I take great satisfaction in saving seeds from my garden, whether they’re to add to my pantry or to my seed storage box. Learning how to save bean seeds to plant the following year is about as easy as it gets. Some vegetable seed, like tomatoes, require processing after harvest. Other plants, like corn and pumpkins, need to be isolated from other varieties by hundreds or thousands of feet to prevent crossbreeding. This is not true with bean seeds. The “bean” part of beans are the seeds. They don’t require any special treatment, except to be allowed to mature and dry.

Beans are self-pollinating, so they don’t cross-pollinate as easily as others. This means you can plant one variety close to another, and those seeds are still likely to breed true. This article provides tips on choosing the right bean plants, timing your harvest, and how to save bean seeds, as well as proper drying and storage.

Why save bean seeds?

There are lots of reasons why I first wanted to learn how to save seeds from beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), and you may have some of your own to add to this list:

• Growing your own seeds is a smart way to save money in the garden.
• Bean seeds are among the easiest types of seeds to save, especially dry bean seeds.
• One bean plant produces enough seeds to repopulate a whole garden row the following year.
• Seed saving allows you to continue to select the plants that thrive in your garden conditions for the characteristics you want.
• Some bean seeds are hard to find, and you may have a particular lineage that’s special to you. Saving these allows you to keep this variety alive in your garden.
• It’s fun to mix and match, sharing bean seeds with gardening friends and neighbors.
• You can eat these seeds as dry beans, if you don’t end up planting them.
• As legumes, which are plants that leave behind nitrogen in the soil, beans are a soil-building addition to the garden.

When to save bean seeds

In learning how to save bean seeds, patience is key. It’s not until the beans are dry that they are fully mature and viable seeds. You’ll harvest your beans as seeds in the fall. This is the same timing you’d use to harvest your dry beans, but it’s much later than you’d typically harvest green beans.

Learn more about saving bean seeds in this video:

Choosing which plants to save seeds from

When you plant your saved seeds, you’re planting all of its characteristics, both positive and negative. As you work out how to save bean seeds, you’ll learn to be choosy about which plants you want to breed more of. Here’s what to look for:

• Ensure plants are healthy, and not diseased or infested with pests. In this way, you’re selecting seeds for disease and insect resistance.
• Plants that produce large pods, and large beans within the pods
• Plants that flower and set pods early

Hybrid vs heirloom beans for seed saving

It’s important to know the difference between hybrid seeds and heirloom seeds. Heirlooms have been grown for decades and are open-pollinated plants, meaning they produce seeds that are similar to their parent plant. Hybrid seeds, on the other hand, result from a crossing of plants, and their seeds will not look like their parent plant. You can save seeds from heirloom plants, as well as other open-pollinated plants, but saving seeds from hybrids means you won’t know what the results will be when you grow them in a future planting.

Lucky for all of us, seed keepers have been saving bean seeds for generations. Heirlooms are common beans in many seed catalogs and at seed swaps. There are dozens of beautiful and tasty heirloom bean varieties that you can grow at home, including Jacobs Cattle dry beans and Calypso dry beans.

How to save bean seeds step by step

In this bean-saving tutorial, you’ll learn five steps for saving bean seeds. These cover letting the pods mature on the plant, harvesting, removing the beans from the pods, drying, and storing your bean seeds.

Step 1: Let the bean pods mature on the plant

Wait until the bean pods are shriveled, brown, and dry. This means they have reached seed maturity. Up until this point, you can still harvest and eat this crop. Saving for seed, though, requires that you wait.

Marking the direct sow date on your garden calendar will give you a better idea for when the plants might reach maturity. Count forward the expected days to maturity, and mark that date on your calendar, too. As the beans mature and cold weather approaches, your vines will naturally start to wither, dry, and turn brown.

Step 2: Harvest the pods

On a dry day, pull the pods from the plants. The drier they are when you harvest, the better. You want as little moisture in the pods and in the seeds as possible.

Given wet fall weather or an early first frost, you may have to cut whole plants and allow the bean pods to dry on the vine while hanging indoors.

Step 3: Remove the beans from the pods

In looking at how to save bean seeds, removing the beans from the pods is the most time-consuming step.
If you don’t have many bean pods, simply shell them by hand. Just crack open the pods and let the seeds fall into a bowl. If you do have a lot of pods or you’re pressed for time, you can shell them in bulk. Wrap the pods in a pillowcase or a tarp, and crush the pods by whacking them lightly with a book or a baseball bat. You want to crack open the pods but not the bean seeds.

An easy way to separate the bean seeds from the shards of pod chaff is to winnow them using a box fan. Here’s what to do:

1. Put a box fan on a table. Put two cardboard boxes on the floor: one right in front of the fan and the other on the farther side of the first.
2. Turn on the fan.
3. Shake your beans and chaff mixture in front of the air flow. The heavier material (the bean seeds) will fall straight down, into the first cardboard box. The lighter material (the chaff) will get caught in the breeze and will blow into the second cardboard box.
4. Repeat this again with boxes repositioned, if needed.

Step 4: How to dry bean seeds for saving

If the seeds are not totally dry or the pods had some moisture in them at harvest, spread out the seeds on a screen or a sheet. Put them out of direct sunlight, in a dry place with good airflow. Let them dry here until you cannot dent them with your fingernail. Then they’re dry enough for storage. I can’t stress enough how dry your bean seeds need to be to store them properly. Any moisture presents the risk of molding and even of germination while in storage.

Step 5: Storing bean seeds properly

Package your dry beans in an envelope that’s labeled with the named variety, the type of bean (meaning pole beans or bush beans), and the year. Keep these packets in an airtight container in a cool space or even a refrigerator. I share some seed-storage tips in this article. If you have more seeds than an envelope can hold, use a glass jar with a lid. Expect your bean seeds to remain viable for about three to four years.

Extra tips for successful bean seed saving

While saving bean seeds is a straightforward process, there are a few more steps you can take to improve your results:

• Plant different bean varieties 10 to 15 feet apart. Beans are wind pollinated, meaning they don’t need pollinators to visit their flowers for fertilization, and the chance of cross pollination is low. This short distance will help ensure the bean seeds you plant for next year’s crop are what you expect them to be.
• Keep watch over your bean plants as they grow. Use ribbon or twine to mark the plants that grow the fastest, flower first, and appear the hardiest. These are the plants whose seeds you want to save.
• If bean weevils are problem insects in your neighborhood, do away with them in your bean seeds by freezing the seeds. It only takes 24 to 30 hours in the freezer to prevent the bug larvae from hatching next year.

Harvesting from your own garden, knowing you can grow your own food, is very fulfilling. After learning how to save bean seeds, harvesting food you grew from seeds you grew doubles that feeling.

More seed-saving advice and tips

• How long do stored seeds last?
• Seed-saving advice
• Tips for collecting seeds—and knowing which seeds can be saved
• Saving dill seeds
• Collecting milkweed pods
• Harvesting coriander seeds
• How to save marigold seeds