Grow and Crop your own Soya Beans

• For a little grown vegetable Soya are an easy and attractive crop to grow.
• Sow in a propagator or into warm soil May or June if sowing direct outside.
• Plant in well-drained, moist rich soil, 6 inches apart. Keep well watered, particularly as pods are setting.
• You will get 3-4 beans to a pod but you get lots of hairy self pollinated pods at the top of the plant.
• Plants are virtually pest and disease free.

How to Use Your Soya Beans

• You can pick pods whilst beans are still green and boil them in the pods with salt. Butterbean & Envy are good varieties for this purpose available from organicseedsonline.com
• Shelled the green beans can be treated like broad beans
• When pods turn brown harvest the dry beans and they can be stored in an airtight container. Soak them for 12 hours before using.
• Good varieties include Ustie, Butterbean and Elna.
• Commercially grown Soya is often GM but produces oil, Soya milk, Bean Curd or Tofu and can also be fermented to make Soya sauce.

Japanese Beans

• Azuki beans are a hairy annual similar to Soya beans. They have yellow flowers and longer pods.
• Daizu is the Japanese Soya rich in oil and protein. Flowers are violet or white and pea shaped.
• Miso is a bean paste made from Soya beans rice and salt.
• Tofu is an easily digested protein made from soaked and curded soya beans.
• Natto is fermented Soya beans often eaten at Japanese breakfasts.