FarmI wrote:
songbird wrote:

i suspect i shall have a surplus of
soybeans.

Nice post Bird - sounds like life is good for you.

it is good for me.


Now, 'bout those
soybeans.... How does one go about growing soybeans please? How deep, how
far apart, what sort of soil conditions, when etc? and can you gorw soy
beans from the stock you'd buy at a Health food shop or does one have to buy
special seed soy beans. TIA.

i've grown them from picking up seeds from the
field next to us (likely a glyphosate resistant variety)
and didn't like those for taste as much as the few
lbs i picked up from the health food store that were
labelled organic. i planted those this year and the
difference was noticeable in terms of season, the
ones i planted turned brown several weeks later than
the soybean fields around us.

i space them 4-6 inches apart and rows a foot apart.
1-2 inches deep, they have pretty big leaves and smother
anything growing within a few feet of them so don't plan
on planting anything right next to them, or you can do
what i did with some of them to thin them out (so the
strawberries got some sunshine) i just trimmed off some
of the leaves. i used the trimmings for green manure
and worm farm food. chickens would probably eat them.

planted them after all danger of frost was past. in
some cases i planted them even later, because i was
waiting for some flowers to die back.

they will not flower or get pods right away. they
are not like peas or green beans, you don't need to pick
to encourage them to produce. as for pests, Japanese
beetles and the other broad leaf chewers and aphids
can be a problem, but i don't see them here much because
of the ladybeetles and birds.

a little bit of rust or fungal diseases can show up,
but i don't worry at all if the season is advanced
enough. if it is early i'll pull the plant or
infected leaves before it spreads. this year it was
so hot and dry that i didn't even bother looking for
fungal diseases.

if my estimate of the harvest this year is correct
one bean gives between a 50 to 75 return.

harvesting by hand is a bit of work, but i like
being outside picking. stripping the stalks is not
too bad if you wait until the leaves have dried
and fallen off and the pods are mostly dry (i.e. not
green). i can pick three to four paper bags of pods
in several hours. long sleeved shirt required. it's
picky and dusty.

the shelling is also dusty, but there are methods
for doing that where you can avoid the dust too. i
put the dry pods in a pillow case and stomp on them for
a while. sort them from the chaff by dumping them from
box to box in a good breeze or if it is too windy and
rainy i use an inclined plane made out of cardboard and
they roll down it as i squish and crumple the pods to
get the beans out. i wear thin rubber gloves because
the pods will stick to cotton gloves.

i'm sure that beating the pillow case with a
baseball bat would probably work too.

the usual 90/10 rule applies, to get the first
90% of the beans takes 10% of the time and effort.
if i had chickens or pigs i'd not even bother with
the last 10% and let them pick through to get
those, but as i have both time and patience i end
up going for almost every bean i can find in the
pods. then later on, i go through and pick out
the beans i don't want to use for soymilk and put
those in the worm food bucket. the chaff gets
recycled back to the gardens one way or another
too. it makes good worm bedding eventually.


songbird