294 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



is likely to be lost through leaching or evaporation. By securing a 

 stand of cow peas and soy beans in the field they not only do not inter- 

 fere with the growth of the corn crop, but actually conserve the plant 

 food for the use of future crops which otherwise might be lost. 



HOW TO RAISE SOY BEANS IN THE NORTH. 



Wallaces' Farmer. 



There is a common impression that soy beans can be grown success- 

 fully only in the latitude of Kansas, Missouri, southern Iowa, and central 

 Illinois. Waiting at a depot in northern Illinois a few days ago a farmer 

 came in with a sack of as fine soy beans as we ever saw, grown right up 

 by the Wisconsin line. Soy beans have matured in the last year or two 

 in northern Iowa, and there is no reason why they may not be tried in 

 those latitudes and we have no doubt that as the soy bean moves further 

 north it will, liKe corn and other grains, adapt itself to the climate, be- 

 coming earlier with the shorter seasons, probably yielding smaller but 

 paying crops to the man who would sow them wisely. 



"Tell us about these beans," we hear some farmer say. The soy 

 bean is a native of Japan, where nearly two hundred varieties are grown, 

 according to the environment of the particular locality. There are very 

 small varieties for table use, larger varieties for the growth of the soy 

 bean as a grain, and still larger for ensilage and for hay. At the Kansas 

 experiment station they have been grown, to our personal knowledge, for 

 ten or twelve years, much as corn, only in drills, and in rows thirty-two 

 inches apart, and narrower if the farmer has a tool with which he can 

 keep them cultivated. 



If cut for grain, they must be cut below the surface of the ground 

 with a bean harvester, or with a corn plow with blades attached to it 

 which answers the same purpose, cured and thrashed. The yield may 

 run from ten bushels to twenty-five per acre, much the same as 

 wheat. For forage, they may be sown broadcast, or in drills, cut with a 

 mower, and cured like clover hay. 



The soy bean is a nitrogenous plant, as rich in nitrogen as oil meal, 

 and exceedingly rich in fat. In time some manufacturers will buy these 

 beans, extract the fat, and sell it for olive oil straight from Italy, and sell 

 soy bean cake to farmers in lieu of oil cake or cotton-seed meal. Mixed 

 with corn, the soy bean would make excellent silage and would avoid the 

 necessity of buying bran or oil meal. Professor Georgeson, who first in- 

 troduced these beans, told us ten or twelve years ago that he regarded 

 an acre of soy beans equivalent in feeding value to five tons of bran, and 

 we do not believe his estimate is far out of the way. 



Some farmers have adopted the method of having a boy drop soy 

 beans between the corn rows at the last plowing and using these as feed 

 for thoroughbred pigs. We have not the slightest doubt, where the mois- 



