How to Grow Asparagus Beans for High Yield? A Detailed Guide to the Latest Planting Methods
Asparagus beans, also called cowpeas, are a very common vegetable in our daily lives, with excellent nutrition and taste, and today asparagus beans are planted over a wide area, especially in rural areas where every household uses vacant land to grow some, partly because they have low requirements for soil and are very easy to grow. But some asparagus bean plants keep producing no matter how much you harvest, while others stop bearing after just one harvest. So today Qinnong Web brings you high-yield planting methods for asparagus beans, let's learn together.
1. Choose good varieties
There are now very many varieties of asparagus beans, including red-skinned asparagus beans, local asparagus beans and hybrid asparagus beans. We can choose seeds comprehensively based on the various growing conditions of our location. Generally, we can choose two to three of the most cost-effective varieties at once and plant them mixed together, which can increase asparagus bean yield to a certain extent, and at the same time new asparagus bean varieties may appear, improving the quality of the asparagus beans.
2. Land preparation and sowing
If it is only for your own consumption, then there are no requirements for land preparation, but if you want high yield it is best to choose fertile land that does not easily accumulate water, and plow deeply together with base fertilizer. The base fertilizer is mainly farmyard manure or livestock manure, requiring about three thousand jin per mu on average. Asparagus beans can now be sown in all four seasons, but the best yield and quality come from sowing in April. Before sowing, we can sun-dry the seeds for two days, then soak them in warm water for twenty-four hours, and finally take them out and soak them in a chemical agent, which can promote the speed of germination and also enhance the resistance of the plants. After the seeds are treated, we can sow them by drilling or by hole sowing, evenly scattering the seeds with a row spacing of forty cm and a plant spacing of thirty cm, then covering the seeds with soil.
3. Water and fertilizer management
When the asparagus bean seedlings grow to about four or five cm we should water them, so that they have sufficient moisture for growth. Next, when the asparagus bean seedlings grow to about twenty cm we should carry out the first intertillage and weeding together with fertilizing. For this fertilizing, we can use manure and urine water mixed with about thirty jin of urea for irrigation. Then we wait until flowering before fertilizing again, at which time we mainly spray potassium fertilizer and phosphorus fertilizer. The most important thing is fertilizing after harvest, which can prevent the asparagus bean seedlings from aging, so that they grow new branches and leaves, and flower and set pods. This is why other people's bean pods seem inexhaustible.
4. Trellising and pinching off the growing tip
Trellising is a very important step for increasing asparagus bean yield. If you do not trellis them and let them crawl and grow on the ground, basically you will not see any asparagus beans. So we generally start trellising when the asparagus bean seedlings grow to about thirty cm, and at the same time we must manually guide the seedlings up onto the trellis, because they cannot climb up the trellis on their own. Another method to increase asparagus bean yield is that when the seedlings grow to about sixty cm we need to pinch off the growing tip of the main shoot, and then side branches will grow. Then repeat the same action in turn until you feel it is appropriate.
5. Removing leaves and thinning flowers
Another method to increase asparagus bean yield is to gently remove some of the weaker flowers and flowers damaged by pests during the full flowering period of the asparagus beans. This can reduce nutrient loss and also prevent flower drop, bringing losses to a minimum. Finally, when the asparagus beans are forming we should remove some of the surrounding leaves, so that the asparagus beans carry out full photosynthesis, enhancing the air and light penetration in the field, and at the same time reducing the loss of nutrients and water.