 a pound, which I consider a horrendous price when buying for food, but wow, a bargain for seed?!)

So far I have harvested maybe a quarter of the plants and have about 5# of beautiful black beans.  There are a few red beans thrown in there, too, since I ran across a handful of them in a baggie in the cupboard at planting time(? no idea why I would save a handful of beans).

At any rate, shelling beans is a wonderful way to pass the time while sitting on the deck on a warm fall day.  



Onion braids done by Katherine :)