Mixing forage and non-forage beans?

[Nova]

Has anyone experimented with mixing forage soybeans with Ag beans to help get beans through browse pressure? I’ve only planted forage beans once (Eagle) and had pretty good success with them but I’m assuming they will out compete the Ag beans. I’m sure they could be planted along the outer rows of a plot eith Ag beans in the middle, but just curious if anyone has had success mixing the two?

Thomas

Yes, last year I planted 4 acres of Eagles mixed with ag beans. I put roughly a half bag of each in the hopper of my 3 row planter and planted like normal. I had a great mix of both ag and forage beans in the plot and the forage beans did exactly what they were supposed to. Kept the browse pressure off the ag beans so they could produce pods. It worked out great for me and I plan to do it again when that plot rotates back to beans.

 

[Dukslayr]

Yes, last year I planted 4 acres of Eagles mixed with ag beans. I put roughly a half bag of each in the hopper of my 3 row planter and planted like normal. I had a great mix of both ag and forage beans in the plot and the forage beans did exactly what they were supposed to. Kept the browse pressure off the ag beans so they could produce pods. It worked out great for me and I plan to do it again when that plot rotates back to beans.

That’s good to know. Thank you.

 

[Callingalldeer]

My farm 50 acres had 36,000 seedlings planted. Between the trees double red clover was planted, white clover around the house and pond. I mowed three times a year after the clovers went to seed. The 2.5 acre soya beans plot grew will and lasted from April to April. The deer didn’t have to dig for food .

 

[yoderjac]

In order to deal with a Marestail (naturally resistant to gly), I planted buckwheat last year. This year I plan to mix sunn hemp with the buckwheat. These can both be surface broadcast and cultipacked. I'm considering two more alternatives. The first is to surface broadcast them and then blocks some of the tube opening in the seed box of my Kasco no-till versa drill and plant wide rows of sunflowers through it. The cultipacker on the drill would not only close the sunflower rows but press the buckwheat and sunn hemp. The other option I'm considering is to put dividers in the seed bin and putting sunflowers in a single row. I would put the buckwheat and sun hemp in the other parts of the bin but I would disconnect the seed tubes from the planting shoes for these rows and just let them hand loose and bounce around dropping seed on the surface in front of the cultipacker.

I think the result would be the same in either case. The first approach would require two steps, one pass with the broadcast spreader and a second with the drill. The second approach would require more playing around with the drill to get the right calibration since you can't adjust seed rates for rows individually but would only take one pass.

In both cases, I plan to spray with 24D ester a couple weeks prior to planting when marestail is the most vulnerable. I'm hoping the fast growing buckwheat will have some protective value on the sunn hemp and sunflowers.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[JFK52]

How big was your field?
The iron and clay cowpeas that had the black oil sunflower seeds mixed in with it was an acre more or less. The plantings of only black oil sunflowers were very small fields that I had nothing else to put in. I would say about 1/10 of an acre or even less.