It started with an accidental encounter of 3 wild bean plants in my backyard garden in late November 2023. They were vigorously growing and I reached out to forum agronomists for help—are the beans edible? I asked because they pods had thorns and definitely looked wild.
Emmanuel Dube was the first to respond and said the beans were edible. Tsitsi Mubvakure was the second to confirm edibility and said she had a few of them growing at her backyard in Harare.
An interesting journey followed with seed multiplication and sharing within the forum. The seeds are not available for sale from leading seed houses. So if you want to grow them—you have to start from the bottom—a few plants and multiply them till you have enough for meaningful farming.
Our big space farming trials started in January 2025 and there are a lot of lessons;
- Constant watering is crucial and often a challenge.
- Planting early helps develop strong plants—the ideal period is September to December.
- The December period when rains come—is for upscale.
- Avoid having the bean plants growing and expanding on the ground—provide enough trellis.
- Security fence extremely important as the beans are a delicacy for cattle.
How many plants do you need to produce a tonne?
A thousand seeds giving you an average yield of a kg every 3 months is all you need.
However you need to first go through a learning curve of backyard farming and transferring skills to big spaces like plots, farms and rural lands.
- Do a soil test first and get experts advice.
- Do not go for too big farming spaces—rather keep it small and slowly upscale. Too big spaces will give you trellis support challenges. As previously mentioned—Trellis support is hard work and it’s not possible to cover an acre in the first cycle. Keep it most 200 sqm or less.
- Evidence has shown that well watered and manure supported plants can give you 5kgs of beans in 3 months. So it’s about more of quality than quantity.
So let’s give it a try this September and aim to have at least 10 plants and lets grow together. Search around for seeds and you could be fortunate. On ZBIN we distributed many free seeds but this time—if you need some, you have to pay a token fee to support the forum operational costs. You can link up on +263 773 055 063.
