I have planted 2 raise beds with soya beans as I love emadame. My question is, they did flower and then have produced the bean pod but they are taking a long time to fill up and every time I press on the pod they just feel empty. Also the bed where I planted my first soya beans the pods are turning brown and no beans have been formed inside the pods at all, I am wondering what to do with it since I am ready to start my fall gardening and really need the space for other fall veggies.
soya bean question.
Sometimes you WON't feel the soy beans inside the pod, but they won't keep producing if they aren't picked. The brown ones mean they are done, may have seeds to plant or no. Strip them, if there are no new blooms, the plant is finished
Kitriana the brown ones are just very small pods with no seeds at all, I am not sure what happened, all I can think of is maybe this crazy heat.
Yes, the brown ones are done, remove them from plant. You did plant the edible soybeans? They dont always do well for me, but its been awhile and I know there is more than a few varieties out there now, u might try a diff var to see if it works better next time.
Actually right next to the soya beans I have some lima beans and they have flowers all over but not a single bean, they have been with this small flowers for 2 months now. I am really thinking of just taking everything out of this bed since I have to start some of my fall crops.
The soy beans I planted are edible, I was hoping to use it as emadame beans.
Check your soil ph, and fertilizer content, beans are nitrogen fixers, which means they need a different fertilizer than flowers. I remember onions, spinach, an greens I needed to add a treatment of liquad iron to where I was going to grow them, but other plants needed Nitrogen, and nitrogen can dissipate into the soil overnite, esp if it is a form like ammonium nitrate or ureas, as opposed to blood meals, or 'green manures'. All of them need watered before or after to disperse the nutrients and help prevent burn, esp at first. Soy beans are VERY sensitive to where the suns rays are as to their ability to produce, more so than most plants if I recall correctly. Don't give up, but the season now IS late. Sorry. Alabama-hvy red iron soils and clays, a good bit of silica soil areas. G'luck.
Kitriana actually you definetely answered my question of why, the raise bed where I planted all these beans was a new raise bed. In an effort to save $ on soil I went ahead and just loaded my truck with top soil they sell in bulk and then mixed it with cow manure from lowes, so the soil was definitely lacking nutrients, I did try my best of giving the plants compost tea but I guess that might have not been enough. When I planted the soybeans and limas the soil looked dark but with all the rain and time passing now it looks like a grey color soil. I do compost and also vermicompost but I can never make compost fast enough to be able to fill my beds with it by the time I have to plant my veggies. The cucumbers I planted in the same bed though and they did wonderful, I had tons of fruit but maybe cucumbers are not so picky.
Cow manure in bags, while awesome stuff, actually has nothing left in it-or not compared to the raw manure I grew up using from our Grade A Dairy. We mixed our own feeds-ground cottonseed meal, urea salts, milo,corn,barley hops from after using in making beer, bagged minerals. I did quite a bit of cleaning, chuckle, and learned basic chemicals from walking size. Commercial bagging of materials have been baked and cleaned and diluted, and the list goes on. I USE cow manure in bags, but another thing I have learned while growing up is that certain plants DO require specific ratios of feed to do their best. Or certain lengths of suns rays, and it isn't a once and ignore thing, they maintain their needs while growing. I use the bagged stuff as plain ol dirt and I prefer it to potting mixes for Everything xcept African Violets, or the plants that don't need dirt at all. Next year, Good planting.
Kitriana yes I am aware that the black cow is not the best stuff. I recently got chickens, I have 3 so I am using their manure to place in the compost pile as well, I just started this about a few months ago.
I have a question though, the home compost after is completely decomposed do I have to spread it all over the raise bed or could I just use it where the plants are going to be planted, the reason why I am asking is because I am thinking that if I just place it where the plants are that that would save some compost to amend the other beds as well but If I have to dump it all in my 8 X 4 raise bed then I will only have compost for one raise bed. I am also thinking that if my compost is not completely finished by the time I plant my fall garden maybe I can buy a couple of those big baggies of worm compost and then place it in the hole where the plants are going to be placed, what do you suggest?
Sometimes I have really been considering of getting some rabbits just for their manure, for what I understand rabbit manure you can add directly to your garden and it does not burn the plants at all, chicken manure you have to let it decompose because its pretty strong stuff.
What variety of soybeans make the best edamame?
Do you happen to have a source for mushroom compost anywhere nearby like a Monterrey Mushroom factory? The compost from there is usually chicken and straw, and would mix in well with older beds as is. Mobile, ooooh, u down on the gulf! You shouldn't have issues with drainage, would be issues with moisture retention. Yes, u can add your compost to your hole. I guess I should ask, how do you sow your seeds? IF you transplant, do you make a hole for each plant? make it a bit deeper and throw in a cup of compost, a cup of water, and tamp the sprouts roots? The transplants should be planted above the watering line so the roots and not the stems get watered, and it helps the roots reach deeper and become stronger. Corn seeds I plant in the bottom of the rows, then as they grow I have the top of the row to move over onto the corn, but I still water thru the rows, and not around the stems of the plant. Rabbit poo is good, but you may be tired of eating rabbit before the mess under the cages does you any good, and it might be cheaper in the long run to just buy the alfalfa pellet feed to throw in the compost bin, chuckl. With chickens, they are fed oyster shells pieces- raises calcium in their poo so their eggshells arent too soft, and again, better they are left in a run and good dirt thrown in for them to scratch around in- or you get GIGO, (Garbage In, Garbage out)-most chicken run owners bring in loads of sand to throw into the bottoms of chicken pens to increase the cleanliness of what chickens like to eat, if they are left on the ground that is. Have fun, dear.
And I don't decompose chicken poo either, just add water and add to the ground, the earth is like fire- its Always Hungry when plants are a growin.
Kitriana first of all thank you so much for all your help! I am so happy you are willing to share your knowledge with me. As far as compost go, Mobile is horrible, I have done searches all over the net trying to get some good compost and nothing. I used to live in P-Cola FL and boy they have tons of people that advertise free compost ( horse manure) etc.. for pick up, in craigslist. I also have to say the recycling here is worse, I have to drive downtown Mobile a good 40 min for me if I want to recycle my paper and plastic and glass.
I mainly do starts but lettuces and other things like carrots, radishes etc... I do direct seed.
I have a chicken run where I let my chickens go, they are not free range because they used to jump in my raise beds and just eat all my greens. So for what you are saying I can actually grab the chicken manure and dilute with water and add to the ground where my plants are and they wont get burn? I have been adding some hay to the pen where they sleep and lay eggs but never though of just plain old sand.
Thanks again.
Just add it into your teas, it isn't that strong. Hay for the nests, and they eat the hay too, sand for the floors, or even millet planted in the run for a green area. All good. Horses main food is hay, unless it was fertilized and cared for, it isn't that great as manure, some horse owners feed 12% pellets, or for brood mares, a higher percentage rate-THAT is what makes manure decent as garden compost. What the animal was digesting. Cows fed for beef don't get the urea salts that are nutrition requirements for making a lot of milk, the manure from beef cattle is good straight into the garden, too. What you will get is healthy weeds as well, since 'aged' manure has heated and killed a bunch of these seeds. Mobile is full of pines, those turn to dirt fast, but the plants that were in your garden also compost real well...40 min out, you are deeper into the woods, do you buy for your chicks 'lay pellets' or just scratch? the 'lay pellets' are supposed to already have the flaked calcium in them that hens need. Scratch has less nutritional value, but keeps the hens busy.
No, its been awhile since I had soy beans, I honestly haven't looked to see what var are on the market now
I just harvested and ate some of the soybeans. They were fabulous and I think we have a bumper crop. We tried them in our Trial Crop bed and they must love the conditions. The soil really isn't that great but they had no pest prolems and looked all around healthy. The soybeans and the okra did better this summer than anything else.
I just steamed them in salty water for about ten minutes. Then ate them by putting the whole pod in my mouth and sucking the beans out. It was a good edamame as I have ever had, perhaps better since the beans were fresh picked.
Kitriana, I have been giving them scratch, they seem to be happy with it. Right now only one is giving me eggs, another has been molting so it will be a while I would imagine until she starts laying again, and the third has not given us any eggs just yet, my DH says that if she does not start laying soon that she will end up in the pot, LOL, well hopefully not. By the way have you been in Mobile before?
Yesterday I went to Home depot and tried to get some mushroom compost but they don't sell any, my next try will be Lowe's, they seem to carry a lot more compost than The home Depot, my home compost is almost ready, I can only see leaves that have not been decomposed yet plus there are things growing in the compost already so hopefully I can use it in my raise beds, also I collected this past weekend about 2.5 gal of vermicompost from my worm bin, the stuff is pretty wet almost like clay so I am trying to let it dry a little bit, I still have to figure out how I can get it so is not so wet, I spent hours dividing the castings from the worms.
I decided to place all the hay that I had left in the run as well as the chicken coop so they can lay in it and start making it into dirt plus this way the chicken run does not stink as bad, thanks for the tip.
Sawpalm I am so envious, What type of soybeans did you grow? I will definitely try to grow them next year and see if I have better luck with them. I have had tons of stinkbug problems this summer so I am sure they had something to do with the fact that my plants did horrible this year. By the way I forgot to mention when I was pulling my plants out of the beds yesterday I noticed that they had some sort of black fungus or powder in the stems, so I am sure that's the reason why the soybeans did not get any bigger in size.
Ok, buy a bag of lay pellets, a chicken doesn't need but 'maybe' a half cup a day or you get gizzards as big as your fists-not healthy for a hen. Hens lay eggs from late Feb to Oct then quit laying pretty much. Some hens are not 'egg a day layers' but leghorns, rocks, rhode island reds, wyandottes, araucanas(rainbow layers), do pretty much give you an egg a day, and the eggs they give you repay the cost of the lay pellets, then they are good for the stewpot. Most folks don't keep hens thru the winter, mine got to be 8 and 9 years old and still laid for me, but a hen loses her layin ability with age, better as a 1 or 2 year old, then food for the table, and ALL those little roosters were fryers by a young age. Try this place for lots of interesting reading 'Murray MacMurray Hatchery.com' just click on the links they have to hop around inside their world. They have their catalog online and are great folks. I have driven an 18 wheeler over the road since 1984, and trained many a new driver-male and female- as well. Yes I have been to Mobile. My daughter was grown before i stepped out, an a few marriages to fellows that didn't like to run were left behind. I grew up in Tx, NM, and Ok being taught the care and feeding of the land so that it would care for us, and those memories stuck so well, that I find myself assessing the value of the land wherever I go as far as what it would take to live there. I'm just on break right now, but my gypsy heart hears the winds singing and I know its time to ride...
Soys need full sun, the rows planted from north to south so the sun is on them all day, and I am not good with fungal remedies, Sawpalm may be tho