When is the best time to sow adzuki beans?

Adzuki beans are what people commonly call red beans, a common edible legume that can be used to make porridge, sweet bean paste, and so on, so when should adzuki beans be sown?

1. Growth habits of adzuki beans

Adzuki beans are annual erect or twining herbaceous plants, flowering in summer, fruiting in September-October, and are cultivated in both northern and southern parts of our country.

Adzuki beans prefer warmth and light, resist waterlogging, and require more than 10℃ throughout the growing period, with an effective accumulated temperature of 20-25℃; they generally begin to germinate and emerge at above 8-12℃,

Adzuki beans are sensitive to light; sowing too early prolongs the growing period without advancing maturity. Therefore, when introduced from high latitudes to low latitudes they mature earlier, while when introduced from low latitudes to high latitudes their maturity period is prolonged.

The growth duration of adzuki beans varies by variety: short-growing varieties can take 60-90 days; long-growing varieties take 80-120 days. Adzuki beans need the most water around flowering; if the flowering and pod-setting period encounters high temperatures and drought, flowers and pods are prone to dropping; if it is too moist, the plants are prone to lodging.

Adzuki beans have strong adaptability to soil and can grow in slightly acidic and slightly alkaline soils.

2. When should adzuki beans be sown?

Sowing is generally done in mid-to-late May, but planting times differ somewhat by region and should be adjusted appropriately according to the local climate. In addition, sowing is divided into spring sowing and summer sowing; spring sowing is generally in mid-to-late April, and summer sowing is from late May to early June.

Adzuki beans are an annual leguminous crop, and the preceding crop should preferably be a grass-family crop such as wheat, corn, or sorghum, avoiding continuous cropping or back-to-back cropping with leguminous crops to prevent pest and disease infection and reduced yield.

The main forms are:

1. Mixed cropping of adzuki beans with summer corn and summer millet: when sowing summer corn or millet, sow adzuki beans along with them; when thinning to a stand, leave a certain number of adzuki bean seedlings between the corn plants;

2. Relay intercropping of adzuki beans with spring corn, sorghum, and millet: spring corn and adzuki beans are relay intercropped in a 1:1 or 2:2 pattern. Generally, after the corn is thinned to a stand, adzuki beans are relay intercropped between the corn rows;

3. Relay intercropping of adzuki beans in spring sweet potato: sow adzuki beans in hills in every other furrow of the sweet potato field, 5-6 plants per hill. Adzuki beans mature early; when the adzuki beans are harvested, it is exactly the second peak period of sweet potato root tuber enlargement, so the sweet potato yield is not affected and several dozen more jin of adzuki beans are harvested.