DeltaRed

Well-known Member
Been thinking of planting some soybeans this year. Just 5 acres or so as an experiment. no soys are grown here.All soybeans are 'imported' from the midwest.Too much frieght out of here,and no prosessors.How ever a friend who raises pigs is now growing some. Last year was the first year. Even with all the 'mistakes' he says they will work,be profitable.He is talking of buying an "extruder".Makeing biodiesel and feeding his pigs and selling some.I have lots of questions.......One is: what kind of plate should I use? I have a JD #70 planter.Anyone got 4 or 6 they might sell me?Kind of excited about an 'alternative' crop,some thing that will work in a rotation.We are 100% dependent on irrigation,at 5000 ft altitude. Even the (Pioneer) seed guys say they will grow/produce well here.Any advise/input is welcomed! Thanks,Steve
 
Well you will find you can drill them plant 10,15, and 30 inch rows. I think in some ways they are tougher than corn. Direct cut them so no pulling or nonsense. You could plant a late group 2 or maybe even a 3 there. If you can plant more than 100 day corn. There are RR beans,Liberty link ,and conventional. Look at some seed test plots. I know there are some beans planted in ID yes north a bit. Though on the drier irrigated land like you have though. It is kind of like a witch hunt sorting all the differences out.
 
D.R. Go to Lincolnagproducts.com easier than chasing around. They have a chart for each planter and are price cheap enough. Have used them over years when we ran plate type planters. I think I remember you having a grain drill. Could just plug ever other hole and drill them, see how it works out. Beans are not that hard to raise.
 
Go to the Lincoln Ag site and you will find 3 different plates for soybeans And I do not know if you have the floor plates with a wide grove or narrow grove but if the wide grove that would give you 6 plate setting options. Deere also has 2 different cast plates. And your operators manual for the planter should give you planting spaces, It will be listed in pounds per acre so to figure settings you need to find out size of bean you plan to use and go from there as you need count per pound to figure size.
 
Steve, if you don't want to go to the expense of a new set of plates you can use a medium round corn plate to plant beans. You will drop two beans per cell. Adjust your population accordingly. I have done it in the past and it works very well. It actually works better than using bean plates. Mike
 
Steve being that you will be doing irrigation you will need a bushy soybean to plant in 30" rows so they will fill out and shade the ground, This will help hold moisture in the ground and help keep weeds under control. Now the planter plates you will need are the B2 or B3 plastic plates. Myself I would go with the B3 plates and hears why. A B2 plate is a 24 cell plate that will fit 4 bean seeds per cell, Now the B3 plate is a 32 cell plate that will fit 2 bean seeds per cell. Both will work fine but the B3 plates will give you more uniform seed spacing and that's what it all about. I thing I will tell you is that when you look at you book for the JD 71 units they were set up in pounds of seed per acre. Todays seed is most of the time small seed, Bags use to be sold as 60# bag or a bushel and now are sold as a unit of population per bag and the weight and seed size can very greatly. Sometimes a bag of seed will weigh 41# and the seed is small and sometimes the same population beg of seed will weigh 56# and the seed is bigger, So it a crap shoot year to year for us guys using old plate type planters to plant with. That is why I would go with the B3 plates because of the smaller cell size and more uniform seed spacing.

The picture is a AC 16 cell planter plate a JD B2 24 cell plate and a JD B3 32 cell plate. The AC will have 6 beans per cell and the B2 will fit 4 beans per cell and the B3 will fit 2 beans per cell. I hope this helps. Bandit
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Corn plates work well for planting beans. You'll just have to adjust your planter transmission to get your desired population. If you really get those plates geared high you'll have to back off your ground speed a bit to give the cells time to fill as they rotate.

What RM corn do you guys use out there?
 
Actually where they are saying a certain cell will hold a certain number of seeds, that may work some of the time but not all the time as a cell that would hold 4 extra large beans might hold 6 extra small beans. That is why you need the count per pound. I have never even considered a round corn plate for beans, never used rounds on corn always flats. So the difference in size of the bean and if you put that floor plate grove up or down that will also change counts per cell. Haven't farmed for several years so not up on sizes of beans. They would recemond a certain number of seeds or pounds per acre but on my ground to get a stand at all would have to take the amount recemonded and multiply it times 1 1/2, pollibly more to get correct amount of population. My soil is a heavy crusting soil tho. And the plates in the picture the first one is for a 999 John Deere horse drawn 2 row planter but Allis was made same way and with an adapter the Deere plates in picture could be used in Allis. I could go to store and buy any size of the plastic plates for Deere or McCormick right off the shelf. I myself used the 494-494A Deere planters. And I have both sizes of cast plates and I think all sizes of the plastic bean plate plus the floor plate with both the narrow and wide grove plus smooth to use. And the plastic plates like to crack in a cell.
 

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