Germinating Soy Beans

[whitewind]

Okay, I grow stuff for a living so one of my obsessions for a long time now has been to throw seeds (particularly food) in to a pot to see if they will germinate. I rarely had any success with old, stored spice seeds or dried beans, peas etc. when I was young, and I guess in some ways that fuelled my obsession - how do I get food to grow without buying special seed packets? I also became interested in breeding new varieties, cross-pollination, storing seed and so on.

But when organic seeds became available in quantity in dried form I suddenly started getting huge successes, almost everything I tried that was organic had almost 100% germination. Stuff that isn't organic but grown and dried in traditional ways are also successful.

It's only "modern" industrial farming that produces infertile seed. I assume that it's a combination of old seed and / or some kind of sterilsation procedure e.g. irradiation.

So it's no small irritation to me that no matter what I try I can't seem to germinate soy beans. Not one soy bean, ever. And I have sown hundreds of them, in all different conditions and substrates. I've tried 4 or 5 different organic sources, some pre-packed, some not. It's making me cranky, and it's making me paranoid. Why won't my food germinate? What's wrong with it? Is it genetically modified monsanto shit that's illegally being sold as organic?

Anyway, what brought this on was that my girl chucked a whole bunch of old seeds in to a pot to make sprouts. These seeds are up to three years old and are all organic:

Chickpeas

Mung Beans

Brown Lentils

Soy Beans

Everything in the pot - 100% !!! - has germinated except for the soy beans.

Can some one tell me what's going on?

[whitewind]

These are the sprouts. Estimated age of seeds is over four years, all organic. At the top are the soy beans, on the right are the chickpeas, bottom are lentils (hard to see but about 50% have sprouted) and on the left are the mung beans.

This is the Soy Bean packet. I have had the same problem with many different sources.

Edited January 25, 2012 by whitewind

[Jonstn]

Hmm I've had no experience with growing soy beans but everything I looked up was saying theyre relatively easy to grow quite strange seeing though you've had multiple success with other beans.

I've read to make sure the seeds aren't cracked at all, they like warm place for germination and apparently letting the soil dry out a bit before rewatering, sowed about 1-2" under soil.

Hope this helps mate, if not might just have to track down some reliable seeds for planting online or something ;)

[whitewind]

Maybe. I just like the idea that my food is actually fresh and sustainably grown. If I can't be sure that the organic seeds I am buying aren't GM then that upsets me too. I have this concern that soy beans are all GM nowadays and I don't know how unfounded this is.

Nowhere I look suggests that soy beans aren't easy to germinate.