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DIY Agriculture

Dry Beans

Dry Beans

Section titled “Dry Beans”

Primary species: Phaseolus vulgaris Common name: dry beans / dry edible beans (frijol in Mexico) Family: Fabaceae Category: staple legume

Dry beans are one of the project’s five initial crops. They introduce staple legume production — a direct staple food rather than a specialty seed or oilseed (PRD §8.5). Dry beans are a Mesoamerican staple (domesticated in Mexico/Central America; frijol is central to the Mexican diet) — for the project’s Mexico interest this is the most food-security-relevant crop of the set.

⚠️ Status: drafted — a metadata-level literature survey is done (research/dry-beans-seeds/report.md). Pages below are drafts grounded in the survey (paper existence/coverage, not numeric claims). All substantive values are Unknown until source notes (S-####) and full-text claims are registered. Do not treat as growing advice.

Why dry beans

Section titled “Why dry beans”

Beans represent the highest practical relevance to home-scale food security among the initial crop set: a direct staple. They also introduce nitrogen fixation as a systems topic, with real small-scale questions (inoculation, soil building).

Documentation map

Section titled “Documentation map”

This crop follows the standard structure (PRD §12). Topic pages are drafted from templates/crop/:

  • index.md · biology.md · climate.md · soil.md · planting.md · irrigation.md · fertilization.md · pests-diseases.md · harvesting.md · processing.md · storage.md · yield.md · economics.md · open-questions.md · sources.md

Key research areas (from the PRD)

Section titled “Key research areas (from the PRD)”
  • Germination and varieties
  • Nitrogen fixation and inoculation
  • Plant density
  • Irrigation
  • Pod development and dry-down
  • Harvest, shelling, drying, storage
  • Yield

Coverage snapshot (from the sweep)

Section titled “Coverage snapshot (from the sweep)”
  • Strong literature: germination, nitrogen fixation/rhizobia, plant density, irrigation/drought, fertilization, pests & diseases (bruchid/weevil, mosaic virus), drying/storage, yield, cooking.
  • Weak/near-gap: manual shelling/threshing at human scale; exact small-plot yields in project units; Mexico home-garden practice.
  • The manual-processing gap exists but is more tractable than chia/amaranth — beans are manageable by hand.

Suggested reading order

Section titled “Suggested reading order”

index.md → biology.md → harvesting.md → storage.md → open-questions.md