this hyacinth bean variety is easy to grow and produces abundant harvests
let's look at growing hyacinth beans so we are starting our hyacinth beans in
these seed starting cells and you can see the seeds they look amazing they're
quite good quality seeds and I will let you know how you can get these seeds
from me but let's first watch how we grow these hyacinth and beans they're using
a coco coir based potting mix or seed starting mix to start these seeds and we
sow one seed per cell and hyacinth beans grow pretty much around the year so you
can start hyacinth beans anytime spring season fall season now you can see that
within a few days the hyacinth bean seeds will start showing up and they
have a pretty good germination rate so you can expect your hyacinth beans to
grow quite fast and one week since sowing you can see that the seedlings
have emerged and they have quite healthy leaves and we will be planting these
hyacinth beans in containers as well as raised beds now choose a nice sunny
location for your hyacinth beans and make sure that the hyacinth and beans gets
at least six hours of sunlight a day and remember these are Bush type beans the
hyacinth beans that we saw in our previous episode were the vining type and
it's a little cumbersome very difficult to maintain those beans but this pole
bean variety is not only a very high yielder as you'll soon see but it's
also very easy to grow and maintain and we have planted five plants in this
whiskey barrel container that's enough space for growing these hyacinth and beans
now we will be planting these hyacinth beans in the raised beds as well and
once again you need well-draining soil in the raised beds we've used a mix of
compost, peat moss, perlite and we keep adding a lot of compost in our raised
beds every few months as and when the compost is ready our homemade compost
and that really adds a lot of nutrients in the soil and that's all really the
hyacinth beans need is good quality compost in the
you don't need to add any fertilizer whether organic or inorganic you don't
really need to add anything to grow
hyacinth beans and the hyacinth beans is
known by a lot of different names as you can see on your screen and this bean is
commonly eaten in South Asian countries a lot of Asian countries as well as
African countries it's not as popular in North America just make sure that you
cook these beans well before consuming and 47 days since sowing you can see
that the bean plants have grown quite well in the whiskey barrel container
they're upright Bush type plants and they've started producing pods as well
now the best thing about this hyacinth bean variety is that they produce these
beautiful flowers as you can see and they are in clusters and the beans are also produced
in clusters so the way this plant produces the beans makes it very easy to
harvest these beans as you can see now the beans are not yet ready for harvest
they do grow slightly larger than what you see here but overall the flowers
look very pretty beautiful flowers and the flowers will now turn into these
pods and you don't need to do any kind of pollination hand pollination for
these bean plants the flowers do become beans very quickly in no time and
remember that we haven't added any fertilizer or amendments for growing
these beans they don't really need any kind of fertilizer or nutrients they can
get all the nutrients they want just using compost good quality compost or
manure from the soil now 56 days since sowing the seeds you can see that the
beans can now be harvested the pods have become a little larger in size and this
is the perfect time to harvest these beans these cannot be eaten raw once
again it's very important that you do not eat these beans raw they need to be
cooked before eating and once you harvest the beans they will have some
small seeds inside them but not huge and this is a good feature
of this bean variety it's meant to be used by chopping it up and then stir
frying it and consuming it and as you can see here beautiful
looking beans and this is unlike the other bean variety like fava beans where
you only eat the seeds the hyacinth beans can be consumed whole including
the pods and the pods of the hyacinth beans are quite soft the skin is quite
soft now the hyacinth beans will keep
producing beans over and over again it sends out these stalks that you can see
around the sides and these will keep flowering and keep producing the
hyacinth beans now the hyacinth beans that we planted
in our raised bed is equally productive as you can see beautiful looking plants
and there are no signs of any insects or diseases on the hyacinth bean plant it's
a very prolific plant it grows quite well and produces a lot of beans and
since the hyacinth bean plant can grow pretty much throughout the year we plant
this in spring and we were able to harvest this all through summer late
into summer and even the fall season now this plant can even survive mild winters
like winters in Southern California it can easily survive them and still
produce a lot of beans and here you can see the beans beautiful looking beans
extremely high quality beans and now let's come to the part of getting the
seeds for this bean plant now I was given these seeds by a friend and I've
been growing these and I've been saving the seeds for quite some time now so the
only way I can give you these seeds is by having a giveaway a seed giveaway so
keep an eye on the giveaway which is coming soon I will probably have it
within the next few episodes so that way I will be giving out these seed packets
for these wonderful bush type hyacinth beans so that you can grow them in your
home garden and once again you can see the harvest it looks beautiful quite
good-looking beans now it turned out that a few of the seeds that I had were
a little vining not really as vining is the variety that I grew earlier but a
little bit so I just put tomato cages around it so that those could be
supported but these were also very high yielding hyacinth beans and it looked
very similar to the other hyacinth in the bush hyacinth beans they're all
from the same set of seeds by the way but it had a little shinier surface as
you can see a slightly smaller more defined body so it could have happened
that out of all the seeds that I was planting one or two were the vining type
or a slightly different type but for the most part all these heights and beans
grow like a bush not like a vine so overall I was quite pleased with growing
these beans and it was very easy to maintain them and harvest them as well
and now let's come to saving the seeds for these beans since these seeds are
very hard to find I made sure that I saved a lot of these seeds every time
the plant produced hyacinth beans and you can see here these are the seeds
beautiful looking seeds they are dry so they are ready to harvest and store and
all I really did was I let the beans be on the plant and within a few days they
just dry out and you can easily harvest the seeds from the pods and this is
something that you should be doing for most of your plants these are heirloom
seeds as you can see this seed is not too good it has some insect damage but
you can still find a few good seeds inside these seed pods and as long as
you're harvesting and storing enough seeds you can throw away the ones that
are not good you should be able to save a lot of seeds from your hyacinth bean
plant and now let's look at a Delicious hyacinth bean recipe we need about two
cups of hyacinth beans as you can see here that means these pods that you see
you will need turmeric powder some salt some oil this is or Urad dal which you can
find in Indian grocery stores some mustard seeds you can either use black
or white some chili powder and some grated coconut which you can also find
in Indian grocery stores now the first step that we're going to do is remove
the edges or the sides of the hyacinth beans and the reason we do that is
because they are very fibrous the edges are very fibrous and they're not very
easy to eat so while overall the hyacinth bean
is very fibrous the edges are extremely fibrous and since we want to have a
comfortable meal of hyacinth beans we just remove the sides just pull the
edges out just like that so it's at the top and the bottom so
make sure that you repair your hyacinth
beans for cutting in this way now once
done we have to chop up the hyacinth beans and remember that we're using the
pods as well as the seeds inside the hyacinth beans so all we do is just hold
them together and start chopping them just like you see on your screen
we chop them into small pieces and you can chop about four or five or maybe
more depending on your cutting skills can chop a lot of beans at the same time
and it's very similar to chopping French beans we need to make sure that the
pieces that are chopped are neither too small nor too big and this is how the
chopped highs and beans looks like all right so we take a wok or any kind of
frying pan we always use cast iron skillets or pans or woks as you see
here we're going to be adding some oil this is about two to three teaspoons of
oil and you can add more or less if you need but we avoid adding too much oil
and then you add the or Urad dal you then add the mustard seeds you can either use
black or white mustard and then you let the oil heat for some time the oil needs
to heat up a little bit and while the oil is heating up you want to make sure
that you stir the ingredients that you just added to the oil a little bit till
they start sputtering and become slightly Brown you don't want to really
overdo the step make sure that you watch while this is being cooked and make sure
that you stir this in between now a lot of folks also add chillies at this step
I'm going to avoid whole red chillies at this step because we are going to be
using chili powder instead and it's now time to add the hyacinth beans as you can
see we chopped up our heissen beans and we're going to be adding them at this
stage and hyacinth beans are fibrous and they do take some time to cook so if we
just mix them in very well here at this stage and once they're thoroughly mixed
in we will be adding some tumeric powder some chili powder and if you don't want
it spicy you can avoid the chili powder I
like putting chili powder and some salt as needed usually about a teaspoon or so
and then we just mix in everything together very well and what happens is
when you cook these hyacinth beans they will absorb all the flavors of the
turmeric the chili and everything else that you add you can add some more
spices if you want but I just like to keep my dish simple just to feel all the
flavors of the hyacinth beans once it's cooked now we will be adding some water
after mixing everything in hyacinth beans is fibrous and has water but not a lot
so if we do want to add some water so that this gets cooked very well now you
don't have to add too much water just add a little bit so that the hyacinth
beans can cook well and then we covered the pan or the wok and then we wait for
about three minutes and after three minutes the hyacinth beans have started
cooking and we just stir it again we mix it in very well and at this stage if you
see that the hyacinth beans has soaked up all the water during cooking it's a good
time to add some more water and after adding water we just cover it again and
then cook for three more minutes now we can see that the heissen beans has
started cooking very well it's almost cooked we are now going to be adding the
grated coconut now remember that we didn't add the coconut in the beginning
because we don't really want to overcook the coconut you want a nice fresh grated
flavor from the coconut so we will now be mixing it in with the hyacinth beans
and once that's mixed in all we need to do now is cover and cook for two minutes
and this should ensure that the hyacinth beans has absorbed all the flavors from
the coconut as well and once you open the lid you can see that everything is
now nicely cooked not overcooked but nicely cooked the coconut is nicely
mixed in with the hyacinth beans and we are done so this is our hyacinth beans
looks like you can have it with tortillas or rice or quinoa let me know
if you like hyacinth beans and you cook hyacinth beans and if you have a favorite
recipe let me know in the comments box below so there we have it folks that was
our episode on growing hyacinth beans this is a very interesting bean variety that you
can try growing in your home garden just make sure that you don't eat them raw
that they need to cooked before eating and I've been
eating hyacinth beans for many many years and they're an excellent delicious
bean variety that you can add to your diet so do you grow hyacinth beans let
me know in the comments box below and I will soon have a seed giveaway
where I will be sending out seeds for this plant so keep an eye on that as
well if you like this video give us a thumbs
up if you have any comments or suggestions please put them in the
comments box below we'll see you again soon happy gardening