If you want to increase your bean harvest, you should make good distances between the plants, use fertilizer and take proven varieties.
Beans are often harvested in the second half of the rain season. This causes, that the yield is low. You also lose many harvested beans in storage because of weevils or moulds.
Producing beans
If you plant beans as relay crop after maize, you should let 25 cm space between each row and plant. You can plant 2 or 3 seeds on every hill. You can plant 2 rows of beans in every row of corn. The canopies of the beans should not close entirely, so that diseases do not transmit to other plants.
Beans produce nitrogen fertilizer by themselves. They produce nitrogen with the roots, therefore it is important that the roots develop good. For a good development of the roots you need phosphorous, therefore you can use a compound fertilizer. After the fertilizer is buried in, it goes directly to the beans. To make the application easier, you can mix it with water.
Storing beans
After harvesting you should dry the beans and put them together with the bean chaff in bags. To make sure that insects don‘t find a way in, use 3 sacks.
If you plan to store the beans in a metal granary, clean it and fill it with the clean beans. Then you add the pills. For 300 pounds of beans you use 1 pill. Put the pills in disposable cups so they don‘t mix with the beans. Then close the mud granary tightly with a rubber strip or tape.
Weevils lay their eggs on the beans when the beans are still in the field. This eggs can be destroyed with pills in the metal granary. The granary should never have holes, so that new weevils don‘t come in.
After 12 days you take the pills out and bury them directly, so children or animals don‘t get poisoned. Whenever you open the granary make sure to close it fast again, so that weevils can‘t get in.
