iron and clay cowpeas ?

[JFK52]

I put in an acre of iron and clay cowpeas this year on my farm near Almond in Portage county WI. They grew great on a field that had paper mill sludge dumped on it for fertilizer this spring. I put in some black oil sunflower seeds to give the vines something to climb. When I looked at this plot last Saturday I could not find the iron and clay cowpeas. Can the deer have eaten them already? Did the hard frost kill them? I have plenty of 4 foot tall black oil sunflower plants with 6 inch diameter seed heads. It was a little over three weeks between the last time I saw them growing in September and my visit this weekend.
This is my first year with iron and clay cowpeas. No idea what to expect or when they get eaten. Looking for feedback from anyone who has grown them before.

 

[Semisane]

Only a 1/4 acre plot, but when I planted IC peas on it the deer let them get to about six or eight inches tall then totally wiped them out between my week-apart visits to the plot.

 

[FarmerDan]

Cow peas are like candy...sometimes. I've seen them totally wiped from the face of the earth.....and other times they hardly get touched.

 

[yoderjac]

I had a similar experience. I'm way south of WI, but here, between browse pressure and summer weeds, warm season annuals are difficult. Deer often nip them off before they are well established. Deer here react similarly to sunflowers here, so I find it interesting that you got sunflowers. I ended up going to RR forage beans instead of IC peas and began mixing RR corn in lightly instead of sunflowers for the vertical cover. That worked well for spring planting until I got hit with a Marestail infestation. I'll be dealing with that for a year or two and am now using buckwheat for spring planting.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[JFK52]

yoderjac, I had a great crop of RR Eagle Northern managers mix forage soy beans. In spite of a three week period in the summer when only .4 of rain fell. The hard frost last week took them out, but in the mix 20% of the soy beans produce pods. So there is a residual amount of beans that have some pods on them. The pods will be cleaned up by the deer in time.
The ICCP was a "try something different" experiment. I guess the deer liked them as I can find nothing left of them. I am also surprised that the sunflowers are standing. I put in other small plots of black oil sunflowers and the deer never let them grow. They were wiped out by late summer.
I will probably stick to planting early buckwheat, terminating it and them putting in dwarf Essex rape seed.

 

[Catscratch]

I plant sunflowers every yr in conjunction with some sort of legume. The beans are sometimes; iron, clay, lima, pinto, peas, AWP, etc. They all get eaten to the ground before they make it past 6 inches. I've found that black oil sunflowers will grow more flowers if the the first flower is browsed off. I'm having good luck with them feeding the deer and still making seeds. I'll look to see if I can find a pic from this summer...

 

[yoderjac]

yoderjac, I had a great crop of RR Eagle Northern managers mix forage soy beans. In spite of a three week period in the summer when only .4 of rain fell. The hard frost last week took them out, but in the mix 20% of the soy beans produce pods. So there is a residual amount of beans that have some pods on them. The pods will be cleaned up by the deer in time.
The ICCP was a "try something different" experiment. I guess the deer liked them as I can find nothing left of them. I am also surprised that the sunflowers are standing. I put in other small plots of black oil sunflowers and the deer never let them grow. They were wiped out by late summer.
I will probably stick to planting early buckwheat, terminating it and them putting in dwarf Essex rape seed.

Yes, beans seem to fill a different niche in the north where you are verses the south where I am. I plant warm season annuals to cover our summer stress period. In my zone, it is probably somewhat greater than our winter stress period. For this, IC peas and Soybeans seem to fill the same niche. Here, summer weeds are a real problem with warm season annuals. The are very well adapted most warm season annul mixes have no post planting herbicide to reduce weed competition. On top of that, most warm season annuals are like candy when they first emerge. If I get planting time right, it helps as our does are staying in cover to fawn. However once the fawns are on the ground they hammer the warm season annuals favoring them over most weeds. So, instead of the mix establishing and providing a summers worth of food, they get only a bite from each plant and we have a field of weeds by summer. The RR forage beans focus their energy on vegetative growth over pod production and can withstand the browse pressure without dying. The RR aspect allows us to keep weeds from out competing them. Here, pods mean little to deer. In most years, deer don't even touch the small Eagle bean pods (but turkey use them a lot).

I think soybeans fill a different role in the north. Because your summers are shorter and later, I would expect them to be a smaller stress period than winter and that weeds would be somewhat less of an issue. I don't know about your level of browse pressure. In the north, I would think pod production would be the primary role of soybeans and ag beans would be a better bet (provided you can establish them). Sounds like the Northern managers mix is working for you.

If you are only planting for attraction, I would not even worry about spring planting that far north. If you are working on a scale where you can do QDM, I think you are headed in the right general direction. You might want to consider mixing legumes with your brassica and consider adding other brassica like PTT that will cover later into the season.

Best of luck,

Jack

 

[Catscratch]

Jack, are any of your summer weeds in the form of native legumes or forbs? Would there be any value in strip discing or burning to promote native vegetation for your deer? We have a ton of high quality natives where I live that are ideally suited to our climate. It takes very little management to promote them. Or, are most of your summer weeds grasses like foxtail and johnson grass?

 

[yoderjac]

It is a mixed bag. I have a high tolerance for weeds in my established clover plots. Many are great deer food. That is true to some degree with my warm season annuals, but the weeds out compete them and things like foxtail or Japanese stilt grass tend to dominate in the summer if my crop does not canopy. Buckwheat is so fast and my deer use it but don't abuse it so it competes favorably with many weeds. With soybeans, I need to spray until they begin to canopy and then they are fine. I still get a mix of weeds during the summer, but as you say, many are beneficial to deer.

Managing natives is part of our habitat program, but that is not enough to cover our summer stress period. For our fall planting, weeds are of little negative consequence. Promoting deer friendly natives is a great approach that favors long-term sustainable management.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[JFK52]

I planted 8 acres of RR ag soy beans as an over winter food source and late season hunting plots this year. The RR Eagle beans are planted to take the browse pressure off the ag beans. One of my ag fields is a buried natural gas pipeline ROW. It is about 70 feet wide and 220 yards long. .8 of an acre total area. The East end was just decimated by the deer with no growth of any pods to speak of. This went on for about 80 yards and then the deer ran out of gas and let the RR ag beans put on some pods. I overseeded the East end with winter rye and it is growing well.

The East end of the ROW is adjacent to some very heavy Scotch pine cover that belongs to an absentee neighbor. The deer bed there, but come to my land to eat.