← Field crops: grain, maize, pulses and potatoes
H14-04 · Module 4 of 7 · Pages: 18 · Worksheets: 5
Beans, chickpeas, lentils and broad beans
Dry beans, runner beans, chickpeas, lentils and field beans on the field: sowing, care, harvest, threshing and cooking them safely
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In short
- One adult needs roughly 6 kg of dry seed a year (5–8 kg), which is about 44 m² of ground (30 m² of beans).
- Dry beans are sown only after the frosts, when the soil is 12 °C (54 °F): in lowland UK and Ireland late May to early June.
- Broad and field beans are sown first (February–March, or October–November for winter types), lentils and chickpeas in April: they tolerate cold.
- Pulses don't need nitrogen fertiliser. Don't give them manure; give it to the crop that follows.
- Raw beans are poisonous. Soak them, throw the water away and boil hard for at least 10 minutes.
What's inside
Chapters
- Pulses on the homestead: how much and why
- Crops and heritage varieties
- Soil, rotation and root nodules
- Beans: sowing and care
- Chickpeas and lentils: pulses for drought
- Broad and field beans: first in the field
- Diseases and pests
- Harvest, drying and threshing
- Weevils, storage and seed
- Cooking safely
- Common mistakes
- Printable checklist
Worksheets
- Area calculator by need
- Seed and yield calculator
- Field and pole sketch
- A year of pulses
- Pulse log
Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.
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