How to store beans to prevent bugs at home for the winter

How to protect beans from bugs

The main pests - bean weevils - live in warehouses and in places of direct storage, as well as directly in garden plots, in bean pods. Their life requires appropriate weather conditions and nutrition, which is provided by beans.

One insect can lay more than 50 larvae in a pod. After 2-3 weeks, the larvae become adult pests. Eggs can be laid both in the pod itself and in the grains. This explains the fact why grain starts growing in a hermetically sealed container.

They prevent the appearance of uninvited guests even at the planting stage by applying pesticides to the site. For sowing, only healthy grains of ideally even shape, without visible damage, are selected. If you use infected beans for planting, you may lose the entire harvest next season.

Optimal storage conditions

To preserve beans for as long as possible, it is worth choosing the right conditions for this product.

Temperature

The duration of storage directly depends on the temperature. The optimal parameters are considered to be +5-10 degrees.

Humidity

To avoid the appearance of mold on the surface of the beans, the humidity should not exceed 50%. Otherwise, the product will lose its commercial qualities and acquire a bad smell.

Illumination

It is recommended to keep beans in a dry and dark place. It is best to put the product in a kitchen cabinet or pencil case. It should be located as far as possible from the stove.

Pest protection

To avoid damage to the beans by harmful insects, they should be placed in a glass container or textile bag. In addition to beans, it is worth putting some dill or garlic seeds in it.

How to prepare beans for storage

To preserve the grains until the next harvest, you need to dry them properly. In this case, the crop can be stored for several years without the threat of pest damage.

Do the following work:

The crop is harvested from the garden along with the pods.
Leave the beans in the sun, in a well-ventilated place. For example, in rural areas, crops were dried directly on the fence. In the city, you can adapt a balcony for these purposes by laying newspaper on the floor.
The beans are dried for two weeks. During this time, the pod should turn yellow and open slightly, and the grain should become hard.
The grains are poured onto a baking sheet and calcined at a temperature of about +60 °C for at least half an hour. This allows you to kill the pest larvae. Such beans can no longer be used as planting material.

If you need to save seed material for the winter, then after harvesting it is placed in the freezer for some time. The bean larvae die at low temperatures, but the germination of the beans remains.

Storing beans in jars

To prevent these unexpected guests from being in the jars of legumes, you need to put garlic in them. If you store it in a small jar, you can put it without the heads. and the cloves.

Also, legumes are also disinfected from pests using dill or ash. If the grains were not subjected to heat treatment, but were only air dried, then they should be kept directly in bags in the freezer. Fruits are stored in jars only under iron lids. Polyethylene allows oxygen to pass through.

And now vacuum caps and pumps are on sale. Pour the beans into regular jars and cover with lids with a silicone valve. And then you pump out the air through this device using a pump. A vacuum space is created for the product and they will remain safe and sound for a long time.

Rules for storing beans to prevent bugs

It is important to know that if you have a rich harvest and need to store it for more than one season, you should sterilize glass jars, then throw a little wood ash at the bottom and only after that add beans. Subsequently, the beans will only need to be rinsed with clean water and used for cooking. Ash will prevent the appearance of bugs and other pests.

A few cut cloves of garlic placed in a bean storage container will also get rid of the bugs. A large amount of beans is stored in boxes, the walls of which are lined with ordinary newspaper. Printing ink has a negative effect on pests, and the crop can safely overwinter.

Where to store legumes - jars, bags or boxes?

The main storage containers are glass containers and bags made of natural fabric. Each method has its own characteristics.

Read more ► How to store vegetables and fruits for a long time

Jar

Saving in glass containers is one of the most effective ways to avoid bugs. Before placing the fruits, about 4 cm of ash is poured into the bottom of the container.

The containers are sealed with metal and glass lids. A polyethylene lid is not suitable for these purposes, as it allows air to pass through.

The disadvantage of this method is that the legumes lose their ability to germinate.

The reason is that when the product is sealed so tightly, there is a lack of air not only for the growth of bugs, but also for normal respiration of the fruit.

The main storage containers are glass containers

The method is suitable if the beans will be used for cooking.

Bag or box

Linen bags and wooden boxes have their advantages. The fact is that such containers allow supplies to breathe. Before planting, the crop should be soaked for 30 minutes in salted water and dried well.

To prevent the appearance of bugs, dill seeds (20 g per 1 kg of legumes) and cut garlic cloves (4 pieces per 1 kg of product) are placed at the bottom of the bags and boxes.

The bags should be placed in a dry room out of direct sunlight. For this purpose, a kitchen cabinet with sealed opaque doors, which is located away from heating appliances, stoves, and ovens, is successfully used.

We choose containers and premises, create optimal conditions

Dry beans are stored in an airtight container. For such purposes use:

glass jar;
plastic bag;
Plastic container.

Insects and bugs should not get inside in any way. Beans are best stored in a dark and cool place. If there are concerns that the grain may reach the crop, then it is better to store it in the cold. The beans tolerate low temperatures well without losing their taste, but the bean larvae die. Before the onset of stable cold weather, you can place the grains in the freezer, and then simply take them out to the balcony.

In a humid and warm room, grains begin to germinate quickly, so do not keep them warm. The sprouts are not suitable for consumption and are used only for planting in the spring. If you plan to store beans in a canvas bag, you must first dip it in a saline solution and dry it. This procedure will protect the crop from both grain and other pests.

Dry beans: shelf life

Most often, harmful insects are found in stocks that have expired. Before placing the fruit in the container, attach a label to it with the date of packaging.

The average shelf life of beans is two years. You can store beans longer only for planting. Starting from the third year, bean grains gradually lose vitamins and other beneficial substances. This is caused by their drying out. At the same time, the germination of seeds decreases, but since they are soaked before planting, you can always discard ungerminated seeds.

If the beans, after lying in the container for more than two years, have changed shape or color, then they cannot be eaten. A change in color from white or red to gray or the appearance of spots on them indicates that they are affected by a fungus. This usually happens in the third or fourth year of storage of the product, especially in a humid area.

Frozen beans

You only need to freeze fresh, green beans just picked from the garden, you can even freeze them in pods. They are washed, the tails are trimmed with scissors, damaged areas or blackheads are cut out. If pods cut into pieces are used when preparing culinary masterpieces, this should be done immediately.

The next step is blanching. The pods are dipped into boiling water for a few minutes and then transferred to ice water. This makes it possible to preserve the beneficial properties and taste of the product as much as possible.

How to store beans at home

This product is in second place after meat in terms of the number of amino acids that are included in its composition. It is recommended for people with heart, bladder, and kidney disease. This product is also useful for patients with diabetes.

Like most legumes, you can harvest them at different times. After harvesting, a crucial period also begins - storing this vitamin-rich product.

Long-term storage of beans leads to a gradual decrease in their beneficial qualities. And so that the beans do not lose their beneficial properties and taste, special attention should be paid to storage.

If you know how to store beans at home, having previously processed them, they will not lose their beneficial and tasteful properties. One of the best ways to store beans is to place them in a cool place. This nuance is extremely important, since it is the low temperature that prevents pests from becoming active and harming the beans.

It is necessary to ensure that the temperature in the place where the beans are placed does not exceed 7 degrees Celsius. A good way out of the situation would be freezing. There is no need to be afraid of exposing grains to negative temperatures. Even if beans are stored at a temperature of minus five degrees Celsius, their taste and beneficial characteristics will not go away.

Preserving beans for the winter

Before storing beans for the winter, you need to carry out the following operations:

Dry. When the weather is dry and sunny, the pods should be laid out on a flat surface and left in the sun until evening. After it gets dark, the beans should be placed in boxes or baskets and dried the next day.

Instead, legumes pulled out from the beds can be collected in brooms and hung in a place with a good draft. The result will be the same as when dried in the sun.

Check the readiness of the beans for subsequent storage.
The legumes are fully ripe when the pods become dry and withered, and the valves begin to open slightly. The beans should be firm to the touch. Popular
news Remove the fruits from the pods and place them in a prepared container. You can use fabric bags and glass jars that close tightly.

It is advisable to use metal or glass lids. Polyethylene ones are unreliable: they allow air to pass through. It wouldn’t hurt to keep bags made from natural fabric in a weak saline solution and dry them.

Place the beans in a cool place. The best option is a refrigerator. With the onset of frost, the legumes can be placed in another cool room.

If the described rules are followed, the beans will remain in quite suitable condition for two years. Another method is used to help preserve legumes until the next harvest. We are talking about heating the grain:

— The beans, freed from the pods, are laid out on a baking sheet and put in the oven for about ten minutes. Temperature - 90 degrees.

— The legumes are poured into a container that can be hermetically sealed and sent to the refrigerator.

Beans prepared in this way will last for more than one winter.

How to Store Beans at Room Temperature

There is also an interesting way that allows you to store beans even at room temperature. In order to use this method, the grains need to be packaged in small boxes or containers. Next, you need to add a little dill and garlic seeds to each container. Their quantity directly depends on how many bean grains are in the container.

So, for one kilogram of beans you need from ten to twenty grams of dill seeds. As for garlic, up to four cloves will be enough for the same mass. But they must first be cut into several parts. Why add garlic and dill? It repels bean beetles, which are a major problem during long-term storage of beans.

Another storage method is to heat the grain. It is necessary to heat the oven to ninety degrees and steam for several minutes. The beneficial properties will not disappear with short heat treatment.

Next, place the beans in a dry jar with an airtight lid and store. Never use plastic lids as they allow air to leak.

Storing beans in glass jars is the most effective way to preserve their nutritional and beneficial properties for a long period of time. But in order to use it, you must first get some ash.

The fact is that at the bottom of each glass jar in which the beans will be stored, you will need to place a little ash. It should be placed in the form of a flooring with a thickness of two to four centimeters. After the beans are placed in the jar, it must be closed with a metal lid.

How long can beans be stored? Despite the popular belief that beans cannot be stored for more than two years, this method allows you to store grains for three to five years. But it is important to take into account that this method negatively affects their ability to germinate.

Therefore, if the beans are not intended to be eaten as food, then this method will have to be abandoned. Beans can also be canned. It will retain vitamins and will not lose its beneficial properties.

Thus, to properly store beans at home, you need to have certain knowledge. The main threat to grains is the grain beetle and fungus.

If you store the product in a cool, dry place in a tightly closed container, you can achieve excellent results. That is why you just have to decide where to store beans is most convenient for you in order to preserve the harvest as much as possible.

Storage at room temperature

If you dry the beans correctly, they can be stored in winter and at room temperature. A certain part of the grains can be frozen, and the rest can be frozen for several hours in the freezer before storage, and then dried. To destroy the bugs and their larvae, the beans are heat treated in an open oven.

The temperature in it is maintained at +100 °C. The beans are kept in these conditions for 20 minutes.

The container in which the beans are supposed to be stored must be hermetically sealed. It is placed in a well-ventilated dark place, for example, in a table or kitchen cabinet. The humidity in the room should be low, otherwise the grain may sprout.

Before storing beans, you should do the following:

choose beans with black spots or other defects;
peel dry pods;
remove seeds that have plaque on their surface.

Under no circumstances should you wash beans before storing them, or use containers that accumulate condensation. It is highly undesirable to store the harvested crop near a heating radiator or other heat source.

What and where to store

It is preferable to store beans:

in specially sewn canvas bags;
paper bags;
cardboard boxes;
glass container. However, you should only place grains in jars that you do not intend to plant next year.

It is not recommended to store them in plastic bags, as they quickly deteriorate. Legumes in canvas bags should be kept in a dark, dry, cool place. This could be a basement, closet or storage room. Grains in hermetically sealed jars can be stored in a kitchen cabinet at room temperature. But you need to remember that they should be kept away from heat sources.

The optimal temperature at which beans are stored is 5-10°C. If the air humidity does not exceed 50%, then the fruits will retain their original taste properties throughout the entire shelf life.

How to save the bean harvest from weevil - prevention and control measures?

Let's look at pest control methods and preventative measures.

Purpose of the events	Execution Rules
Preventive measures against weevil	Fumigation of seeds and treatment before sowing. On the day of sowing, treat with rhizotorphin (bean) and micronutrients.
Housewives' tricks for preserving the harvest.	Maintaining a cool temperature (no more than 8ºC). A balcony, a vegetable section of a refrigerator, or an unheated utility room are suitable. Separation of affected and healthy seeds. The crop is immersed in a saline solution of one bucket of water and 3 kg of table salt. Spoiled fruits float to the surface, they are separated, the rest are washed and dried.

Canned beans

This preparation is an excellent way to preserve the bean harvest for the winter. Canned food prepared according to all the rules is stored for two years.

Ingredients:

0.5 kg beans;
1 liter of cold water;
40 g granulated sugar;
40 g salt;
7 tsp. table vinegar;
cloves to taste;
black peppercorns to taste;
cold water for soaking.

How to cook:

The beans are soaked for 7 hours in cold water. Then the liquid is drained and the beans are transferred to a clean pan. Add cold water according to the recipe, add sugar, salt and spices.

Bring the contents of the container to a boil over low heat and boil for 1.5 hours. Periodically check the readiness of the beans with the tip of a knife. If the beans yield easily to pressure, they are ready.

Add vinegar to the pan and immediately turn off the heat. The finished product is placed in sterilized jars and hermetically sealed with tin lids.

Pros and cons of different methods

How to store beans? It can be prepared for the winter in several ways, which we have discussed. To choose the best one, consider the pros and cons of all these methods:

The refrigerator is the best method. The main thing is to choose a container that does not collect condensation.
The freezer is a completely appropriate option if there is not a lot of fruit, since the chamber is filled with many other products.
Balcony. This method is only suitable after the onset of cold weather or using garlic and dill.
A pantry or utility room is not the best option. With this method, the grains must be processed accordingly.

How to store beans for the winter?

Storing beans and green pods is initially different. Green beans can be preserved using all known methods, frozen, and thus they are stored with maximum benefit during the winter. But to preserve grain beans, other conditions must be created. Considering that beans are a very healthy product that replaces meat in its composition, it is easy to spoil supplies without following storage rules.

The herbal product should be protected:

from improper drying and laying of wet grain;
from storage in conditions of high humidity;
non-compliance with temperature conditions.

When beans are stored, even correctly, their nutritional value decreases over time, and the cooking time increases.

Of all the bugs that pest grain and legume seeds on beans, the most common is the bean weevil or bruchus. These insects are quarantine pests. They live in a narrow range where beans have long been cultivated. They arrive with seed material and gradually multiply. Therefore, the task of the quarantine service is to prevent the spread of the beetle to new territories.

Recently, we stopped this insect from reaching the Far East on a Chinese ship carrying beans from India. The insect and its live clutches were found on the ship in food beans. Security measures have been taken. Bruchus often comes from the fields of Transcaucasia, they have their own species. Therefore, in home plots, each bean should be examined before planting and the seeds with holes in the bean should be destroyed by burning. This pest came to Russia at the beginning of the last century, at the height of the Civil War, when there was no quarantine service. So far no grains have been observed in black beans.

How to preserve beans so that bugs do not infest you can be understood by knowing the biology of the beetle. The weevil actively reproduces in summer and winter in heated rooms, giving 5-6 generations. In nature, eggs are laid in ripening beans, up to 30 eggs each. But the masonry is extended over time. Oviposition is found on the valves of the pod or on an unripe bean in a crack or gnawed hole. The larvae will develop in 10-11 days and invade the beans. After 21 days, the caterpillar turns into a pupa and after 10 days an adult insect is obtained.

At cold temperatures of 0-10, the death of larvae and pupae occurs within a month, at -12 0 within a day. So the cold storage method can protect food supplies from destruction. The beetle in the southern regions is not destroyed during mild winters and can colonize storage facilities during warm times. They colonize crops and manage to produce 4-5 generations. Damaged beans lose their viability. In colonized seeds, black dots of passages and excrement are visible through the shells.

The initial drying of the grain before loading is of great importance. In good weather, the beans pulled out from the garden should lie in the sun for a few more days before opening the doors or, collected in brooms, hang in a draft on racks. For food purposes, beans are threshed and prepared for storage in winter.

Bean pests who else?

- slugs. Slugs really like tender bean leaves. However, the fight against slugs is a separate topic, which is the subject of an entire article on our website.

This is what beans look like after a visit from slugs

- whiteflies, codling moths and other gnawing and sucking insects. They are fought in the same way as aphids - both in terms of prevention and control.

Mistakes summer residents make when collecting and storing beans

Untimely and poor-quality harvesting. They skip the morning hours when the fruits are juicy. They pick the pods by hand, which leads to their breakage. It is safer to cut with scissors, holding the pod with your hand.

Do not maintain tightness when storing fruits in glass containers. This leads to damage to the beans by pests and loss of the harvested crop.

They do not prepare the soil before sowing. Planting on ridges for the first time requires enrichment with nodule bacteria. It is enough to add soil to the ridges from the places where beans used to grow or add special bacterial preparations.

Bean bushes are not left to obtain seeds. Separately grown seed plants provide high-quality material and do not reduce crop productivity.

How to dry beans

You need to dry beans at home in a natural way. The optimal place with the appropriate climate may be a veranda, a fence in a country house or in the village, a gazebo or a balcony in an apartment. First, you should carefully remove the pods from the garden bed, remove the remaining soil and place them in one layer on a wide tray, a sheet of paper or a spread cloth. The natural drying method can take up to 14 days. The dried beans will remain distributed into storage containers.

It is not always possible to dry the product in a well-ventilated area. In this case, you can use one of the following household appliances for quick processing:

oven;
electric dryer.

Depending on the power of the equipment and the volume of production, the process can take from 1 to 5 hours. To properly store beans, you need to separate unsuitable grains or pods from suitable ones. You need to sift out those beans that show elements of mold, rot, damage or black spots. These defects indicate that the product is infected with harmful bacteria, which can be transmitted to neighboring grains or pods.

Bean diseases

In addition to pests, various bacterial and fungal diseases and root rot lie in wait. Rusty spots appear on the leaves, pods and roots, which then turn black. To combat diseases, use a 1% solution with Bordeaux mixture. To reduce the incidence of legume diseases, the beans are treated before planting. It is soaked in:

1% solution of potassium permanganate,
a solution of baking soda, prepared and 1 tsp. soda and 1 liter of water,
3% hydrogen peroxide.

They dig up the soil in the fall, keep the garden bed clean, and pull out the weeds in a timely manner. One way to reduce the incidence rate is to adhere to crop rotation. You should not grow legumes in one place for several years in a row. If possible, beans are returned to their old place for planting after 5-6 years. In addition, earlier planting in cold soil (at a temperature less than +10 degrees) leads to the bean becoming moldy, and too much deepening leads to a siege by pathogenic bacteria.

Terms and conditions

Beans tolerate cold well.
She feels comfortable even at temperatures down to –5 °C. In addition, sub-zero temperatures prevent the proliferation of pests. If the harvest is large, store it on the balcony or in the pantry. When storing this type of legume, pay attention to air humidity. It should not exceed 50%

Otherwise, stocks may suffer from fungal diseases. Under favorable conditions, the maximum shelf life of beans is from 3 to 5 years.

Recently, green or asparagus beans have become very popular. But some housewives do not always have an idea of how to properly store this variety of legumes. After all, in the refrigerator it begins to deteriorate within 2-3 days from the date of purchase.

Beans tolerate low temperatures, so they can be stored on the balcony in winter.

To be able to eat this healthy product all winter, it must be properly frozen. Start by cleaning and washing the green pods. Then cut them into pieces, pour boiling water over them or hold them over steam for about 5 minutes. Dry the processed fruits, place them in sealed bags and freeze. Store the pods in the freezer for about six months. Please note that with longer storage they will gradually lose their nutritional and taste properties.