Now that fall is upon us and the garden is pretty much ready for winter, I decided to tackle our large harvest of dried wax beans in order to remove the dried beans from the seed casings. We acquired the allotment garden at the end of July, and the large plot of wax bush beans our predecessors had planted were already overripe and no longer edible as green beans. So upon the advice of a dear elderly experienced gardener, I left the beans on the plants until they were thoroughly dry. She had said that after harvesting I should spread them on newspaper to further dry, up to the point where the pods were stiff and crackling. So that's what I did.
Then one dreary evening (it's already dark here in Germany by 5 p.m.) I settled in and began to remove the seeds.
The beans were quite pretty, shiny white with black markings. Still, my husband suggested we cook up a batch as bean soup to see if they really tasted good as dried beans before shelling the whole two bucketfuls.
When I washed a bowlful, I noticed an insect or two rising to the surface of the water without thinking much of it. After all they were organically grown beans from the garden. But after I had soaked them for a while and they had somewhat expanded in size, I noticed that every single bean seemed to have a small round hole in it. I took one out, cut it open, and inside there was a tiny live beetle! It turned out there was a beetle in every single bean! Not a worm - a beetle. Being soaked for a few hours hadn't phased them. Horrified, I dumped the entire lot onto the compost without thinking to grab my camera and get a photo.
After researching on the internet I discovered that they must have been bean weevils. I found a great picture of them on a Danish website by searching for the Latin name Callosobruchus maculatus. After discovering that the website had German and English versions, it turned out to be a website run by people who have a mail order business for poisonous dart frogs, geckos, and other terrarium animals they breed themselves. So why do they have such a professional photo of bean weevils on their site?? Because they raise them, too, as food for the frogs! Here's the picture, at a later stage than my beans were:
The creatures have an interesting life cycle, spending almost their entire life inside of the bean they call home. They crawl out to mate and lay eggs on the beans, and the hatched larva then chew their way in where they pupate. So will we now have trouble growing beans without using insecticides, which we are determined not to do?
If anyone has advice on this I'd be grateful. I've been trying to psych myself into liking our slugs (see my post on snail whispering), but I don't think I can get close to a bean weevil. Maybe I'll get in touch with those Danes about a business proposition!
If anyone has advice on this I'd be grateful. I've been trying to psych myself into liking our slugs (see my post on snail whispering), but I don't think I can get close to a bean weevil. Maybe I'll get in touch with those Danes about a business proposition!
