The bean-speriment

So, a bit of background: I just started building a small hugelkultur bed, and a lot of the advice online warns that fresh wood in a hugel can take in a lot of the nitrogen as it starts to rot. As almost all of my wood was cut within the last week, I got thinking about nitrogen fixing plants, and specifically where I could get a lot of them very quickly. That's where the beans come in. I generally have various bags of dried beans in the kitchen cupboard, so I delved around and came out with a sealed bag of red kidney beans, and an open bag of black eyed beans. I figured both of those were worth a shot, so I left a decent handful of both to soak overnight, and I'm gonna sow them once I've put the finishing touches on the hugel bed.

I don't know exactly how old either bag is, they may have been languishing in there for more than a year, so I have no idea how successful this will be. For all I know these beans have been irradiated or otherwise killed before packing, as there's no information on the packaging on whether or not they have. I'm not too fussed if they don't give me a massive yield, or even if they don't survive cooler weather, they're green manure first and a food crop second right now. If anyone UK-based has ever tried growing the KTC-branded beans you get in the "world food" aisles of supermarkets, let me know!

I'll update this thread as things progress, I might try some different beans if these don't sprout, the bags aren't expensive and I can always cook any batches that don't seem to grow.

Despite my worries about how old they were, both the kidney beans and the black eyed ones sprouted just fine! I've mass-sown about half of them in one raised planter already, and I'm about to go and stick the rest of them in the one out front. I threw a handful in a sunny corner of the garden that's not got anything else growing in at the moment as well, just to see if they take there.

I've heard mixed things on the internet about whether black eyed beans will grow in britain, but as far as I'm concerned it's worth a shot.