How to Save Bean Seeds For Next Year: Green And Dry Beans

Just a small handful of bean seeds can produce plants that will grow hundreds more seeds to plant the next year! It may not quite be like Jack and the Beanstalk, but beans are a truly prolific crop, and it's easy to learn how to grow beans.

Beans are also one of the easiest crops to save seeds from. By learning how to save bean seeds, you can preserve your favorite heirloom varieties of green beans and dry beans to plant next season, and then the season after that, and the season after that, and never have to buy seeds again!

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Seed saving is a great skill to learn and pass down from generation to generation. It unlocks so much potential when you can not only grow your own food, but also grow your own heirloom vegetable seeds. It gives you food security AND seed security! 

If you’re new to seed saving, beans are a great place to start. I hope you will use this information and then check out more of our free resources on seed saving:

• Complete Guide to Seed Saving

• How to Save Tomato Seeds

• How to Harvest Sunflower Seeds & Save Them 

• How to Save Pumpkin Seeds for Planting 

• How to Save Lettuce Seeds

Why I Love Saving Heirloom Bean Varieties

One of the most exciting things about seed saving is preserving rare varieties that have fascinating histories, like the 1500 Year-Old Cave Bean! It is one of the rarest bean varieties we have grown at MIgardener.

According to the story, researchers discovered a clay pot containing bean seeds inside a cave. Those bean seeds were believed to be over 1500 years old, but because they were sealed inside the clay pot and protected from the environment in the cave, they were amazingly well preserved.

The story continues that those researchers took the seeds, successfully germinated them, and grew pole bean plants from them! Seeds were saved from those plants, then shared, until we received about 12 to 15 beans from a friend at a seed swap.

Whether this story is entirely true or not, I can’t be certain, but regardless, the 1500 Year-Old Cave Bean is very cool! It is an absolutely beautiful, mottled rusty brown pole bean with white blotches.

Cross Pollination in Beans

We grew our 1500 Year-Old Cave Beans isolated in a greenhouse away from other bean varieties, and then hand-pollinated them to make sure that they were completely safe from cross pollination. We had excellent germination and production, with plants so tall that they climbed to greenhouse rafters and hung back down, producing hundreds of pods!

Even if you don’t have a greenhouse at home, you can still save bean seeds from your home garden. Most common bean varieties are self-pollinating, so it is relatively easy to save seeds from them without worrying about cross pollination. However, it is still possible when growing multiple varieties.

Pro-Tip: If you’re growing heirloom beans for seed saving, consider isolating each variety of bean plants to reduce the possibility of cross pollination. Read my guide on Avoiding Cross Pollination in Your Garden for more information. 

Select the Best Plants For Seed Saving

When you are selecting which plants to save seeds from, choose only the best plants that are healthy, growing vigorously, highly productive, and disease-free. (On a small scale, you only need to choose one or two plants.) On those plants, instead of harvesting all the beans while they are young and tender, like you do for fresh eating, leave some of the biggest, healthiest pods on the plant. 

Once those bean pods begin to mature, stop watering the plants and allow the pods to dry out naturally on the plant. When the pods are yellow and completely dried out, it is time to harvest and save the seeds. Pro-Tip: Rain and moisture can cause pods to mold or rot before you are ready to harvest the seeds. If the weather isn’t cooperating to allow the pods to dry out, you may need to harvest the mature pods and dry them indoors in a warm, dry, well-ventilated area before harvesting the seeds.

Supplies Needed for Seed Saving

Saving bean seeds doesn’t require any special equipment. In fact, most of the work can be done easily by hand, but these items will come in handy:

• Seed Saver Packets - Seed saver packets are perfect for storing your bean seeds until it’s time to plant.

• Bucket - Depending on how many seeds you are saving, two 5-gallon buckets may come in handy.

• Box Fan - If you are saving bean seeds on a larger scale, a box fan can be used to separate the lightweight chaff from the heavier bean seeds.

How to Save Bean Seeds

When saving seeds for your own home garden, you may only need three or four mature pods to have enough seeds for the next growing season. In that case, you can just take the completely dry bean pods, break them open by hand, remove the bean seeds, and store them in seed saver packets until next season. It’s that easy! 

But if you want to save bean seeds on a larger scale so that you have more to use and share with others, I will explain the full process from start to finish of how we take a large number of pods and harvest the seeds.

1. Allow the Pods to Dry - Once you have mature pods on your bean plants, stop watering them and allow the pods to dry out naturally on the plant.

2. Harvest the Pods - Pick the pods off the plant and collect them in a 5-gallon bucket.
   

3. Crush the Pods - Use your hands to crush the pods, breaking them open to release the seeds. When you’re sure that all of the seed pods are broken up, you can remove the bulk of the lighter material from the top of the bucket. You will be left with seeds and some lighter chaff in the bottom of the bucket.
   

4. Sift Out the Chaff - Place the box fan on a table or other elevated surface and put the second bucket in front of it on the floor. Turn on the box fan and shake your seeds out in front of the fan so that they fall through the path of the wind and into the bucket on the floor. The wind generated by the fan will blow all the lighter material away, but the heavier seed will fall into the bucket.

5. Store - Place your seeds in a seed saver packet and label it with the name of the variety, the date, and whether or not they are potentially cross-pollinated. Store the packets in seed storage containers in a cool, dry, dark place.