Always freeze your legume seeds!
A common practice is to put your bean and other legumes seeds in a freezer for a few weeks. This kills the weevil larva inside and then it's safe to take the seeds out, dry them and store then regularly.
However this autumn we had many other projects on our hands and simply forgot about the freezing part.
Here's the result, a pile of weevils, plenty of eaten beans and even the plastic bag is full of holes!!!
What's really interesting however is something else. Look at the other bag of seeds - no eaten beans, no holes, no weevils. Also, in the jar behind, a black bean seeds, again no weevils.
So there must be something that attracts the weevils to one variety and not the other!
This year we'll be planting the two varieties that had no weevils in the bag and compare the results.
By the way, those are three varieties of salad beans, also called French Bean around here. Round pods, thin, yellow or green, picked young and cooked with some thyme, cream and butter!
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I didn't realise you could freeze them without harming them. I had some sugar snap peas infested with those beetles last year. I didn't know what to do other than remove the infested ones, but now I know. Thank you for sharing.
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We also grow Sugar Snap variety and the pods for seed are almost all with weevils so we actually store them the whole time in the fridge!
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