I own little land but have a couple gardens though. I was thinking about growing some soybeans but I don't have ANY idea what I'm talking about. We like them dried and put in trail mixes. Is it worth it if I don't have much planting area? Where do I buy seeds?

If I want a fairly large quantity now, where do I buy them? I feed the deer at my house in the winter / early spring and I'd like to supplement the corn w/ soybean for the protein.

Any ideas / suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks, Mike

-- Mike in PA (smfine@yahoo.com), January 18, 2002

Answers

Mike, make sure you cook the soya beans before feeding them otherwise they are inedible for animals too. You can roast them, same as for your trail mix I suppose. I have grown soyabeans here on the Pacific northwest coast and they do fine. Unfortunately there are only two beans per pod so you have to do a lot of shelling. Some people make up a box with a screen of hardware cloth with holes big enough for the beans to fall through as you crush the pods (walking on them if your screen is supported enough). I'm sure this must have been covered in some back issue of Countryside. There are many varieties of soyabeans so try and find out what is grown locally for your type of climate. Also, deer adore soyabean plants and will eat them down to the ground very quickly. Otherwise, just grow them like any other dried bush bean variety keeping in mind the low yield per plant as compared to other dried beans. Good luck!

-- Kathy (homefarmbc@pacificcoast.net), January 18, 2002.

Are you looking for any old soybean?

Non-GMO beans?

Food-type (clear-hylum) soybeans?

Any grower or crop elevator can spare a bushel for $5.

In spring you should be able to beg a bag of seed from someone, or an ag seed seller.

Some seed houses like www.al-seeds.com (Albert Lea Seed House, think I remembered that right) will ship UPS & have the food-grade type. Think they update their web site in Februrary, kinda bare at the moment....

A bushel of seed plants about an acre. If you inocculate the seed (or were growing some other legume in the past 2 years) the beans will fix their own nitrogen.

--->Paul

-- paul (ramblerplm@hotmail.com), January 18, 2002.

Raw soybeans have a tripsom inhibitor that make feeding to young stock unadvisable. Tripsom is a digestive enzyme. Animals that have a fully developed rumin can eat uncooked soy just fine, the only limit to quantity is the oil they contain. Been a while since I fed raw beans, but I think it was around 15% by weight of thier daily feed intake? Again my memory is fragile on the point but I think oil in beans are about 32% protein. Two beans per pod must be a garden variety, but are probably better quality than feild beans! Not that cook feild beans taste bad, they're great! If you want to feed deer some soy beans see if your feed store has "micro beans" Not micro small, micro micronized, meaning roasted and crushed, oil left in.

-- Ross (amulet@istar.ca), January 18, 2002.

i to am planning to plant a small amount just to see how they do i plan on getting mine from baker creek heirloom seeds for one i like the idea of using heirloom seeds and they are only about 14 miles from me. if u want to check them out try rareseeds.com

-- gail missouri ozarks (gef@getgoin.net), January 18, 2002.

Fedco seeds have one variety of soybean seed available, and its organic. Surely not roundup ready!!!! Their website is fedcoseeds.com

-- Suzanne (weir@frontiernet.net), January 20, 2002.