Dry Beans — Harvesting

Metadata research draftEvidence limits

⚠️ Status: drafted from the literature survey. Values Unknown until source notes/full text.

Maturity indicators

• Pods dry down, change color, and rattle with mature seed when ready; the plant may also shed. Dry-down to a safe stage is the goal. Moisture target Unknown.

Window

• Harvest when pods are dry but before shatter/spilt. Evenness of maturity across a plant/bed — Unknown.

Manual harvesting (human-scale core, tractable)

• Pull/cut plants or strip pods by hand. Beans are a directly tractable staple: a few dozen pods yield shellable dry seed, far easier than chia/amaranth’s tiny seed heads.
• Shell by hand or on a tarp (rubbing/beating dry pods). Time per kg — Unknown (needs practical source + our experiments).
• Mexico highland frijol harvesting practice — flagged candidates.

Drying

• Whole-plant or pods air/bench dry to a safe dry-down before shelling; protect from rain/birds. Target moisture Unknown (see storage.md).

Losses

• Shatter at/after maturity; pod-splitting; bird loss. Unknown.

Equipment

• For a few kg: hand/sickle + tarp only; scale to integrate ownership of the crop.

Structured-data impact

• harvest.manual_time_h_per_kg and harvest.shatter_risk in data/crops/dry-beans.yaml once evidence.