Growing beans is a profitable and rewarding business, because this legume is popular in our kitchen. She is loved for her pleasant taste and heartiness, they appreciate the variety of dishes that can be cooked with or from beans.
It is easy to stock up with a product from autumn, but it is not easy to keep it. You can not keep the beans anywhere, otherwise in the middle of winter, it will become unsuitable for adding to food and go to the garbage disposal. To avoid this, you should remember the basic rules of its storage.
How to store beans - basic requirements
To save the beans the whole winter, it is necessary to fulfill two mandatory conditions concerning the place of its placement:
- Humidity should not exceed 50%.
- The temperature is kept at a maximum of 10 degrees heat.
Thus, the main place of storage of beans is the refrigerator.
Save the beans for the winter
Before you bookmark the beans for the winter, you need to perform the following operations:
- Dry. When the weather is dry and sunny, the pods should be spread out on a flat surface and left in the sun until evening. After it gets dark, the beans should be sent to boxes or baskets and continue to dry the next day. Instead, the legume plucked from the beds can be gathered into brooms and hung in a place where there is a good draft. The result will be the same as when dried under sunlight.
- Check the readiness of the beans for subsequent storage. Legumes fully matured when the pods became dried and faded, and the leaves began to open slightly. To touch the beans should be firm.
- Remove the fruit from the pods and add it to the prepared container. You can use fabric bags and glass jars, which are tightly closed.
It is advisable to use metal or glass covers. Polyethylene unreliable: they let the air through. Sacks made of natural fabric, do not interfere with holding in a weak salt solution and dried.
- Place the beans in a cool place. The best option is a refrigerator. With the onset of frost, legumes can be placed in another cool room.
If the described rules are observed, the beans will remain in a completely suitable condition for two years.
Another method is used to help protect legumes until the next harvest. It is about heating the grain:
- Beans, freed from the pods, are laid out on a baking sheet and sent to the oven for about ten minutes. Temperature - 90 degrees.
- Beans are poured into containers, which can be hermetically sealed, and sent to the refrigerator.
Beans prepared in this way will last more than one winter.
How to save beans from bugs
The bean weevil is a small but harmful bug that penetrates into the grains even when they have just begun to ripen. It happens on hot summer days. Two or three dozen larvae can live in one bean. As a result, the product is damaged and loses a significant part of its taste and nutritional qualities. Beans can no longer be used for cooking or as seed.
Grain bugs feel comfortable only at high temperatures. Therefore, if they are already bred in a legume culture, it should be sent to the freezer. Bugs instantly fall out.
But it is important not to force insects to leave the fruit, but to prevent them from appearing at all.
To protect the beans from bugs and keep the product longer, you can use one of the options:
- Pour the beans into the fabric bags and add a few cloves of garlic. Instead, you can put the seeds of dill. They are able to secrete substances that repel grain beetles. Insects are afraid to penetrate into such cultures. Bean grains with similar additives can be successfully stored in a cool pantry.
- Bugs will not get into the beans if you keep them in the refrigerator all the time. When winter comes and the air temperature will cool to seven to ten degrees, the beanbags can be sent to the glazed balcony.
- Place the beans in a glass container and add ash to it. Its quantity should be from ten to twenty grams per half-liter jar. The container must be closed with a metal lid. The beans are protected from the penetration of air, so it will be kept well at room temperature.
- Prevents the appearance of insects printing ink. If there are many beans, it can be placed in cardboard boxes or boxes, the bottom of which is made up by newspapers in several layers. But this method is less reliable than the previous ones.
Storing beans is a difficult and troublesome business. If you do not follow the rules that help protect legumes, much of them will have to be thrown back in the middle of winter. In order to prevent such a disastrous result, it is necessary to work a little and keep the beans right. Then it will remain fresh and nutritious until the new harvest and even longer.
