Another Bean Option?

[Semisane]

My wife cooks quite a few Chinese dishes using bean sprouts. Sometimes fresh sprouts are hard to find. So I did an on-line search for Mung beans to sprout myself (really easy) and found the best deal at Walmart's web site.

After sprouting a few batches and getting what appears to be a 100% germination rate I decided to throw a handful of those little green spheres into one of my back yard gardens. I'm not sure what date that was, but the plants in the picture below are somewhere in the four to six week range.

I weighed out a quarter ounce and counted the beans. The total was 187. That's 748 per ounce or about 12,000 Mung beans per pound. That's four times the number of soy beans in a pound.

I do believe a few bags of Mung beans will be scattered in my plots next spring. At $2 a pound, why not?

 

[j-bird]

Lots of folks are experimenting with "garden beans" of some shape or form. My only issue with them is weed control. I planted pole beans and sow peas and they did fine and I intend on actually planting them in more of a garden type setting for the deer next year as well. Also keep in mind these "garden beans" will mature faster so you may need to save some back if you want some to feed critters later in the summer. I think I'm going to mix some "garden beans" in with some sunflowers next year to help break up some plots and add some diversity.

 

[StrungOutOutdoors]

My wife cooks quite a few Chinese dishes using bean sprouts. Sometimes fresh sprouts are hard to find. So I did an on-line search for Mung beans to sprout myself (really easy) and found the best deal at Walmart's web site.

After sprouting a few batches and getting what appears to be a 100% germination rate I decided to throw a handful of those little green spheres into one of my back yard gardens. I'm not sure what date that was, but the plants in the picture below are somewhere in the four to six week range.

I weighed out a quarter ounce and counted the beans. The total was 187. That's 748 per ounce or about 12,000 Mung beans per pound. That's four times the number of soy beans in a pound.

I do believe a few bags of Mung beans will be scattered in my plots next spring. At $2 a pound, why not?

Interesting. What's the nutritional value?

 

[Semisane]

16-23% crude protein as forage.

 

[StrungOutOutdoors]

16-23% crude protein as forage.

Hey, that'll work !

 

[Doe Shooter]

Great info. I'm gonna try them. The plants resemble cow peas.