Research for high yeilding soybeans

Can any one recommend some websites that I could research growing soybeans? I didnt raise any this year, and wasnt to happy with how I did 2 years ago and I want to research as much as I can so I can have a plan going into the spring. I do know hydrid selection is critical, I am moslty looking for data/advise for growing practices on light soils for high yeilding beans. Every one always says they want high yeilds but will not deter from their past practices. I want to try different things and see what does best. If I get the weather I need I do not want to be sitting here next fall with only 20 bushel beans

Dave we didnt do so great in 2008 in beans either but the bean crop in 09 overflowed the bin. No physical change was made in the planting/spraying/tillage methods, we dont fertilize or put down any preemergence on beans. We just use a field cultivator to loosen it up, plant, spray it a couple times with roundup and harvest it. at least 8 beans to a foot...

I take that back, I thought it was set too light so this year I planted a second time with diagonal rows over the first ones. And for the first time ever we sprayed for aphids. Other than that I prayed about it when I thought about it. I'm pretty sure that made the most difference, but the guy that sprayed for aphids will happily take credit too.

If you are talking light soils such as lots of sandy soil it just will not happen unless youhave irrigation. Done it for few years on theat type soil and never did get above 25 and that was year of local flood in my area it was basically sub irrigated by the river. late season early season and variety just did not seem to make any difference. raise rye on it now and bale it alll in small bales and way money ahead than any soybean or corn crop would do. other light farm is in crp 156 an acre,no way net that farming good luck

Check with your extension office and see if they have an agronomy guide. We have one here in OH and it is pretty helpful and would be adapted to growing them in your area.

Why not contact your local extension agent and inquire about university research. Also contact seed companies and ask about different growing methods they have tried for yield increase.

I"m running some "older" varieties of Asgrow beans with some of the "newer generation" roundup ready 2 ones for next year just to see. We"ve had very good luck with Asgrow, I"m not a dealer or anything. I ran some test plots with other varieties this year to check them. Do the F.I.R.S.T. field trials go up to your area? Maybe there is a farmer nearby with similar soil that ran a plot for them. I know the Asgrow site will have test plots of their stuff running with others. I"m sure theirs is skewed to show off theirs though. I"m going to try some minimum till and some chiseled stalks in one field of beans also to check for a yield difference. I would check the prices for fungicide, foliar feed, etc. in your parts and see if it could pencil out. It doesn"t usually pay in my lighter ground, but on my better stuff I try some of the "extras". Hey if you can get 5 more bushel, it might be $50. On some great ground I threw everything under the sun (fungicide, foliar feed with each roundup application, check the beans needs during the growing season with nutri-scripts, liming, etc.) and got 70+ bushel. What size rows do you run for beans?

Some have all ready said check with your county extension agent but if MN is anything like KY you will also want to go in an talk to two local co-ops that sell a large variety of seed brands. If a person does every thing the UK extension says they should you are never going to make any money but you will look good doing it and your auction will bring a huge crowd. A local co-op manager only makes money if you make enough money to come back and buy stuff next year. If you get info from 3 sources use your own judgment to pick and choose what they say between the three of them.

Good luck!

Dave

I will be doing all of the following 30", 15", with corn planter, the remainder will be 12" rows drilled with conventional drill. I may try a small area on 6" if I have some seed that isnt bushy. At least these were my plans, we"ll see what I learn.

Ours is on a modified deal at 18". I've seen stories proclaiming all the spacings are better than others in some regard. Does fungicide and other extras come into play up there? We're in NW IN. I learned some this year by sending in tissue samples during the season and seeing what the plant was lacking (supposedly). I tried to remedy that in the next roundup app with tweaking the foliar feed. I keep on the N-P-K real well on all my fields, but this is supposed to help on zeroing in on the micronutrients your missing also. I felt pretty lucky this year on my yield, I rotary hoed the beans and corn just to try and get them to pop on 250 acres.

check with your local mycogen dealer or go on the web and look for mycogen soybeans they are a MN company

I spent the winter of '07-08 in the Iowa State University Library and on line studying how to grow better beans. Bought the latest class room text books too.

I planned early, contracted beans that won every plot in 200 miles and contracted them with Cruzer-maxx. Planned on April planting (central Iowa). Contracted prowl-H2O preplant after I planned a glyphosate burn down. Contracted an insecticide spray, expecting a bean leaf beetle problem with the early planting. Contracted a spritz of Headline at a time to be determined. Spraying times to be determined. Put new brushes in my Kinze bean meters on my JD 7000 planter. While the best I'd done was 49 the area average was about that. (central part of Story County, close to Ames).

I had some samples of stalks and beans from 2006 so I had those tested for micronutrients which showed molybdenum was lacking. I acquired suitable molybdenum for adding to the seed and I bought America's Best innoculant.

My goal was 70 bushel beans.

It all fell apart. The beans were too fragile to have any germination left after the seed treatment so they came bare and 85 or 90% germination which is low to begin with.

Being notill I had to wait until the ground warmed up and dried enough to support the planter on the corn stalks. That didn't happen until mid June. The mid May burndown and prowl H2O kept the weeds brown until late June. The molybdenum and innoculant did get applied.

It rained and it rained and it rained, I considered adding pontoons to the planter and triples to the tractor for floatation. But my soil touched when wet turns to concrete so I held off.

The late planting kept the bean leaf beetles away, but in August I had a swarm of aphids in a none aphid year. Then the beans got dosed with insecticides and Headline.

In mid July when I applied glyphosate, I found bare patches that I'd gone around the first two plantings and some that had drowned out so I ordered some 0.9 maturity beans and planted them that week. Some of those drowned out.

The combine really rumbled from the green stems caused by the Headline, but the crop came in at 47 bushels. The neighbors who didn't spray for aphids got in the low 30s with the same planting conditions.

My new tenant is continuous corn and I'm OK with that.

Gerald J.

I would advise against the 6" spacing. I drilled some on 6" and it is very hard to keep from over populating. This was with a 510 IHC drill.

When I started farming 30 years ago , if I got 100bu corn yield I was happy, now yields are 175-200. However soybeans have not followed that trend, 30 years ago 35-40, now some years we get 35-40 and some years 40-46. These are average yields over the entire farm, sure test plots show yields in the 50's-60's but that is always a few rows on the best ground. Soybean yields are highly dependent on soil type, planting date, moisture, and heat, most things we have no control over. If you have "light" soil, (sandy) you are not going to get a good yield no matter what varity you plant. Talk to a couple of seed dealers and tell them about you soil type, they know that stuff, if they don't, find another dealer. They will find a variety that will work for you.
We no-til here, so even if our yield is 3-4 bushels less that the neighbor's conventional tillage we are money ahead because we do at least 3-4 less field passes, that is the way I see it.
Brian(MN)

One of my best bean yields was 25 years ago, I moldboard plowed corn stalks in the spring, worked it up and planted beans with a 4-38" row planter, those beans grew and grew and I harvested 54bu/ acre. Another of my best yields was during a dry year, a slough went dry, so I planted the bottom with out working it up, beans grew and grew, no rain lots of heat, man I had a crop there!
Brian(MN)