Cheap Plow-Down Clover???

No till is as little soil disturbance as possible. Only so much of that is possible and still get seed in the ground, at least with current technology. Sooner or later someone will come up with a rolling hole puncher that drops seed as it goes and pinches the hole back shut as it rolls. I think that would be about as far as it could go with as minimal disturbance as possible and still actually plant into soil. Coming to a farm show near you by the year 2099.

We're all limited to how much we can do by technology and financial confines to one extent or another. A disk is going to disturb more soil than ideal but trying to do no or minimal till on a budget that's not a bad step forward as an improvement. The ranch's notill before I bought this 7' great plains was a 5' truax "no-till". It was a POS. It had a front row of extremely aggressive cutting disks. The thing pulled harder than the bigger 7' GP drill because those disks turned so much soil over and the row units were so poor that if you adjusted the disk up out of the ground it basically wouldn't plant. A simple finish disk or vertical tillage disk and a spreader would be a vast improvement over that thing as far as soil disturbance and functionality.

 

Thanks but more like saying an earthworm is a genius geologist, it's not particularly bright it just has it's head in the mud a lot.

 

That's definitely a lot of experience talking. Discing I think is just an engrained/tradition that is hard for people to let go. It's what their father and grandfather did. I agree covey that initial field prep of leveling or smoothing out a field and breaking larger roots is a good idea.
One might look into a co-op or check with their extension office about borrowing a drill. Or paying a small fee to have it done. If possible.
As far as erosion goes. It amazes me how much effort and expense goes into some farms around here to keep it from happening. Drain tiles are installed and rip rap is put in washouts to keep them from expanding and then they go right back and disc the field. All the good top soil is being washed away so they have to apply more fertilizer. Then the amount of land they are able to work shrinks because of all the wash outs. It's just a vicious cycle.
Covey, what's your thoughts on overseeding soy beans then using a roller/crimper to turn the existing crop into a "moisture barrier". Do you think it would allow for the beans to germinate. I guess it would depend on the density of the existing crop, but was just wondering your thoughts.

 

Well your experience shows. Take the compliment and put it in the pocket of your mismatched camo pants lol

And like Chris Farley said, you can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking your head up a Bulls A$$ but wouldn't you rather take the butcher's word for it? Go to who has the most experience......

 

Depends on the standing crop. My dad and I were talking about something very similar except the scenario was over seeding beans into standing ripe wheat with a high clearance spreader or seeder then cutting the wheat while spreading the chaff over the seed. I think the chaff would be just about right to germinate the beans. I can imagine something similar working in similar conditions, maybe over seeding beans in a standing but terminated crop and then clipping the standing crop high with a mower.

Rolling the crop might work but my concern would be as you pointed out, having too much residue may keep them from making it through to sunlight. There's been a lot of success planting beans into standing cereal rye or milo or corn through an annual legume like crimson clover but in those cases the planter creates a bit of a weakness in the mulch barrier so the planted crop has an easier time coming through in the row. Most of the point in a heavy residual soil armor is weed suppression along with soil and moisture retention. I wouldn't want to have my seed in on the wrong side of that intended purpose. It could be worked out with just the right percentage of residual matter but I don't think it'd be very repeatable. With $50/seed unit beans that's an iffy gamble. With a high clipping of a standing crop with a mower, at least you'd have some control over how much residue is going over the seed. The problems I can see with that is seed to soil contact and good moisture needed to get a good seed germination. If a person had a bin full of cheap beans, it might be worth experimenting with. Most of the coolest stuff with cover crops, crops, and no till have been discovered and worked out through accidents and experimentation.

The farm visit I went on in North Dakota a while back was to the ranch of Gabe Brown who brought much of this stuff into the forefront of the modern era. He was about to go broke farming due to disaster like hail so he started growing annual species for graze. He soon realized the short cycling of crops and no till had an impressive action/reaction relationship with his soil and low annual rainfall and that's how he started venturing into soil health principles. That was in the early 90's and he started being vocal about it years later and eventually a community of folks picked up on and expanded the ideas with further experimentation. I don't think anyone has really gotten very close to discovering how far and impressive the results can get with it yet. There are people getting 100+ bushel per acre soybeans in no till and cover crop systems. Most of those are still using ridiculous amounts of inputs though, fertilizers and multiple spraying of junk. I used no fertilizer this year, just running off residual from last year and I think I have several acres of beans that'll run well over 60bpa conservatively at 150,000 plant populations based on pod counts I've done informally. One field I pulled four consecutive plants that had, almost, to a few over, 90 pods each and three and four bean pods. All that has been applied this year is two applications of herbicide including the initial burn down. One initial roundup, planted, and then a follow up roundup with a short lived residual. The cover crop was some crimson clover, wheat and winter/spring annual weeds. We've had a lot of rain though so that helped but this last 10" or so they were already made. Those are also group 3.7 beans.
I'm 5'11".


Milo on minimal fertilizer application. This had 50 units of N applied and was previously old overgrown pasture.

 

Impressive looking beans and milo CM.
Around here the no-till planting was experimented with a bunch in the early 90's only without the continual spraying and of course there were no species specific herbicides, leading to mediocre results at best. In the last 5 years we are seeing a much larger foray into the no-till world and those that do two round up sprayings followed by at least two fertilizer boosts are seeing incredible production. I was watching a couple of bucks one night last week walking along the edge of a bean field when they turned and went into the beans and totally disappeared. Definitely a good use of a new way of thinking about producing a crop.

 

Dang covey. That's an awesome crop you got going there. Their is something to be said for the method. It makes sense that once you start the rotation and method that it will work to your favor. Let the plants bring your nutrients to the top and leave it there, building your top soil. And it's there waiting for the next crop. If you till it under you're starting all over again.
This is a great thread. Very informative. Thanks Covey and all that have thrown in their two cents.

 

The man, the myth, the legend!!! Those are awesome beans Covey. Ours are starting to turn. They should be, we planted them April 24th. At their tallest they were 5' tall again. We've had some pretty strong winds and heavy rain last weekend, I think you did too. They are laying over now more than they were but still in good shape.

Keep at it Brother!!

 

I followed you on everything but the 3.7 group. What does that mean Covey?

 

Yeah mine have gone over some as well. We didn't have a ton of harsh wind but we had extremely hard and fast falling rain. With them being heavy with pods and beans, that much water just pushed them over. Mine aren't in as bad a shape as the neighbors though, his are laying flat. I think his beans are better than mine but his crew got them planted in early may. He's the big operator in the area, like 10K acres big. His crew of guys pull into a 360 acre field about noon with two new JD tractors with tillage equipment and two new tractors with new split row air planters and finish working and planting the field by five or six o'clock. He also applied a lot of fertilizer and sprayed his about five times. His runoff water comes across my farm and it's always watery mud and when he takes the crop off he has knee deep ditches all over the place. Road grader has to blade the silt out of the road between us from his runoff after a big rain...it's pretty gross.

The 3.7 is the maturity group of the strain of bean seed. Soybeans are grouped into ranges of maturity from short season beans to full season beans. I'm not sure what the extreme ranges are. I've seen group 2 through 7. The short groups are needed the further north you go into short growing seasons and the long groups go further south and some are forage type beans that basically don't stop growing as long as they have sunlight and non-freezing temps. I think eagle brand plot beans go into the 7 group.

Here in MO/KS, the "normal" range we typically see run from group 3.5 to 5. I have trouble getting enough of the short season seed here because most of what's available and "normal" is group 4 to 5. I got enough 3.7's to plant 100 acres and when I went back for more seed they were sold out (and I spoke for enough to do everything). I had to plant the other 2/3ds in group 4.7's.

The 3.7's are basically done filling while the 4.7's are still in the process. Those in the pic above are now starting to turn, that pic was a few weeks ago. You can see where this will result in making it hard to get good covers in behind the longer season beans. I can usually still get crimson clover and cereal rye and sometimes wheat in behind the full seasons if weather cooperates but they are always a lot later than they should be and don't get as well established as they should going into winter.

 

That's not McElwain is it?

I picked up a bunch of bags a few weeks ago. They were mostly "39's". There were 31, 38, & I believe a few in the 40's. Is that the same as the one with the decimal just different seed company?

Thanks again for info Covey.

 

No, McElwain is quite a ways north of me as far as I know. I don't think they have any ground this far south. I think they're all up around Harrisonville down around Adrian. My prior brother in law and his family are big operators up in that area and are always competing with McElwains for ground and whatnot.

Not sure about what you bought, what brand of beans were they? I generally use Willcross seed. Here's a chart of their beans that shows their relative maturity. Mine are the WX2374N and the WX2473NS. Companies generally put the group number in the variety ID somewhere. You can see the group numbers in the two varieties I listed 37 (3.7) and 47 (4.7), same for the others listed in the charts in that link.
Soybean Varieties | WillCross Seed

 

I knew we dealt with them in our coverage area but I wasn't sure how far south they go. We had to do something for them the other day east of Amoret off of 52 hwy.

The seeds we ended up with were from Dyna-Gro. The code on the bag is S38RY87. The only reason I "bought" these is that they were end of season and at a very good price.

The seeds I use in the food plots come from Kitchen Seed. We've had great luck with these the past 2 seasons.

 

Yeah same as Willcross, that number does seem to indicate a group 3.8, look like a good bean. Carrying this years seed over to next year you may lose some germination. Beans don't carry over all that well usually, you may need to up your seed rate.
http://www.dynagroseed.com/sites/default/files/S38RY87_2017.pdf

 

I'm not sure what we'll do the following year for seed. This is the last year on the lease.

We went by to look at that planter I was telling you about. Looked like a pretty good set-up from what I could tell.

 

Yeah, I'm surprised he still has it.

 

If I had the money laying around we'd go get it. We have some work to do here just to get it in the gate. The owner before us thought 14' was big enough................

 

I've ran into those problems before. The old great plains 30' front fold drill I had was 17.5' wide folded up in road position. I had a bunch of places I had to "modify" to get it in.

 

Bad news this morning, the milo I was so proud of, I checked it this morning and found a serious problem. Over the last week and a half since I checked it last sugar cane aphids moved in and pretty much ruined it. They're a pretty new pest here, I knew there were a few in there, local co-op I had look at it 2+ weeks ago said it wasn't a big deal. There's still going to be some harvest-able crop there but the yield is going to really be knocked back. Wouldn't have been as bad if it had been planted earlier and been further along but all of it that had not finished filling out is screwed. I'm pretty disappointed.

The lesson to be learned here is that no-one knows your crops better than you, if you think something needs attention, get it taken care of. If someone tells you it's "no big deal" tell them to screw off and take care of it anyway.

 

That really stinks CM. How easy are those aphids to eradicate?