Sow legumes when the soil is well warmed up, and do not forget about abundant watering during flowering. Soybean is an important crop because it can provide vegetable protein and oil. In addition, it has good profitability. Growing soybeans does not require special conditions. Therefore, summer residents often began to plant it in their garden plots.
Description of the plant
Soybeans are heat-loving plants. For its good growth, it needs warm days and nights without frost.The plant grows most actively at daytime temperatures of +32 degrees and at night temperatures of +22 degrees. The daylight hours should be 12 hours. The culture is high-yielding.
The average height of the plant is 0.6-1 meter. It has trifoliate leaves, which fall off after the crop ripens. Soybean blooms with small flowers collected in inflorescences - racemes; insects are weakly attracted due to the lack of a strong smell. The length of the fruits does not exceed 6 cm, they contain a maximum of 4 beans, usually 2-3. The seeds are greenish or yellow in color.
Tips for Growing Soybeans
This plant is relatively “new” in the gardens of our citizens. Not everyone has experience growing this crop in their gardens. Experts offer several tips to help you get a high-quality and abundant harvest.
- Soybeans can be grown in areas where cereals and corn previously grew, and can be sown after potatoes and beets. But after cabbage or other legumes, it is better not to sow soybeans. And after sunflower, too, because these plants can cause active spread of bacteriosis in the soil.
- Having grown soybeans, the next year in the same place you can get a good harvest of wheat, rapeseed, and vegetable crops.
- It is impossible to sow soybeans in the same field for two years in a row, as it significantly impoverishes the land.
- The soil should be prepared in advance. In the selected area in the fall, it is necessary to apply fertilizer to a depth of approximately 20-30 cm. In the spring, the field is harrowed. It should be smooth, without furrows or bumps with a height difference of more than 4 cm. After all, soybeans have beans that are quite low and will be difficult to collect.
- It is necessary to prepare not only the soil for sowing, but also the seeds.The peculiarity of the preparation is that the planting material should be pickled under normal home conditions and then treated with rhizotorphin so that nodule microorganisms actively develop. The solution consumption is from 70 to 80 liters for every ton of seeds. Sometimes, instead of treating seeds with rhizotorphin, ammonium nitrate is used to apply to the soil. This method is more expensive, but significantly increases productivity.
- You cannot sow soybean seeds using air seeders.
- It is important to water and fertilize plants in a timely manner, especially with compounds of molybdenum, sulfur, and cobalt.
- To ensure that the yield does not decrease, you should periodically change the varieties grown on the site and update the seed, as well as apply crop rotation.
Planting soybeans in open ground
The legume crop is sown when the soil warms up well - up to 10 degrees to a depth of 5 cm and the threat of night frosts disappears. This is the seed planting depth. It is better to wait until the soil warms up to 12-14 degrees. Therefore, soybeans are often sown in late April or early May. At the same time, there must be a sufficient amount of moisture in the ground.
Under favorable conditions, seedlings will appear within a week. If you sow a legume crop earlier, it will sprout late, be susceptible to various diseases, and the stem will elongate excessively.
All dicotyledonous crops are very demanding on sowing depth. The beans should not be buried more than 3-5 cm. If the sowing is done deeper, the plant will not sprout at all. The distance between the rows is left at 40-60 cm. About 40 seeds are sown per meter.
The moisture content in the soil is of decisive importance; it must be retained using various agricultural techniques. For example, loosen the soil only slightly so that it does not dry out. It is beneficial when a layer of plant residues is preserved on the soil.
Soil acidity is important for soybeans; it prefers neutral or slightly acidic soils. The best option is 6.2...8. At lower pH values, the plant is not cultivated.
Features of soybean care
The culture is demanding on ambient temperature and lighting. If there is not enough sunlight for the plant, then it greatly lengthens the stems, the leaf cuttings also become long, as a result, the ovary is poorly formed and falls off prematurely.
Most of all, this legume plant requires heat during the period when it actively blooms and produces fruits. At temperatures below 14 degrees, soybeans stop growing.
It is important to weed the plants in a timely manner, remove weeds, and loosen the soil between the rows. Harrowing is done several times. The first time 4 days after sowing, then when the plant reaches a height of 15 cm, the third time - when the third leaves are formed. You need to cultivate the space between the rows to remove weeds as they appear. During the growing season there can be from 2 to 5. Without additional watering and fertilization, soybean will not produce a high yield.
Soybean fertilizer
For this leguminous crop, a sufficient content of microelements in the soil is very important. This primarily concerns molybdenum and boron. This is due to the fact that the development of nitrogen-fixing bacteria that live on the roots of the crop directly depends on these elements. Nodule microorganisms fix nitrogen from the air, enriching the soil with it. Foliar feeding with these substances has a positive effect on crop growth, especially in the initial stages.
Leaf treatment ensures the synthesis of chlorophyll. If this is not done, the soybeans will have an uncharacteristic color: light green and even yellow.
For fertilizing, nitrogen fertilizers are used at the rate of 10-20 kg per hectare of soil, as well as phosphorus (15-30 kg) and potash (25-60 kg). During a period of active growth apply urea (for fertilizer for leaves you will need 50 grams of the composition per bucket of water), nitrophoska, UAN. Before sowing, ammonium nitrate or ammonium sulfate is added to the soil where soybeans will grow.
How to tie?
Large bushes are tied to stakes about a meter high. For this purpose, any branches can be used, with the exception of willow. She gets used to it quickly. Metal rods are also often used. It is recommended to use polyethylene cords or strips of soft fabric for garters.
Rules for watering soybeans
Another factor that is important for a leguminous plant is the amount of water and air humidity. Before flowers appear, soybeans can still tolerate dry periods, but this reduces yield, because the lower beans will not develop well.
When the beds are abundantly covered with flowers and grains begin to set, the plant needs a sufficient amount of moisture, otherwise the harvest will have to be forgotten. Also during this growing season, moist air is desirable for soybeans. Therefore, watering should be frequent and abundant. In dry conditions, the crop simply sheds its flowers, the first formed ovary and does not form a new one.
It is better to water the legume crop with warm water, and then, to prevent moisture from evaporating, mulch the soil with peat or straw.
How to process soybeans?
To protect soybean crops from an abundance of weeds, it is necessary to carry out timely treatment with herbicides. Most often they use Harnes, which is applied at the rate of 2 liters per hectare of land.Sprouts tolerate herbicides well in the growth phase from the first trefoil to the beginning of the formation of the third trefoil. The deadline for weed control is the appearance of the fifth level of leaves, before the formation of buds. Later, treating crops with herbicides is very harmful to it.
The plant’s immunity is quite weak, so monitoring the presence of the first signs of the disease is very important for it. Among the pests, aphids and spider mites love to inhabit this crop. Traditional methods include treatment with decoctions of wormwood and hot pepper. If the growing season occurs with excessive humidity and at the same time low temperatures, the plant may suffer from powdery mildew.
Then they spray with copper-based preparations, for example, copper sulfate. All damaged parts of the plant must be removed and burned. For prevention, it is better to treat with Imazamox, Imazethapyr or Bentazone when the first 5-7 leaves appear on the seedlings.
How to harvest soybeans?
Early legume varieties ripen already on 85 days, while late varieties will require 245 days. Also, the harvesting period depends on the climatic conditions of cultivation and the region. Therefore, soybeans are harvested from the end of July to the end of September.
The main factor signaling that it is time to harvest is when the plant sheds its leaves. By this time the beans will turn gray. They need to be collected quite quickly, within 3-4 days, otherwise they will begin to open on their own and the harvest will be lost. In the fields, soybeans are harvested using combines; in small beds, they are mowed and threshed. After the beans are harvested, the stems of the plants are removed from the field and the leaves are simply dug up.
Before you start threshing the beans, it is best to hold them in the sun so that they open up from the sunlight.
If the harvest period coincides with the rainy season, then the plant is pulled out from small areas along with the roots and hung to dry indoors. The beans will ripen completely in this state.
