Yes this is for next spring I built a 55 gallon drum roller this summer that has a weight of 425 lbs in use. I also am thinking about building a cement-tile cultipacker this winter. I can roll the WR with either of those and it should suffice.
How come the beans need to be planted when the rye is pollinating? what are the results if I am too early or late?
(Ignore the yellow circles in the chart) You'll want to roll it and plant it the same day and that should be done when the rye is in the anthesis stage. Why? Because simply the act of rolling it over at that point has a good chance at killing the plant and/or the reproductive cycle of it. You don't want it maturing seed and reseeding itself and it'll make the roundup that much more effective to get a good kill on it. The reason you'll want to plant it the same day is because usually a planter is going to have an easier time planting through it right then. If you kill it first the planter will have a hard time planting in it because the dead rye is hard for a planter to cut through. Also once rye is dead, if you get much rain, it'll have a hard time drying out with a carpet of rye mulch on it.
Ok that makes sense. Does anyone have a comparison between protein levels of winter grains and annual clovers? which will make a better impact for covering brassicas?
Clovers are a legume, they will always be higher in nutrition than winter grains(grasses). Of the winter grain crops, actually wheat is the highest in protein I believe. I think wheat is actually a little higher than corn. Wheat will run around 14% protein for the grain itself and a little higher at different growth stages for the forage, clovers will run anywhere from 13% to 35% protein depending on the kind of clover and soil health/fertility. In general I think you could expect 20-25% protein levels for most average clovers. What do you mean by "covering brassicas"?
Either Fall over seeding small grain or frost seeding clover/small grain into brassicas that have been hit hard (fall) or depleted (spring).
Covey....you talking just a regular planter or a drill? If I can accomplish this without a drill this could change my entire plan next year....no drill here. So plan was to have to disc in the WR lightly....plant beans heavy and drag/roll them in. Probably plant 1.5 times the recommended amount as not being drilled.
I was told soybeans dont need to be very deep at all, like 1/2" or so, and we have a 3 row planter on 3 pt so we can adjust how much weight is on the planting discs and how much is on the packing wheel. The planter is mechanically driven by the packing wheel so you have to make sure there is enough weight to spin the wheel. We also have row unit dpeth adjustments. What I have found is that if we set the row unit depth to the desired depth, and then focus the weight more on the planting discs, the discs will sink to the desired depth then the depth control takes over and puts all the excess weight on the packing wheel. We can easily get 1/2" in almost any soil with this method. I'm not sure how much of this information is correct, but that is what we have found with our planter.
Ideally beans should be about 1.5". Never dealt with anything driven by the packing wheel? Only ground driven wheel transmission. What model of planter is it? The gauge wheels are what change the seed depth for the planter. Down pressure can be changed by air bags, springs or hydraulically depending on type of planter.
Either a planter or a no-till drill. Depending on the planter, some will actually do a good job of no-till planting just as they are. The IH planters that have the double disc openers with one leading the other, it takes some pretty harsh conditions before they won't plant seed adequately. If a person wants to try the rye plant through method, I'd encourage them to try a small scale test and see if they like it or not or if they can even consider it do able for them in their conditions. There are a lot of vids on youtube of people doing it and I have some experience with it but it's not as simple as planting in fresh tilled soil, there's a learning curve to adjustments, conditions, etc... Roll down termination would work better with a drill or narrow configured planter. If a 30" planter is used the additional roundup termination spray will probably be needed but if it's rolled down well at that growth stage some guys don't need any spray. The resulting mulch acts as a weed barrier and soil protection for most of the season. It should break down well enough by fall for over seeding to work with small seed like clover and brassica. Broadcast beans are iffy at best. It can work with extreme rates but the seed is generally so big that most of it will rot before a sprout takes hold. Dragging them in only gets a small percentage planted very well and you don't know what you have until a long time down the road. It can work and I know people who do that successfully quite a lot but I'd never do it unless I had a lot of beans and applications where it didn't matter if it failed. I'd prefer having the control and repeatability of a planter even if I had to double plant the field to get the population or spacings I wanted. I wouldn't plant beans an inch and a half deep, I don't know what's "proper" depth but if I planted them that deep I'd get about 50% emergence here. I like 3/4" personally, most of the time 1/2" would work just fine as long as they are covered good and adequate soil moisture. I can't speak for what's perfect in other soils and climates just my local conditions. Some planters can have adjustable down pressure by managing weights or if they are on a three point with down pressure...most tractors three point don't have down pressure but some do.
What's your average annual rainfall there? If we're dry here or looking to be dry I plant on down to an inch but that's not usually a problem here, just the opposite actually. We usually get a flood the day I start planting beans and it stands water on them for a week, lol.
About 26" I believe for the year counting snowfall. Too shallow of planting and it messes the roots up from the beginning from what I can tell. More so for corn definitely but beans seem to be affected as well.
We have more of Coveys problem, our ground is gerneally lower and never seems to have problems with dry conditions unless in the worse of droughts. 8 years out of 10 we battle wet ground. They are Allis-Chalmers row units from a 16 row planter mounted on a custom draw bar and 3-pt with 24" rows. I may have my terminology wrong, but they have double disc openers and a packing wheel. Chain from the packing wheel spins the plates and drops the seed. We can adjust the top bar of the 3 pt to angle the planter differently thus moving where the weight is focused.
We're 90% creek bottom ground that gets plenty wet. I still wouldn't go less than an 1.25". Try a couple depths. Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk
Our annual average rainfall here is about 45" and the last two years it's more like 60". I've gotten my drill and planter set wrong before and planted beans 1.5" deep. I got about a 50% stand over most of the field and the lower areas I got exactly squat. Might have gotten by with it okay but we had a couple inches of rain on them over the next two days and they just rotted. Soil in that field was so mellow I left the planter set the same as the last field and it just planted deeper in the mushy soil.
