This year I planted on May 15th. You can read my previous posts from earlier this year in this thread for more on planting dates and what I've tried and learned from the past.
If your talking about broadcasting Winfred seed into soybeans that are small and have a lot of open bare ground in between the rows or soybean plants, the Winfred will sprout and grow just like any other brassica with a good rain to get it to germinate on bare ground with enough sunlight. Problem would be seeding rates. If you planted soybeans at a rate for optimum production of soybeans, planting the Winfred with the beans would likely decrease the soybean production somewhat, but you would have the additional tonnage from the Winfred which would probably more than make up for the loss of soybean production. I would think you could even plant soybeans, roundup ready if that's what you're doing, and let the beans get a couple inches tall or whenever you spray them for weeds, and after you've sprayed the plot with roundup make sure you've gotten a good rain to eliminate the possibility of the roundup killing the sprouting Winfred seeds, and then broadcast the Winfred over the soybean plot. Just beware, 2 pounds per acre of Winfred is a tiny amount of seed and you need to be careful not to spread too much seed if you're broadcasting. I used a landpride seeder and put the Winfred in the small seed box and the rye in the large seed box and can easily plant Winfred at 2 pounds per acre with that.
When they say it can withstand 4 grazings and regrow they are talking about letting a herd of cattle graze on it and eat most of the foliage, and then take the cattle off the Winfred for a while and put them back on to let the cattle graze it again. Like rotational grazing, doing that 4 times, and the Winfred will still regrow after 3 or 4 hard grazings from cattle. As the following bold italic text says on one of the sites selling the seed, this is to farmers planting it for cattle to graze on:
Management suggestions: Winfred can be sown in spring or late summer. Winfred is quick to establish, ready for first grazing 10-12 weeks after planting. Strip-grazing prevents both yield and quality losses due to tramping and polluting. It is also important not to overfeed the cattle when they are allowed to graze the brassica at first. Extreme high dry matter intake of brassicas can cause health problems. Stock should be allowed to adjust to the change of diet. Supplementing with other forages will also prevent these problems.
Nothing even close to that kind of grazing pressure would happen with planting Winfred Brassica as a food plot unless you have an extremely high deer density or a very tiny plot of Winfred. Right now there's just a handful of deer browsing in the Rye and rape at various times during the morning and evening because they have alfalfa all over the place around here, and 2 acres of alfalfa right next to our 4 acres of rye/Winfred. So during the spring, summer and early fall growing season, most of the Winfred plants in our food plots will be untouched by the deer other than an occasional leaf or two eaten from some of the Winfred. A couple of weeks ago I did see some individual Winfred plants that were totally uprooted by deer that pulled on them to eat them, but that's very minor in 4 acres with plenty of Winfred plants throughout even at only 2 pounds per acre. By September they start to feed on the Winfred more heavily, but by then if things go well the Winfred should be about waist hi and there will tons of green forage there for them. Deer grazing pressure increases a lot in October and November on the Winfred (and the rye too). By the time December or January we will likely have anywhere from 30 to 50 deer every evening in our Rye and Brassica.
