Can you grow beans from Dried Grocery Store beans?

Can you grow beans from Dried Grocery Store beans?

I often see people asking if you can grow beans from the dried beans you can find in almost any grocery store. The short answer to that question is possibly.

Things that affect the outcome

For a bean to grow, it must first be dried. But the longer since it was dried, the less apt it is to sprout and grow. Dried beans can be consumable pretty much forever if they are kept dry, away from contaminants and pests and preferable as air tight as possible. However, if beans have been irradiated, their chance of sprouting is pretty low.

In the USA, it is not required by law for them to tell you on the package if the product as been irradiated. Unless you can find a brand that specifically says it has not been irradiated, your only choice is to buy a bag and test to see if they sprout. Simply soaking about ¼ cup of beans in water overnight will often show you whether they will sprout or not, but until you get used to seeing what a bean looks like when it first starts sprouting, you probably need to move beyond the first step of soaking overnight.

image source

The second step is easy. Drain the water from the beans, leave them in an open container so plenty of oxygen can get to them and let them sit. If you want to put them into a sprouter or cover the top with plastic screen to keep bugs and things out, that is fine. You do not want to let them sit in a cold place but it does not have to be extremely warm either. Sitting on your kitchen counter will be fine unless your house is very cold or very hot. In cold weather, it might be best to set them in a cabinet or inside an old cooler to keep the chill off.

Two to three times a day, rinse the beans and drain them again. The idea is to keep them moist, but you don’t want them sitting in water or they could mold. If they are viable, you will see tiny sprouts begin to grow from them within a few days. If after a week, none have sprouted, chances are very good they have been irradiated or they are extremely old and will never sprout. (Save them for cooking and eating)

This is how sprouts are made also

This is the same way people make sprouts at home to eat. Dried beans are not one of the most commonly sprouted seeds, but the general process is the same.

image source

If your beans sprout, they can grow more beans

If any one bean sprouts, you can grow more beans. It is just a matter of planting enough beans to have a chance of at least one sprouting. Except for in extreme instances, I would not try to grow from beans that have less than a 50% sprout rate.

That means if you plant two beans at every place, you have a good chance of at least one of them growing. Of course, you could always soak some beans and then only plant the ones that sprout. Either way you will probably end up growing lots of beans. The problem with pre-sprouting is it is easy to damage the sprouts when you have so many of them.

Of course, after the zombie invasion, you could easily be willing to plant with a 10% sprout rate to restart the food chain.

Dry your beans on the vine

As your beans grow, it helps to always give them something to run on. Wires or heavy string running between to poles works fine, or you could build a nice pretty trellis if you prefer. Just get them off the ground.

At the end of the season, the leaves and stems of your plants will turn brown. Leave the seed pods on the plant until they and the beans inside them are thoroughly dried. Shell them (remove the pod leaving just the beans), and allow them to sit in open air for another week or two to make sure they are 100% dried before storing in an air tight container.

Long Term Storage of your Beans

When you buy beans in a grocery store or in bulk at an organic food store, the first thing you will notice is their containers are NOT air tight. This is because their beans have not gone through the extra drying process I mentioned and the fact that it is more expensive to buy air tight containers for each size package, than it is to simply throw away a batch or box of beans if they mold or become infested. Molding rarely happens, but infestation is easy to happen.
What you grow and what you bring home from the store is food you and your family are depending on. It is in your best interest to make 100% sure they are stored air tight in something pests like pantry moths cannot get into.

Pantry moths are like having a demon in your pantry. They can eat through soft plastic,cardboard boxes and the metalized plastic so many foods come in these days. The only way to prevent them from infesting your food supply is to have it in air tight container made a heavy firm plastic or glass.

If you have a large quantity to store, it could be worth buying 5-gallon food grade buckets and gamma seal lids for them. Gamma Seal lids can vary greatly in price. The fewer you purchase at one time, the more expensive per lid they are. Shop around to get the best price that allows you to purchase what you need.

Gamma Seal lids come in many sizes and colors, so make sure you get the ones that will fit your size of bucket. At the time I bought mine years and years ago, they fit only 5-gallon buckets. Now they have a size that fits several smaller and larger size of buckets.

Perhaps the best thing about them is they can be reused many times over by simply cleaning and reusing the bucket they are attached to.

I do not suggest you purchase the buckets for delivery. They will cost many times more than buying them locally, plus you probably have some places near buy that will give them to you for free. The 5-gallon size is what most bakeries get their icing in. A few places may charge you $1 or $2 for them, but ask around. Between what I used for myself and my family and friends, I have been given well over 300 buckets. You will have to clean them out but it is not that hard to do.

My local Walmart bakery and Kroger gave them to me, but that was years ago, so they could have changed. It never hurts to ask.

If no one local to you will give them to you, the next best place is Home Depot. Their bright orange buckets are actually made of food grade plastic. It is the exact same type of bucket, made by the same manufactures that make the buckets used at Walmart and Kroger. The cost about $3 to $4 without a lid, but that is MUCH cheaper than buying them online to be delivered, unless you are purchasing enough to have them shipped by truck. Because of the size, shape and light weight, there is an additional fee of close to $7 per bucket to have them delivered by UPS or FedEX. They include that fee in the prices you pay.

Installing the Gamma Seal Lid

The gamma seal lid comes in two parts. A ring that is attached to the top of the bucket and a circular lid that screws in place inside the ring. It is important to make sure the outer ring has its rubber gasket in place. This is what will make the seal air tight.

The outer ring is easier to install if you have a rubber mallet to pound it into place. They are made to fit very tight and are a little hard to get them locked into place on top of the bucket. But I can do it with very little problem with my dollar store rubber mallet. It has a small head and very little weight so you have to use arm strength to settle the ring in place, but for $1, its a no-brainer.

image source](https://amazon.com)

Rotation System with Gamma Seal Buckets

Depending on the size of your family and how much food you want to have in long term storage, a rotation system in buckets is a GREAT idea. When I first started my stockpile, Sam’s Club was my friend. You would be surprised how much food you can put back for about $100, plus the cost of your buckets and lids.

I set a goal of having 1 long term bucket and one regular use bucket of each staple. One the long-term storage, I used regular lids because they are so much cheaper. The regular lids are one-time use. Opening them the first time makes it almost impossible to get an air-tight seal. Occasionally you might get lucky, but in my mind, why would you risk it with your food for survival.

Long term storage food is held in the basement in an extra room down there. It is nice and cool just like you would want a cellar to be, but dry and pest free too.

The second bucket has a gamma seal lid. These I keep in the upstairs pantry on metal shelving units. As I need pasta, potatoes, sugar, flour or whatever, I simply unscrew the lid, take out what I want and screw the lid back on. Not a single one of my buckets has become infested, even though we have a major pantry moth infection that took out every single box of food we had.

Storing Smaller Quantities

I LOVE CANNING JARS! If I don’t have enough to store it in a 5-gallon bucket, I always put it in canning jars. I purchase a lot of things in #10 cans. But once you open them, they can become infested with pantry moths (I learned from firsthand experience) Pantry moths have the ability to squeeze through places you would not think they could do it. The plastic lids on #10 cans is easy for them to get past.

Storing items in bags like Ziplock bags IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. Those little devils will literally eat through plastic and/or paper bags. They can even eat through the metalized bags some sprouting grains and seeds come in. Your only choices are to:

1. Never allow them to get into your house. This is almost impossible because they are often hiding in packages of grains, seeds, dried potatoes, pastas, pretty much any carbohydrate is a possible source of infestation.
2. Store food in hard plastic, air-tight containers or store in glass with an air-tight lid. Air-tight plastic products are not cheap. Canning jars are MUCH cheaper and unless they are broken, they will last forever and can be washed and reused over and over again.

Often you can find used canning jars at yard sales for next to nothing. On the local level, Walmart has always been my cheapest place to buy them, except for when you are lucky enough to find them on markdown at the end of the season. I use to get them for about $8 a dozen, but it has been a few years. They may be $11 or $12 now. I have somewhere upward of 200 cases of jars and have never paid more than $10 for a case of 12 jars and lids. Many I got for free using the Facebook yard sales and just asking.

The only drawback to canning jars is it is possible for the lids to rust. But that usually only happens in high humidity areas. If it happens to you, simply remove and replace it with a fresh one. You can buy extra lids and caps at almost any grocery store, Walmart or online. It is always good to have a fairly large supply on hand.

You do not have to heat treat dried products stored in canning jars. Some people will bake them in the oven long enough to heat up the inside of the jar (and product) so the lids will vacuum seal when they cool. With dry goods, I don’t bother. I fill the jar full enough so there is very little air in the container, screw the lid down tight, label it and store it away.

I hope this helps you to understand, growing food from any type of seed is not a matter of using seeds by an expiration date or throwing them away. If stored in the proper way, seeds can still have a reasonable sprout rate, 10 or more years after their so-called expiration date.

Keep them dry, keep them as cool as possibly and keep pests out of them and you could restart your garden 10 to 20 years (possibly more) after they have expired. In nature it is not unusual for seeds that have laid dormant for 100’s of years to suddenly sprout when the climate changes in that area. Our food seeds are no different.