Helpful information
Timing: All year around (as long as you can get hold of broad bean seeds)
Where to do it: Indoors
Garden space: Any
Ready, steady, grow! This broad bean growing experiment is a great activity for individuals or small groups to try.
- This experiment could be done in pairs or small groups, allowing you to connect with others and experience changes in nature together
- Setting up the experiment provides gentle exercise, working on dexterity and coordination
- Enjoy the wonder of nature, even if you have no garden space of your own
Selecting beans
For this experiment, you need broad beans. These should be the ones you get in seed packets from garden centres, not fresh broad beans from the supermarket.
There are a wide variety of broad bean varieties you could test with this experiment. We have found good results using ‘The Sutton’ or ‘Aquadulce Claudia’. Avoid using red- skinned varieties, like ‘Red Epicure’. These tend to leave red dye all over the kitchen towel, grow slowly and sometimes rot.
Soaking beans
You need to pre-soak your beans before you begin. Leave them in water at room temperature for 24 hours. You will see below that you need four beans per person. It is worth soaking a few spare beans too.
Essential items
- Four broad beans per person (pre-soaked, see above)
- Identical, clean glass jars with all labels removed e.g. jam jars
- Kitchen towel
- Water
- Sticky labels
- A ruler or tape measure
Optional items
- Teaspoon
- Chopping board
- A prize for the overall winner!
Follow these steps to do your broad bean growing experiment with ease.
Step 1: Gather everything you need
Equipment for a broad bean growing experiement
Get everything you need for this experiment in one place. Make sure everyone doing the experiment has four presoaked beans.
Step 2: Line your jar with kitchen towel
Take one square of kitchen towel and fold it in half. Loosely roll it so it forms a tube.
Put this tube of kitchen towel into your glass jar. The kitchen towel will look like it is lining the glass jar all the way around.
Step 3: Pack your jar with extra kitchen towel
A glass jar packed with scrunched pieces of kitchen towel
Take another piece of kitchen towel. Scrunch it up loosely.
Stuff this scrunched up kitchen towel gently into the middle of the lined jar. You are trying to pack the jar full of scrunched kitchen towel. Take another piece and repeat until the jar is full. The first piece you put in place should still create a neat lining all around.
Step 4: Set aside your 'complete' beans
Take two pre-soaked broad beans. Set them aside and do not do anything to them. These are your ‘complete’ beans.
Step 5: Prepare your 'naked' beans
Take two more pre-soaked broad beans. Use your fingers to carefully peel the outer layer of each bean. Be careful - you do not want to damage the rest of the bean when you do this. You may find it helpful to peel the beans on a chopping board.
These are the ‘naked’ beans.
One naked beans stays whole. Cut the other naked bean in half. Carefully cut lengthwise, from top to bottom. Keep one half for the experiment. The other half can go in your food waste or compost pile.
You should now have two complete beans and two naked beans. One naked bean only has half left.
Step 6: Add your beans to your jar
Broad beans positioned in a glass jar
Each bean should be placed between the glass wall of the jar and the piece of kitchen towel used to line it in step 2. Do not place beans on the scrunched up kitchen towel in the middle.
The beans should sit about half-way up the jar. They should not be touching the bottom of the jar. Gently move them if this happens. You may find the handle of a teaspoon useful for carefully moving beans.
Try placing your different beans as follows:
- One complete bean facing the right way up (this means having the little 'mouth' at the top where the plant will sprout)
- One Complete bean upside-down
- One naked bean the right way up
- The half a naked bean any way you choose!
Step 7: Label your jar
Write your name and the date on a sticky label. Stick the label underneath the jar, so it doesn't block your view of the beans.
Step 8: Add water
Carefully add about 1cm of water to the jar. You don't want any of the beans to be touching the water.
The kitchen towel will soak up the water and the beans will stay moist.
Step 9: Put in place
Put the jars in a warm place, like a warm windowsill. Now, watch and observe what happens!
Try to make sure there is always around 1cm of water in the jars.
You may want to come back to your jars every week for three weeks and take note of what has changed.
Each week, you can pick a 'winning' bean of the week. This could be based on which is the tallest. It's up to you how you will measure them. You may decide to measure from the tallest shoot down to the longest root tip.
It's normal for the beans to develop at different rates. Some will fail completely. Remove any beans that go rotten or mouldy.
You will probably see how the beans planted upside down still manage to grow upwards in the end. The shoot will likely curl around and start to grow upwards, while the root will curl around and start to grow downwards.
The difference between the complete and naked beans is often surprising. The naked half bean may do extremely well at first, but then slow down as it runs out of food.
At the end of three weeks of running this experiment, if you get very attached to your beans you can always try planting them out in the garden. You may get some return on your little magic bean!
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