Bottling Beans

A lovely few hours were spent at Prinzessinnengarten today. Walking through the gates is such a wonderfully relaxing experience, not that being in Berlin is stressful at all, but in the words of Darryl Kerrigan, "How's the serenity?"


Today there was a choice of two jobs. One was to move some compost and the other was to pick and bottle some beans. Being up for a new experience I went with the latter and was so glad of my choice.


There were a variety of beans that were harvested along with some herbs.

I would love to be able to tell you all about the different variety and be full of fabulous information, but my lack of German makes that a little difficult.

The first job was to top-and-tail the black beans and the yellow beans. These were then cut into pieces that were a little smaller than the height of the jars that the beans were to be stored inside.

Some of the larger beans were shelled.

These Fire Beans where shelled similarly to how you would shell a Broad Bean by taking off the outer layer. My phone camera does not do these little beauties any justice. The colours speckled over each little bean were gorgeous.

The little pieces of beans were blanched in batches and I was amazed to see that the black beans lose all of their dark colour and become green within second of being placed into the simmering water.


After a cooling bath and being place in a sieve to drain, the beans were stood up in the jars. Some of the herbs that we picked were added to the jars and the beans were packed as tightly as possible, without squashing them.

With all of the harvest, there ended up being 7 jars of bottled beans.

Some of the longer pieces of bean needed trimming so a few little adjustments were made. The bonus was that we were able to munch on the offcuts. Delicious!


A salted water mixture was brought to the boil and this was to be poured into the jars to assist in the preservation. We were unable to stay until the end of the process but I am sure that the final product would be fabulous.


Bottling beans is not something that I would really have thought to do, but after today, I will definitely have a go on my own.


What sorts of vegetables do you bottle?


Take care