It’s important to know how to store beans until your next harvest at home.
In nature, all living things are in the food chain. Beans, with their nutritional properties, are no exception. Where the area of its cultivation is located, specific insects, bean weevils, live. When infected in the habitat, these insects spread with grains, getting to where the beans do not grow, but there is a lot of them as a result of storage.
Therefore, all warehouses are treated with insecticides on schedule in order to destroy not only the weevil, but also other insects in the warehouse. The question of how to store beans for winter consumption is largely associated with its preservation from bruchus, a bean weevil..
How to store beans for the winter?
The storage of beans and green pods is different initially. Green beans are canned by all known methods, frozen and stored in this way with maximum benefit during the winter. But other conditions must be created to preserve beans. Considering that beans are a very useful product that replaces meat in their composition, it is easy to spoil stocks without observing storage rules.
The plant product should be protected:
- from improper drying and laying of wet grain;
- from storage in high humidity conditions;
- non-observance of temperature conditions.
Stored beans, even if stored properly, will decrease their nutritional value over time and increase cooking time..
Of all the bugs pests of grain and legume seeds for beans, the most common is the bean weevil or bruchus. These insects are quarantine pests. They live in a narrow area where beans have been cultivated for a long time. They come in with seed and gradually multiply. Therefore, the task of the quarantine service is to prevent the spread of the beetle to new territories..
Recently, this insect was stopped from entering the Far East on a Chinese ship in beans from India. The insect and its live clutches were found on the ship in food beans. Security measures have been taken. Bruchus is often caught from the fields of the Transcaucasus, there is its own species. Therefore, it is necessary to consider each bean in home plots before planting and destroy the seed with holes in the bean by burning. This pest came to Russia at the beginning of the last century, at the height of the Civil War, when there was no quarantine service. Until now, no caryopses have been seen in black beans..
Knowing the biology of the beetle, you can understand how to preserve beans so that bugs do not start up. The caryopsis actively reproduces in summer and winter in heated premises, giving 5-6 generations. In nature, a clutch of eggs goes into ripening beans up to 30 eggs each. But the masonry is stretched out in time. The egg-laying is found on the pod valves or on an unripe pod in a crack or gouged out fossa. The larvae will develop in 10-11 days and invade the beans. After 21 days, the caterpillar turns into a pupa and after 10 days an adult insect is obtained.
With a cold of 0-10, the death of larvae and pupae occurs in a month, at -12 0 in a day. So a cold storage method can keep the food stock from being destroyed. The beetle in the southern regions is not destroyed during mild winters and can colonize storage facilities in warm weather. They populate crops and manage to give 4-5 generations. Damaged beans lose their germination capacity. In the infested seeds, black dots of passages and excrement are visible through the shells.
Primary drying of grain before laying is of great importance. In good weather, the beans pulled out from the garden bed should lie in the sun for a few more days before opening the flaps, or, gathered in brooms, hang under a draft on a hanger. For food purposes, beans are threshed and prepared for storage in winter..
Storing bean seeds at home
How to store beans in winter for seeds is another story. Pods with intact valves and without the slightest flaws are selected. After drying in the sun, the beans in the pods are packed in a canvas bag and kept in the refrigerator until the onset of cold weather. Later, the bag is taken out into the cold, hung up so that rodents do not eat it. Disassemble the pods just before planting. Another way of storing seeds is to pour ashes and store them in a glass sealed container. By adding a head or several cloves of garlic to the package, the safety guarantee increases.
There are several ways to store beans at home for the winter. The humidity of the ambient air should be no more than 50%, and the temperature stopping biological development should be 10 0, that is, before the onset of frost, the storage place is a refrigerator. Store in linen bags, you can put a garlic head inside.
If there are a lot of beans, they can be stored in cardboard boxes or wooden crates, but the inside should be a layer of plain black and white newsprint. Printing ink also prevents insects from settling. Of course, winter storage in a cold place will guarantee the safety of the product..
Another way to preserve beans for the winter is to use heating the marketable grain. When heated in the oven to 90 0 for several minutes, the beneficial properties of the beans will be preserved, and the contents will die. After such processing in a dry container with sealed lids, the beans will survive for more than one winter. Another way is to warm up at 10 0 for an hour.
The lids under which the beans are stored can be glass and metal. Polyethylene – breathable. Cloth bags for storage must first be soaked in saline and dried.
When storing beans in a warm open state with disturbance of moisture, the beans can sprout or become moldy. You cannot eat bean sprouts. It can be used as a planting material if it is time for sowing..
