Which means your still wasting your money on Eagles. Anyone who will preach the "weeds in plots are ok" rhetoric until they are blue in the face is throwing money away on the RR traits. Save yourself $40 a bag and plant Tyrone, Derry, Donegal, Laredo, Quail Haven, or a host of others that I did not list that are not under the thumb of Monsanto and save yourself some cash. Now for those of you who will tell me that "weeds are ok accept in soybeans", save your rhetoric for the guys who buy BOB seed. All of the varieties I mentioned will canopy very quickly and should shade out most weeds anyway. Granted, some of these varieties are not readily available at your everyday Big Box hunting outlet like Cabelas or Bass Pro, but if you stop at an actual farmers coop, they can usually get some of the above named varieties for considerably less money than your Monsanto overlords dictate the Eagle beans be sold for. I have nothing personally against Eagle Seeds or Monsanto, but for those who don't mind a little ragweed or other "undesirables" growing in your plots, save yourself some cash. Do a little web research, inquire at your local coop or feed mill, get yourself a bag of non-RR forage soys and see how they perform in your deer plots. And remember, the deer don't care about weeds in your plot.............There are other forage beans like Tyrone. The price Eagle is able to command is because they are one of the few forage beans that had licensed the RR gene.
We did a side by side trial of Eagle, Real World and free ag beans. Everything was documented and pictures taken during the whole process. Like others stated, each type has their special niche in food plots. We live in a heavy agricultural area, beans are everywhere...acres and acres of beans. If we planted a forage bean...all the forage and money would go to waste because the deer are so spread out on the production fields. We need pods for late season. For our needs, free ag beans are the best fit. Look at what is planted in surrounding areas, what the weak spots are in your food plot program, size of your plot, cost associated in the seed, then decide whether forage beans or production beans fit what YOU need.
Which means your still wasting your money on Eagles. Anyone who will preach the "weeds in plots are ok" rhetoric until they are blue in the face is throwing money away on the RR traits. Save yourself $40 a bag and plant Tyrone, Derry, Donegal, Laredo, Quail Haven, or a host of others that I did not list that are not under the thumb of Monsanto and save yourself some cash. Now for those of you who will tell me that "weeds are ok accept in soybeans", save your rhetoric for the guys who buy BOB seed. All of the varieties I mentioned will canopy very quickly and should shade out most weeds anyway. Granted, some of these varieties are not readily available at your everyday Big Box hunting outlet like Cabelas or Bass Pro, but if you stop at an actual farmers coop, they can usually get some of the above named varieties for considerably less money than your Monsanto overlords dictate the Eagle beans be sold for. I have nothing personally against Eagle Seeds or Monsanto, but for those who don't mind a little ragweed or other "undesirables" growing in your plots, save yourself some cash. Do a little web research, inquire at your local coop or feed mill, get yourself a bag of non-RR forage soys and see how they perform in your deer plots. And remember, the deer don't care about weeds in your plot.............
They do comparisons against normal maturity soybeans showing how much taller their beans are. Its crap, save your money and pay $40 for late maturing RR AG beans if you want! Or plant double the rate of mormal beans for your area and get the same. Stop wasting your fricken money!
AD, you are spot on again!
Late season Pods are where it is at! No Pods, you have no Deer!
You might want to go back and read that weed thread more carefully. It is advocating a more thoughtful approach to weeds. It is not an all weeds are good or all weeds are bad approach. It takes into consideration ones objectives and poses a question as to what role the weeds are playing in either achieving or impeding ones long-term objectives.
So, when you re-read that thread, you will see that in my area, weeds are an issue with warm season annuals, but not with my cool season annuals or perennials. The combination of browse pressure and weed competition reduce soybean forage production well beyond the tipping point. I use glyphosate for both pre-planting and post emergent weed control. I also include a very light mix of RR corn with my beans. The objective is not corn production but adding some vertical cover in the beans to encourage more daytime use but that is thin enough for ethical shots. This eliminates most of the post-emergent grass control herbicides in beans as an option like Clethodim.
From a cost perspective, one needs to consider the entire cost of planting the field, not just seed cost as well as time availability. Using glyphosate on RR beans (ag or Eagle) provided many more options for folks in my area with high deer density outside ag areas. Not only is it less expensive form of weed control (being outside a big ag area I don't have a glyphosate-resistance issue), it also can be used when browse pressure keeps the beans from forming a canopy. For example, without a canopy, summer grasses will invade forage (or ag beans) but once established, they can continue to produce forage. RR forage beans like Eagle, because they are indeterminate late maturity, will produce forage well into our archery season for attraction. I can apply glyphosate to these standing beans, and surface broadcast a cover crop for fall. This removes the grass canopy which can be fairly heavy by late summer and allows the cover crop to germinate. The result is a mix of soybean forage through mid-October with WR, CC, and GHR or PTT growing in them. As the bean forage yellows and falls, the small pods are still available. While my deer don't use them much except in mast crop failure years, my turkey use them heavily.
The more general point here is that you are only wasting your money when you don't match the characteristics of the seeds you use with your application. Applications differ based on region, surrounding conditions, deer densities, soil types, weed specifics, and probably more other factors than I know. Everyone has to look at their own application and make a value judgment.
As you can see from my previous post, I'm not advocating that Eagle beans are a fit for every application. However, they fill an important niche in the south for many. I'm also not advocating that all weeds should be ignored.
I would agree that if your application does not require weed control or if the variety of pre and post emergent herbicides necessary to establish non-RR forage beans work for your application, non-RR forage beans can be a viable alternative that may or may not be a lower overall cost when herbicides are considered.
The overarching principle applies. These forums are a great place to share experiences and characteristics with different seeds and describing why we used them and what characteristics worked for us. Assuming that everyone else has the same application as we do that they are wasting their money doing things differently than we do is a bit shortsighted.
Thanks,
Jack
You can't argue with a photo like that^^^^^!!!!!
MO, about how far along was that plot, like when was that photo taken? My point would be that I don't see any other grasses(like foxtail) hiding in there, so the soys most likely canopied before they were an issue.
That ^^^ whole post is great and all, but have YOU tried the non-RR forage soys for yourself? Making statements like those above, I take it YOU HAVE actually tried the non-RR varieties and they were epic failures for your applications then? Or is this anecdotal evidence that YOUR weeds will overtake them? Shortsighted? Hello kettle. I HAVE tried both Tyrone and Laredo soys in the past, so I think I CAN speak to their ACTUAL performance. Neither one of them panned out for me, mainly due to the fact that a sub-1/2 acre unprotected soybean plot in a non-ag area with WI deer densities is destined for failure, RR Eagles, ags, or otherwise. What I can say from PERSONAL experience with the non-RR soys is that they did produce deer food for fawns and lactating does for a week or 2 longer than non-forage ag beans before our deer killed them by hoovering them to the dirt, and with some protection or a large enough plot to get them over a couple feet tall, I feel they would have been fine for summer and early fall forage until the frost took them out.
For guys wanting to try non-RR forage beans and would like a "weed free" plot(corn, volunteer or planted in soybeans on purpose, is a "weed" in soybean plots, so if you want corn in your plot, you will have to live with other grasses as well, and spray a broadleaf only residual herbicide). Start with a relatively clean plot, spray with a hot dose of gly after spring weed emergence(but do not wait until they get too tall). After planting the soys into the burned down plot, allow the soybeans to emerge, and spray your plot with one of the many post emergent residual herbicides in the list provided below(DO YOUR HOMEWORK!! FOLLOW ALL LABEL DIRECTIONS!!). Sure, most of them are more money per acre to apply than gly, but many can be sprayed for around $10-$15 per acre, and given the $40-$50+ premium one pays for RR Eagles, your still saving $25-$30 per acre. Considering you would potentially be spraying gly twice, pre-plant burndown and post-emergence anyway, the "tractor expenses" of a second spraying are a wash. There is more than one way to end up with a relatively weed free forage soybean plot(and gly resistant weeds won't throw a wrench in your gears), and you can save money over the "you must plant RR forage soys" crowd.;)
https://igrow.org/up/resources/03-3000-2013_1.pdf