Soy bean question

Can you swath green soys to get them to dry down?

When I was a kid we got a terrible hail storm in July. Too late to dry out and replant. I was too young to understand how bad this was, but I remember bits and pieces. The corn was wounded very bad, the beans were shredded.

Dad was told to cultivate several times would help th beans.

Not much came of them, back then a straight header no flex was the normal. Dad started swathing the beans, they fed into the swather easier than they did into the combine.

In the end I recall dad saying it didnt pay, the wear and tear on the swather and the dummy head belts. He lost a lot of short beans straight combining, and shelled out a lot of pods on the dummy belts.....

I recall in the oats field there was an acre that was too wet to plant, and dad put beans in it. That corner of that field was sheltered by the grove, and that was the only good beans dad had that year. Back then you saved seed beans, and that was half of the saved beans.

This doesn't answer your question.

I would say it would dry them down uniformly if some stayed greener. But if they were dead and just a weather issue, I'd think they would dry down slower in a windrow than if you left them stand?

They windrow eatable beans in some areas don't they? Maybe they would know how it works or not.

Paul

No experience here but if you would windrow them and got a rain I don't think the beans on the bottom would ever dry out and most likely spoil.

Don't know?

There are varieties that will dry the stems down better than others. Be more choosy in that regard. Maybe drop your maturity a little.

3.0 and earlier are the best for drydown in this area. I have tried to stretch the maturity to a 3.2 or 3.4 here and I end up cussing green stems.

Gary

Dad used to talk about bean hay. Is this what you are considering ?

I think it made pretty good feed but I don't know what stage of maturity the beans were in when they were cut. I would suspect they were just begining to pod.

Pretty sure they would dry down fine if cut then.

AS you all know, I am an organic producer. This is what happened to me this year. When the leaves dropped the stem and the beans were green as a gourd. So I am waiting for a hard freeze that did not come for three weeks. Meantime grass started growing up in them and did not stop growing until we got the hard freeze the week of Nov.10. I tried to combine them before then but it was a no go. After the freeze it went slow but smooth. This has really put me behind the eight ball for my fall work. I was on youtube and saw where a producer in Oregon was swathing his beans and it was working for him. Just got me to thinking....as you know that can be dangerous..

Boy, at this point I think I'd leave them standing. Seems to me it would be much more risk to put them on the ground. You, I, and the weather forcaster have no idea what mother nature has planned for drying days ahead.

I hate green stemmed beans too, don't remember ever having them 20 years ago. Horsepower robbing bastages !

Maybe line up a couple neighbors that are willing to custom cut with you at the next opportunity to cut ?

What about a bean cutter? I know nothing of soybeans, but traditionally dry edible beans in this area are cut with a bean cutter. It cuts them with knives just at the base of the plant. They're then windrowed with a rake and combined with a pickup head. Then they started to cut and windrow in the same step. It is now becoming popular to direct harvest with the combine.

David

Eric, I already have my beans out, was just doing some planning for the future.

A few used to swath them around here, but the beans themselves were mature and nearly dry enough, it was the weeds and dockage in the sample that prompted some to try it. Didn't go over very well.

Nothing will dry them better than standing with air/wind all around them. Leave them stand. We had one year where they ripened ok but ground got wet and then snow fell and we waited for Jan thaw (which we had) melted everything down to mud then two days later froze harder than a rock. We harvested and lost zero beans and price went from $7 at harvest to $10 by Jan. Let em stand.