I’m currently reading Roland Bunch’s book: Restoring the Soil: How to use green manure/ cover crops to fertilize the soil and overcome droughts and he mentions two things about Velvet Beans (Mucuna pruriens) that I have followup questions on.
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The bush types have some that produce large quantities of seed vs some that don’t produce as much. He recommends an individual that worked in Ghana to get the bush variety that produces more seed. Has anyone used ECHO’s Velvet Bean ’ ECHO Bush Selection #1’ extensively or compared it with other Velvet Beans? Does it produce a lot of seed? What is the biomass production compared to the other viney types? Do the seed pods have bad itching hairs?
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The viney types have itchy types and non itchy types. “The seeds of the itchy mucuna are always black, although the seeds of the non-itchy mucunas, which come in a variety of colors, are also sometimes black. In areas where the itchy mucuna exists, farmers should avoid using any black mucuna seed, even of the good kind, so they will not accidentally get seeds of the itchy kind mixed in with their own seed stock.”
Just before this Bunch states “One variety of mucuna in southeastern Rwanda and across the border in northwestern Tanzania has the typical hairs, but does not itch very badly. Virtually everywhere else the itching caused by the pods is intense.”
So my story is that I was given a jar of velvet beans years ago, some were black some were speckled, both are the viney kind. I’ve always worn gloves to harvest or touch the pods because I was told about the hairs and have only grown them in a small isolated area where they can climb a water 5m water tower. Are there any other characteristics that can determine the differences between the itchy vs not so itchy varieties?
From my experience, individuals can react very differently to plant allergens, things like this so I’m not quite sure how I know if the beans I have are the itchy kind or not and I definitely do NOT want to be promoting something like this that can be problematic. I just planted a single line of both the black and speckled varieties in a test plot about 50m long and I’m wondering if I should pull them out. I also planted a single packet of the ‘ECHO Bush Selection #1’ but not sure how well those will do. From what I remember seeing at ECHO, the bush varieties have far less biomass from what I’ve seen the viney ones produce.