soybeans

Dad and I have been contemplating planting one field to beans this year. It's a field we've rented for a couple years now and corn was a major flop last year due to weather, lack of proper tillage because of it, and just generally poor soil. We covered it in manure last fall and plowed it under, most of it had snow when we did it.
First time it's seen a moldboard in many many years(don't think it's ever been chiseled, owners only ever used a disc that I saw), but in our area moldboard plows still have a place. We've never done beans before but I'm not convinced it's worth trying corn again. We do have some bean
plates for our 495A (32" rows) that we've used for seeds like pop corn and I was gonna modify them fit other use that never came around.

We also have a 20x7" Van Brunt B drill. Which one would you guys use? I'm leaning towards the 495. They both cover about the same width and we drive about the same speed with either one. The corn planter would give us the option to spray and cultivate if needed though. We could
spray the beans if planted with the drill, but we'd run down a whole lot more in the process. I know it's been talked about some with another guy and a 494, read some of it before I lost track of it.

Donovan from Wisconsin

I personally like the idea of the 495A (Never used the Van Brunt drill myself) with cultivation a possibility. You probably would get better yield from the drill though. How big of a header on Your combine will determine how much You will end up knocking down in drilled rows. If a small header like a 10 - 13 footer, loss could be enough to make 32" rows more profitable. Next... Make sure You let the seed dealer know You are using a plate planter. Most seeds nowadays are not metered for size, is my understanding.

How will you harvest them? Is there a market in
your area? I would drill them, but what do others do
in your area? Here most beans are drilled, a few
are put in with splitters.
Josh

we drill soybeans and yes they may run down some beans spraying but it really doesn't make that much difference beans usually come back up from it or the ones beside them bush out and take their place. Really depends on weed and disease pressure in your area which method is best.

Use the drill. You will need to spray, but that is no matter... you will have a few wheel tracks that will soon canopy over.

What is your fertility like???? If it didn't grow corn very well, odds are beans won't do well either. Tillage may make you feel better, but won't correct fertility issues. Have you done a soil test?

I think I would get a handle on the agronomy before rushing into planting any crop. It is not so much poor soil as matching a crop that is suitable to that soil which maybe something other than corn or beans. Has a soil test been done? What is the drainage like? What are the tillage practices? We have soils here that do so much better to work after a decent shower than running a cultimulcher or roller harrow across ten times to get it fit to plant. If corn really struggled in this field I don't expect soybeans to do appreciably better. The big advantage is a much lower input cost to the crop. Being a dairy you have a way to handle forage crops. That might be the best use in the short term. Since you yourself are not milking you will want to sell the hay. Figure out what would grow best and see if there is a good market for it. Regardless of what you do you need to assess the soil type(s) first and then determine the health of that soil including drainage and fertility.

I like the drill the best. You could put some tape over every other hole in the drill for 12-15" rows
which is more popular these days than either 30" or 6" rows. Of course I'm not that into beans either.

I should note that if the soil is dry and lumpy going into planting it a planter is going to have a much better time with depth placement versus an old style grain drill. If a lot of beans are grown in your area then white mold could be a problem. Wider rows minimize this problem. Seed selection will be important too in terms of disease issues.

What nobody is talking sbout is bean type. Straight line, no branches on plant? Bush, lots of branches on plant and generaly taller? Medium bush, someware in between? Maturity, early, meedium or late? A early straight line short type will do better with the drill and you would use quite a bit more seed but you need a lot more stalks with that type of plant, now a heavy tall bush type is better in the 32" rows as it will branch out and fill the middles where a short straight line will not. The straight line are generaly a smaller bean while the bush type are generaly larger. Now anouther question is soil type in is it a type that does not crust over or a clay type that will crust so hard you have trouble putting a shovel in the ground? The beans in the crusting soil will do better at emergence using the planter as in that condition you should have a been every 1 1/2" apart in the row and with that they will break thru the crust where with the drill you might have one bean in every 7" square and that one bean will not be able to break thru the crust even using a good rotary hoe. The longer the season the taller the bean generaly is. Eather way have a good seed to soil seed bed worked deep enough to get good depth with either drill or planter, planter with the press wheels will work better if ground is a bit more cloddy as the press wheels if the clods are not too hard will break them up, use your corn planting as a guide on that. With the drill at least use a light weight spike tooth harrow to smooth over the field and to be sure all the beans are covered. A good way is a light weight cultipacker behind the drill and the spike tooth behind that. That is the way we did it in later years using 1950's erea John Deere or McCormick drills, your Van Brunt is just the no fertilizer version of the FB that we had only our drills were 13-7. Ny planters were a 494 set on 40" rows to start, then bought a 494 set on 30" rows, followed be a 494A set on 30" rows first with shoe openers and later installed the disk openers, shoes no problem getting seed covered, the double disk I did have problems with that but I did not have the disk row covers on that I should have had on but didn't because of stuck bearings, If did not cover correctly had to go over after planter with that packer and harrow. I don't think you have a combine so how do you plan to harvest them? That could also influnce how you plant them. If you plan on using them as forrage then you do not want rows and would not need to think about them maturing like for grain and you would want double the plants per acre and a perfectly smooth field but you also need that with a combine so you are not running clods thru the combine. Without knowing the answers to these questions then no one can give a reasonable answer to your question and a lot are thinking on using the newer items like the Deere 7000 plante or no till drills and not light weight machinery like you have and that I used, big difference there in way to do things. Row width for spraying does not mean much as now most spraying is done with the beans less than 6" tall, Now if the spray you gan get is to be a late season application and beans are 2+' tall then row with could matter as long as the tractor and sprayer wheels would match the row spacing. Not nere as simple as you were thinking about but all questions you need to answer before you buy the beans. In your area I think for grain a medium group 2 would be about correct maturity. Around me I have seen a lot of group 4 beans that never matured due to frost, myself I never used longer than a late group 3 and prefered a mid group 3. I would rather sacrifice the pontential for a couple of bushels per acre to get them harvested before snow falls. And get them harvested before the snow-mud and not hope to have to wait untill spring to harvest and hope there were still beans to harvest. Have not alway been succesfull at that. One year had to harvest after a 6" snowfall and had to not only use the pickup real on the combine but the pickup guards to help lift the stalks off the ground. Long but items you need to think about before you decide.

Hopefully, Don is talking to his seed dealer to match local conditions. Good point on crusting. Some fields we have crust easily and stand no chance of getting on to rotary how after 2 inches rain before the seedlings die underneath the crust. A big reason why we run wide (30 inch) rows on a lot our acreage.

I recommend rows narrower than 32". Either double over with your planter or use the drill. Put down Roundup plus whatever you want to kill the volunteer corn and don't waste your time cultivating. My cousin in Lind Center bought our old 495 planter and likes it for corn but says he has better results drilling soybeans. I've never planted narrower than 15" although I'm going to try it on a few small fields this year with a Great Plains drill in 7.5" rows. I normally plant about 165000 seeds per acre. 1.7 or 1.8 maturity. Last time I had soybeans I averaged 55 bu per ac. My soil varies from sandy loam to heavy black to red clay nine feet deep. Sometimes all in the same field. So, some acres were running 70 bu ac and some about 35 give or take. Due to that, I had soil tests done on 2.5 acre grids (GPS plots) and apply fertilizer accordingly. My estimated input costs this year will require 27.5 bu/p/ac to break even if soybean prices hold. Some soybean seed is pre-innoculated and some isn't. Better check that out. I don't have any opinion on fungicide and pesticide seed treatments but all of my seed this year will be treated. I really like soybeans better than corn although I rotate every year. They're completely different from corn. Corn is as dumb as a rock but soybeans seem to have an intelligence all their own. Not so many truckloads in the fall, either. You'll have plenty of places to sell them from where you're located.

Locally most went back to planting with a corn planter, but still some drill.

What type of manure, if you got a fair amount of N I'd hate to give that up on a bean crop?

Paul

I have planted beans through a VanBrunt with every other hole plugged.The seed cup doors are opened all the way open.Around 5 to 6 beans to a foot of row.

I guess I can answer a few questions, others we need answers on. As far as harvest, plenty of custom guys in the area, and the guy we rent a bagger from is willing to do the work and he's pretty reasonable to work with.

Our soil is a heavy clay base that can crust over, but that depends on the weather. If it rains hard right after planting, it's gonna have a crust.

I'll have to see if dad had the soil samples done this year, pretty sure he had some pulled for last year so it'd be a start.

We have some packers that we pull behind the drill, for the corn planter I figured we'd pull the drag around after we're done planting

Donovan from Wisconsin

As somebody mentioned in an earlier post, if the soil is poor, don't expect beans to do much good no matter how they are
planted. Be sure to used the proper innoculant too. You mentioned a good covering of manure but how about lime? Beans are more sensitive than corn to sour soils and do
much better at a more neutral Ph. Lime takes a while to affect ph, but it is quicker if it is tilled in. I'd till it, drill
it, and drag it to be sure beans are covered and be ready with the rotary hoe if was to get crusty. My 2 cents.

Don, soybeans are really sensitive in terms of depth especially on heavy soils. Unless you are planting in low gear that depth will vary a 1/2 inch or more from what you desire plus that drill has no gauge wheel to help. The drill will draft shallow in hard areas or too deep in light soil areas. Stay away with any after planting operations plus even rolling can have a negative impact if this spring remains cold and wet. I think since you are not going to invest in a different planting machine go with the 495 planter and as Leroy pointed out find a variety that will bush out to fill the row. I do not find a great difference in yield from 30 inch rows down to 7 inch most seasons as long as great care has been used to select the variety and the fertility is in order. Herbicides are comparatively cheap to a decade ago and you can use products such as Dual II to help with weed control as long as you follow the label. Get with your fertilizer/ chemical salesman and he can give you ideas. If soybeans workout for you then you can go the next step to a top flight planter or drill.

Manure can bring a lot of fresh weed seeds into a soybean field, especially cattle manure.

I think soybean germination is affected by planting depth a lot more than corn is. For only one field you might be ahead to reduce you planting speed and concentrate on doing the best job of planting that you can.

We'd really like to plant it to alfalfa, but we rent it year to year and when it sells, it sells. We'd hate to make that kind of an investment in alfalfa, only to have a developer buy it next year and it's all being torn up for a new commercial building.

We're still kicking around what we should put in there. I think there is a soil sample, but I gotta ask Dad on that one. A former coworker I had planted 1/2 his bean with a drill (I think it was a great plains no-till drill), and 1/2 with a planter and rolled everything 2 years ago (the newest and latest craze) and said the drill used a bit more seed, but the harvest was about as dead even as you could get.

We put some manure on last spring too, but we never got any good primary tillage done and that's a must in most of the fields around here.

I would blame part of last year on the seed selection (strayed from the norm) and a cool, wet then dry summer and late planting. Wasn't good conditions but seems most others had a little better luck.

Donovan from Wisconsin

I hate to keep pecking away but if there is difficulty getting on the field with a sprayer due to wetness of the field it would be another reason to use herbicides such as Dual II to supplement glyphosate ready beans. It would mean chasing the planter as Dual II has to be applied pre-emergence but would let you sleep better if it rained the next three weeks not allowing machine traffic on the field. There are other products in case that field has a much more serious broadleaf weed issue than grass.