I
was recently buying some groceries at Wal-Mart when I came across one pound
bags of cranberry beans for 92 cents U.S. Cranberry beans are a kind-of pinto looking
bean, only the markings are a distinctive cranberry red with some of the beans
being almost solid red.
I
like to experiment with different types of heirloom plants, and I had actually
looked at cranberry beans on an heirloom seed website. The website was selling their cranberry beans
for $3.00 U.S. for 40 beans. This seemed
a little rich for my taste so I took a pass on them. And here I am now looking at a pound of
cranberry beans for 92 cents. Now 40
beans this size weigh just a hair less than one ounce (28 grams), so a one
pound bag should contain around 640 beans.
That means my $3.00 dollars will buy me 40 beans from the website or
1920 beans from Wal-Mart, so I figured, “What the heck, I’ll give it a
try.” I remember when I was a kid, if my
dad was going to plant black-eyed peas, he’d just buy a bag of peas at the grocery
store and plant them. So I was hoping this would still work for me 60 years
later.
There
are a couple of things that could go wrong with this plan. For one, the beans could be hybrids that
would not reproduce true to type, or they could be genetically modified to
produce sterile seeds that won’t germinate.
I reasoned that both of these scenarios were pretty unlikely. I haven’t really ever heard of hybrid
beans. They may exist, but it seems that
a little selective breeding over the years has made beans pretty much perfect,
so what are the advantages of hybridizing them?
As for genetic modification with a terminator gene, I think that this is
usually reserved for big money crops like corn, wheat, rice, and soybeans. I don’t think cranberry beans are that big in
the agri-biz world. In fact, these at
Wal-Mart are the first ones I’ve seen outside of a seed catalogue. So, long story short, I think these are
probably a genuine, non-hybrid, non-GMO, heirloom seed. Time will definitely tell.
The
second thing that could go wrong is that these beans may be pretty old which
could lower their germination rate.
Unless seeds are properly stored; which is to say cold, dark, and dry;
their germination rate will decrease each year until at some point it’s not worth
the effort to plant them. Another thing
that could affect the germination is if the seeds have been exposed to high
heat. One advantage of buying from a
reputable seed company is that the seed will, most likely, be fresh and
properly stored to assure good germination.
But, as you can tell from the numbers above, premium seeds mean premium
prices.
The
only way to tell if the seed is going to germinate is to plant some and see if
it germinates, and the only way to see if it is heirloom seed is to raise a
crop and plant seed from it next year to see if it will produce another
crop. If it works I get a lifetime
supply of cranberry beans. If it doesn’t
work, I’m out 92 cents and a little labor.
So
I took my Wal-Mart cranberry beans and planted 80 of them. I planted them ¾” deep and about 6 to 8
inches apart in 2 rows that are about 8 inches apart. I tamped the soil down over them, and watered
them in.
The
first beans started breaking ground on the 6th day after
planting. On the 9th day the
beans were up and growing. I had 67
beans that germinated. If my math is
right that’s a germination rate of about 84%.
This looks to be about the same as the pink-eyed purple hull peas (on
the left below) that I planted from saved seed, and maybe a little better than
the Kentucky wonder beans (on the right below) that I bought at the feed store.
So,
the first hurdle has been cleared. The
beans germinated. Now I need to see if
they produce any beans. I’ll up-date this
post in a couple of months, and hopefully will include pictures of me picking
cranberry beans.