Legumes

Mung beans are a warm-season legume known for their remarkable heat tolerance and drought resistance. They exhibit rapid growth, maturing in just 65 days. One advantage of mung beans over cowpeas is that their seed pods remain intact, unlike cowpeas, making them an excellent source of late-fall protein for grazing livestock or wildlife. However, it's important to note that mung beans are highly susceptible to cold weather and require a minimum of 60 frost-free days to ensure successful growth. They can be used for both hay production and grazing and are compatible with peanut inoculant. Mung beans typically reach a height of around 3 feet and have a low to medium water usage. Their strengths lie in nitrogen fixation, forage production, and hay production.

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Hubam White Sweet Clover can produce up to 9,000 lbs dry matter per acre over a summer after being oversown into a grain crop or direct seeded with a spring grain nurse crop. While its taproot is shorter and more slender than that of its biennial cousins, it still loosens subsoil compaction. Annual sweetclovers work best in the Deep South, from Texas to Georgia as they are not frost tolerant. There, they establish more quickly than the biennial types and produce more biomass in the seeding year in southern regions.

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Laredo Soybeans are an older soybean variety that is distinguishable from most other soybean varieties since the actual seed is black in color. While growing it will look like a typical PPS (Photoperiod Sensitive) soybean plant. PPS is the developmental response by the plant due to the relative lengths of light and dark periods (Day and night) that adjust its flowering time. These soybeans are excellent in both grazing and or hay situations.

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Faba beans are one of the oldest plants under cultivation, having been grown in ancient Greece and Rome. Unlike other beans, they prefer cool weather, allowing them to be planted — and harvested — much earlier. Faba beans have a distinct flavor and creamy texture that make them a fine ingredient for a wide variety of dishes. This legume is a natural, organic fertilizer (called a green manure) that fixes nitrogen in the soil for other plants to use. By planting faba beans in your garden, food plot or field, you can improve soil fertility at the same time without needing to add other fertilizers and amendments.

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Sainfoin produces most of its growth in the spring, with little production in summer or fall. It has beautiful pink clusters of flowers and is an excellent honey plant. In areas where alfalfa makes two cuttings or fewer, sainfoin will exceed alfalfa in production. In warmer areas its yield is much less than alfalfa. Newer varieties such as Shoshone are much better than older ones at yield, regrowth and persistence. Can be used as bloat prevention in alfalfa fields. Used extensively in the Northern Plains in place of alfalfa. It does not tolerate heavy grazing very well.

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Yellow blossom sweetclover is not a true clover but is probably more closely related to alfalfa. Sweetclover leaves look much like alfalfa, but the margins of alfalfa leaflets are serrated only on the tips. Sweetclover leaflets are serrated around their entire margin. It is typically a biennial, grows 2-6 feet high, and as the name implies, produces yellow flowers. When compared to the white flowering types of sweetclover, yellow blossom blooms roughly 2 weeks earlier and also matures earlier, usually grows less upright, possesses finer stems, and is less productive and less winter-hardy. However, yellow blossom sweetclover persists better in pastures and tolerate adverse conditions better than white varieties. In temperate climates with mild summers it can survive and thrive through a second year of production. Yellow blossom sweetclover adds lots of nitrogen and organic matter to a system.

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