Beans on Beans

Hello,
I have a question and would like pros and cons of it. I would appreciate experience from those who have been there done that. I have approximately 30 acres that I raised soybean on last fall. They yielded an average of 55 bu/ac. I live in central Illinois and we had a really dry summer. I am wanting to put a crop out this yr and thinking about just putting beans on beans. Is this doable? What kind of fertilizer should I use? I did not do any soil tests so it would be just a shot in the dark. This is only the 2nd yr of farming this piece. Thank you for the help

I'm planting 36 acres bean on beans, no problem just put on enough p and k to support the plants needs. For 50+ yield potential beans I'd think about 50 units of p and 20 units of K. I just had my starter broadcast on my bean and corn ground, I didn't use those numbers but I don't have that yield potential on most of my ground.

In some areas diseases and root rots will build up affecting the beans, in other areas 10 years of beans on beans is not a problem.

In general 2 years of beans should work out fine, I'd want to know more about your location and switch up the bean varieties for different resistance packages if you want to go more than 2 years.

Naturally beans create their own N so you won't need that. Assuming you didn't fertilize much last year, getting 50 lbs each of P and K per acre would help you out. Beans seem fine with broadcast fertilizer. Remember, your fertilizer is only 60 or 23 or whatever % P or K, so you might need to add 400 lbs per acre to get the right amount of actual nutrients....

What is the soil ph in your location? I'm in a high ph area so not a concern for me, but in many areas, low soil ph below 6 will lock up the soil nutrients, preventing roots from prying them loose from the chemical bond to the soil. This makes lime the most important thing you can do, if your soil is low ph. Lime takes several months to start working, so if needed, sooner is better, and can last for 5 years or more. Depends what type of lime you use. If needed at all.

Paul

John, i have a neighbor up here by dwight that has been doing beans on beans for many years. He used to do op beans, then mix bin run with fresh seed for years. Then the round up beans pollinated his and put an end to that. Now he just plants roundup beans. He is an older gent, doesnt want to change the planter or combine anymore. He does 50 bushel beans regularly. Next time i see him, i can ask what he does .

Total fertilizer is 109 potash 49 phosphate this is for 50
bushel beans.

hey beans price that fert at those levels and report back. You might have to mortgage your first born.

It shows that you don't know the fertilizer removal a 50 bushel bean crop those are the exact of fertilizer it takes if you farm by the book I guess you don't know. Give ag phd a call if you don't believe.

Fertilizer price by the semi load at river is pot 495 a ton mez is 565a ton

Hey beans I'm not the village idiot, I looked at the Kstate soybean handbook yesterday before I talked to my ag supplier about spreading my starter. That's great if you can buy a whole semi load, I can't. Figure out how much that cost is on a per acre basis and tell me if you think those numbers work. How many bucks an acre are you willing to invest in a crop? Figure your fuel, fert, herbicide, fungicide, harvesting, trucking and tell me how many bucks an acre you can make off that crop. Oh an Ag phd is great, but if a guy doesn't farm half the county he better stay within his means if he wants to keep farming.

I understand what you are saying, and don't want to get in an argument, but if you haul a crop away, you need to put the nutrients back into your soil somehow.

Can do it with manures or plowdowns or other such as Animal and others do; or you can do it with the tons of granules, or you can let your ground slowly slide backwards until you got nothing left and will cost a lot more to build it back up.....

I just wrote a check in December for them to put $145 to $199 an acre's worth of variable rate fertilizer - that includes N. I'll still be putting on 100 lbs of starter with the micros in it with the planter.

This should cover next year's soybean crop as well, so it is a build program.

But, dad let this farm run down, didn't keep the soil up, so here I am still paying for that, takes years to get back to where you need to be. Does not look good to get those maps back, and see so many red and orange colors on your fields....

Sure can see the difference in the crop where things are coming around again, and back into the yellow colors at least.

You think a person can't afford the fertilizer; I can't afford the red colors on the soil maps, that show - and I can see looking in the combine bin - how much yield I'm losing without the fertilizer.

But you are right, it is not cheap, and a person needs to plan and work on it, not go stupid.

Wish I could find some manure, my few cattle are grazing cornstalks and direct-depositing, I don't get much to spread, and the neighbor's hog barns are being spread on my dairy neighbor's fields because he had the same problem I did, his dairy manure doesn't get his soils built back good enough.

It's always a work in progress.

--->Paul

I understand what you boys are saying, and if you ask my landlords they will tell you that my practices are a whole lot better than the guys that farmed them before me. You don't get ground and keep it on my scale if you don't maintain the land. The last renter on one of these farms grew beans on beans for 10 years and never applied a granular of fert. Now you also have to remember that this is some tiger crap....clay it just doesn't have the yield potential to put on 200 dollars worth of fert and see it returned to your pocket book. It just will not work. It has only been in the last couple of years that anyone around here has even thought of applying bean starter. It is just different ground than you boys farm. I'm not upset and don't take it as such I like discussion without it we don't progress we flounder.

On the price it don't matter how many tone you buy at the river it is the same price it will average $100 a ton less than the local coop . And for your answer on cost pull a tissue sample this comming summer and I bet your crops will be suffering on fertility . You get out what you put on. For yield on beans where I farm I do not have a problem getting in the. Mid to high 70 bushel per acre.

Where do you farm bean? Here we plan for 30bpa beans and 100bpa corn. That's reality. This is the Great American Dessert of Kansas, where you plan for those yields and if it rains you might just get 50bpa beans and 150bpa corn. But it only happens about once in 4 years.

I can only dream of 50 bu soybeans, my high ph wet clay doesnt get along with beans so well. Topping over 30 bu is a good year sometimes.

200 bu corn is easy here tho, if you don't count the parts that flood out or the tops of the hills that burn up. (I like being honest and get 160 bu corn maybe 170 average, but the neighbors all swear the whole farm is 200 bu.....)

I've put in $10-25,000 of tile a year the past 4 years to try to get the wetness problem cut down some, we will see if mother nature wants to help out with the dryness now.

You can see why corn is king here.....

--->Paul

Southern IL.

I farm in southern IL too and our removal rates don't figure out that high on light clay. If you are in black dirt maybe but not white chalk or gray clay. We run a 2 year spread usually in the neighborhood of 100 DAP and 200 Potash average on a grid and that includes buildup for low areas. We are running a 40 bushel bean and 120 bushel corn average. Every time our tests get pulled we are getting more even across the field with the low testing areas coming up more even with the rest of the field. We have inverted here the last few years we have had an easier time here raising good beans than corn. It used to be the other way around. Erik if you're fertilizing to your tests that's all that matters. But I will say that grid sampling and VRT spreading our dry fert. is paying off. As far as the bean on bean question if the ground is low lying SDS and other disease issues should dominate your vareity choice. Also a history of cyst nematode pressure may cause you issues as well.

That's good to hear, started grid sample and variable
spreading 3 years ago.

Paul

We have been grid sampling and VRT spreading on the home farm for 12 years now and 6 years on the rented ground. I believe it has more than paid for itself in better bean yields alone. The wide swings in the weather skew the results on the corn somewhat but take out 2010,2009,2007,and 2005 (all for various weather related reasons) and our corn average would be up as well.

Our local supplier just became equipped for vrt last year, I'm glad to hear some feed back on the grid sampling and vrt. I haven't used it yet, but now that I have heard some field proven results I will try it out next year. This years starter is already applied.

The biggest piece of advice I can give you is temper your expectations early on. It took several years before we really started to see results other than on the soil test maps. The lay of the land makes a lot of difference also, if you have varying soil types that are typically "sweet" spots in a field they usually test lower. The VRT allows you to build up those areas without piling it on areas that don't need it. By bringing those areas up to par and I think the newer generation beans are affecting it also we have increased our bean average by 10+ bu. in some fields. We usually get a map from the co-op for each field with the prescription and we put max rate caps on to reconcile it with the checkbook and best practices (just because the test level calls for 500 lb./ac. potash doesn't mean you should put it on that heavy). We paid for the first round of grid samples with the reduction in lime we applied that fall. The maps had them only spreading partial fields so both our tons and acres spread were lower than if we had straight spread it with what the low areas needed.

I started grid sampling and vrt several years ago and it's paying off very well. Fertilizer is not going down so it don't hurt to go extra if you can as it will carry over and may save a little for the next year. I'd say to check with your extension agent as he'll know the soil types and recomendations for your area. Get soil samples to know where levels are. I can tell you to put down plenty of phos and don't get cheap. Beans love it.