drying dwarf beans

[blondiewonder]

Hi, I have dried some beans from some dwarf french beans i grew and they have dried a different colour than those from the original packet, the originals were a very plain brown, mine are mottled, i just air dried mine, would it have something to do with mass production drying v air drying at home? will they still be any good?
many thanks

[Martin H]

It's probably not due to the way you've dried them. Maybe the original seeds were F1 hybrids, which do not come true from seed? Or maybe there were different french beans growing close by and they have crossed?

Still they will taste fine and will produce some sort of edible crop if you grow them next year, they just may not be like their parents.

[blondiewonder]

it doest say it was F1 on the packet, they are MAXI variety, oh well, it will be fun to see what grows.

[Alison]

Sometimes home saved ones do tend to be a different colour but difficult to say if that's happened here.

[Zelenina]

It's hard to tell without seeing the seeds. Do you have a photo?

I haven't found any listings of Maxi as an F1, and French beans usually aren't hybrids because of the difficulty of preventing self pollination in large enough numbers of pods. Each flower would have to be hand pollinated, which isn't easy in beans. It can be done as the first stage in producing a new variety, but not for mass production for the sale of seeds.

They do sometimes get cross pollinated naturally by insects, but this wouldn't show in the seed colour until the next generation. So if the different colour is due to a cross, it happened where your original seeds were grown, not in your garden. And it's very unlikely that all your plants would have been affected unless their seeds all came from the same pod. So there's probably a different reason.

According to this catalogue http://www.hildsamen.de/pdf/frucht_engl_bohnen.pdf the seeds of Maxi should be light beige. Bean seeds do darken with length of storage, so that would explain why the older seeds you planted were more brown in colour. But it doesn't explain the mottlings.

It's possible that they weren't actually Maxi, but a wrongly labelled variety with darker marblings, which could have become invisible when the whole bean darkened, but would show in new beans. But that's a long shot.

If the seeds are mottled with a lighter colour or white, it could be because they hadn't finished maturing when you harvested them. Bean seeds usually change colour in their pods while they are ripening. Did you dry them in the pods, or did you take them out? If you need to dry them off the plants, it's best to leave them in the pods so they can continue maturing.

[blondiewonder]

It's hard to tell without seeing the seeds. Do you have a photo?

I haven't found any listings of Maxi as an F1, and French beans usually aren't hybrids because of the difficulty of preventing self pollination in large enough numbers of pods. Each flower would have to be hand pollinated, which isn't easy in beans. It can be done as the first stage in producing a new variety, but not for mass production for the sale of seeds.

They do sometimes get cross pollinated naturally by insects, but this wouldn't show in the seed colour until the next generation. So if the different colour is due to a cross, it happened where your original seeds were grown, not in your garden. And it's very unlikely that all your plants would have been affected unless their seeds all came from the same pod. So there's probably a different reason.

According to this catalogue http://www.hildsamen.de/pdf/frucht_engl_bohnen.pdf the seeds of Maxi should be light beige. Bean seeds do darken with length of storage, so that would explain why the older seeds you planted were more brown in colour. But it doesn't explain the mottlings.

It's possible that they weren't actually Maxi, but a wrongly labelled variety with darker marblings, which could have become invisible when the whole bean darkened, but would show in new beans. But that's a long shot.

If the seeds are mottled with a lighter colour or white, it could be because they hadn't finished maturing when you harvested them. Bean seeds usually change colour in their pods while they are ripening. Did you dry them in the pods, or did you take them out? If you need to dry them off the plants, it's best to leave them in the pods so they can continue maturing.

that sheds a bit of light on things as some of the beans had dried in their pods and some hadn't, hence some are more mottled in colour and there is a variation amongst all of the beans. my question is are they still good to grow or should i have really left them all to dry in the pods to give them the best chance?
regards and thank you

[Zelenina]

I can't say for sure whether they'll be good to grow, bw, but if you have plenty of them you could try a few in a germination test. They are generally best if they can dry in the pods on the plants, but wet or frosty weather doesn't always allow that. Next best is to pick the pods after they've started going thin and leathery, and dry them indoors. Don't shell the beans until the pods are crisp and dry. If you pick them before the leathery pod stage the seeds don't mature so well.