How To Grow Soybeans

Growing Soybeans – This vegetable is high in protein and can be used as a substitute for any meat. It’s nutritious, delicious, and easy to eat. Many soybeans grown today commercially are GMO. Therefore, growing your own is a must, using non GMO varieties. Most people know edamame as the soybeans. These improve your soil by fixing nitrogen in their roots and requiring little or no fertilization if your soil is rich in compost.

How to Grow Soybeans Using Non-GMO Soybeans

They are very easy to grow in the same way as snap beans or any other legume. Buy the edible soybean seeds versus seeds which is grown to feed livestock. Plant them about 1 ½” deep (See video on planting soybeans). There are some varieties that are early-blooming varieties, while others are late bloomers. The earlier varieties can be planted closer together and the rows can be as close as 2’ apart.

Inoculation

It’s a great idea to inoculate the seeds with nitrogen-fixing bacteria before you plant them. If you have inoculated the soil in prior years with the specific bacteria for soybeans, then the bacteria will still be in the soil. It will not hurt to inoculate the soil every year even though the bacteria can stay active for 4 or 5 years. The bacteria will assist the roots in being able to fix nitrogen which the plants get from the air and the plant form nodules in the roots that store it.

Temperature and Timing

Soybeans are a warm season plant and should be planted once the ground warms up and the temperature in the soil is above 60°F. They do take about 68 to 85 days to mature, depending on the variety. They get about 2’ tall unless they lack sunlight,in which case they can get leggy and fall over.

When to Harvest

You can harvest them as soon as the pods are plump and still green — theearly stage of development where they are immature. You shell them after they are cooked. If you leave them in the ground longer they will turn brown quickly. It’s best to leave the roots in the ground and cut off the plant when harvesting.