Any of you far north guys try planting pinto beans?

[Lloyd Smale]

Ive read that the dry beans you get at the store make decent seed. Will they grow properly up north and will freezing the beans hurt them as seed?

[mes]

Don't know about planting pinto beans but have a source for some other beans you might try.

http://www.anasazibeans.com/

Anasazi beans, Black Turtle Beans, Bolita Beans, Rio Zape Beans, Gourmet Pinto Beans and a lot of other Southwest cooking stuff.

Marty

[OLDHandgunner]

I grow Yellow Eyes, Lima beans and a few other short season beans up here in VT. Get most of my seeds from Johnny's Seeds in Maine.
 
The Yellow Eyes we shuck and dry. Then put the dry beans in canning jars to store. The Lima beans we blanch and freeze in vacumm bags.

 
Only problem I have is keeping the deer from eating the plants when the pods are forming. ( more canned venison ). 

[bilmac]

I grow pinto's at 5000" elevation about the middle of Wyo. I can't find a growing zone map when I need one, but I think we are the next to coldest zone in the continental US. Farmers around here also grow them. Like the other guys said there are gobs of other bean varieties to try. I bought a 15 bean mix at the grocery store and picked out some of the other varieties to experiment with next summer.

[powderman]

LLOYD. I'm not up nawth but have planted dry beans right out of the bag and they grow just like the high priced seed.
OLDHANDGUNNER. I raised the yellow eyes many years ago, there used to be a grocery store in Lou that carried the yellow eye dry beans and they were our favorite. I'd love to have a pot of them again. I've asked IGA, KROGER, WM, even an Amish  store and a mennonite store and they cannot even order them. POWDERMAN. 

[bilmac]

The 15 bean soup mix I got at the grocery listed yellow eyes as one of the ingredients, but I couldn't sort anything out that looked like the pictures in the seed catalogs.

[OLDHandgunner]

powderman,
 
The only place that has my yellow eyes in stock all the time is our Market Basket Stores here in the North East.
 
They used to be $.99cent per 1lb bag. They are now at $ 1.40 per 1lb bag.  The name on the bag is Hurst's if that helps.
 
On the back is says packaged by Hurst Co, Indianapolis, IN  1-800-426-3336 
 
Hope this is helpful.

[AtlLaw]

..never even heard of yellow-eyes... 

[powderman]

OLDHANDGUNNER. THanks, I'll call tomorrow and see where I can find them.
ATLAW. If memory serves me right they were in between a Navy and a Great northern in size. They have a very distinct yellow eye on them. We planted 10 types of dry beans one year. Pintos, navy, gr northern, and baby limas were planted rt out of the bag from the store, the rest I ordered. We let them mostly dry on the vine then pulled them and hulled them on the front porch. We had yellow eyes, Christmas limas, soldier beans, dwarf horticultural beans, swedish browns, and another I can remember the name of. Those were good days, just can't do it anymore. Most disappointing was the swedish browns. Cook all day and night and they just never tasted done. The beans from the bags grew just as well as the more expensive SEED beans. POWDERMAN. 

[bilmac]

I grew some Good Mother Stallard beans last summer. I wanted dry pole beans for an indian style garden. Pole beans all tangled up with corn stalks made them harder to harvest. I was looking on the net to find some recipes and they are selling for $5 a pound!!!!  Supposed to be some sort of super gourmet bean. I cooked some up, but those gourmets must have better tasters than me, They just tasted like hard to harvest beans to me. 

[powderman]

I found the Hurst co on the web and sent them an email. Hopefully they can tell me where they can be bought in my area or maybe buy from them direct. POWDERMAN. 

[powderman]

Got an email from them today. They said they were only available in the N England states but I could order a full cs of 24 1 lb bags for $37. Thats a lot of beans, and money. I'll have to think about this. POWDERMAN. 

[plumberroy]

Powderman have you looked on amazon ?
I have grown pinto and black beans using  grocery store cookin' beans for seed . pinto  are a passable green bean picked tender.
Roy