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Cover Crops for Edamame We really don't like to see the ground bare of vegetation - leaving the dirt exposed after we harvest our edamame leads to erosion from the effects of wind and rain - not to mention snow melt. So we use an old, reliable method of building up the soil: cover crops.
A cover crop is just any crop that is planted so it grows quickly and can be turned back in to the soil. We don't harvest anything from the cover crops - we use them as preventions to erosion and soil builders. Farmers in different areas use different cover crops, and the selection of a particular cover depends on your needs. For our edamame fields, we like to use oats.
After we harvest our Ohio edamame, the field has nothing but the stems, leaves and roots of the edamame. We try to leave as much of this vegetable matter in the field as possible - it is important to build the soil through the composting effect of this plant material! Not so incidentally, the way we harvest our beans is valuable to the soil as well… we leave the roots in place and that creates two significant benefits. First, the root mass helps hold the soil together, and as it rots in place, it creates valuable pathways for water and air to work in to the soil. Second, the roots of soybeans have a lot of stored nitrogen in them, so we use the natural nitrogen fixation of the soybean to replenish the soil. Read More...
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Don’t Modify My Genetics!  All of our edamame is what is known as “non-GMO” – that is to say, the seeds are not genetically modified. (GMO is an abbreviation for genetically modified organism.) Specifically, GMO crops have been manipulated in the laboratory so the plants incorporate characteristics that are not possible with traditional plant crosses. More disturbingly, many modern crops have something called “transgenic” traits – that is to say they have incorporated genes in to the plant, but the new genes are not even plant genes! More on this later, but for right now, I have to be perfectly clear about something: the American Sweet Bean Company edamame is GMO free. We do not plant any edamame that has been genetically altered, and we test our crop annually for accidental contamination.
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What Will We Tweet You?  We want you to be one of our followers on Twitter! When you follow @asweetbean you can expect to receive tweets that (almost always) fall in to one of the following topic categories. We hope you enjoy our notes, our links, and our products! Be sure to retweet us so your friends can join in the fun! Here is a short list of the topics we cover in our tweets... 1) News About Edamame2) Farm News From Us3) Our BeansTalk Blog4) Our Integrated World
Follow the "more.." at the bottom of this story to read a little more about our Twitter efforts. Thank for listening – thanks for sharing. We grow these beans just for you!
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Food Marketing Frauds, Part 1 It is sad to see the extent of the fraud perpetuated in the food industry. The more deeply I become involved in the industry, the more I see manufacturers slant and spin messages, fib on packaging, and generally mislead the public about just what goes in to the food we buy. Read More...
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What Do Farmers Do All Winter? Every year – and especially this time of year – people ask me “What do farmers do all winter?” It is true that we are not out in the fields this time of year, but believe me, there is more to farming than working in the fields! But I have to confess – the schedule really is a lot slower in the winter time, especially in Ohio. Right now the weather is cold, the daylight hours are short, and snow covers the ground. Keeping indoors is better than working outside! Even so, there is plenty to keep us busy on the farm.
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