Harvesting Green Bean Seeds

It was a great feeling to be "working the garden" again so to speak, even though the garden itself is "resting" for the winter.  At the end of October we hung the green bean vines in the basement so the bean pods could dry.  Today we shelled the dried pods to save the seeds for our 2014 Spring garden. 

Some of the pods dried beautifully (note the one on the right), some shriveled up into nothingness (on the left)...

...and some got eaten by the mice (much to our surprise but we shouldn't have been surprised because the little scavengers will eat anything and everything available during the winter)...

It was easy to pull the dried beans from the stalks, and though the leaves look somewhat fresh, they were dry and crispy (just what we wanted)...

...we collected 3 separate baskets of pods...Striker, Pole and Bush beans...

...and carefully removed the seeds from the pods.

...and put them in a bowl, culling out any bad looking seeds...

...and stored them in clean, labeled glass jars with a small envelope of instant dry milk (a recommendation we read about but had not added those envelopes yet) which is supposed to soak up any moisture in the bottles.

Until spring, rest well bean seeds!

Thanks for reading my blog, you are the best f/f/r/s/f's, see you tomorrow,
Lise