Study on overseeding into Soybeans

[Tpstacy]

Inter-Seeding Cover Crops into Soybean

Recent studies have investigated the soil health and yield impacts of inter-seeding various cover crops into soybean plantings.

extension.sdstate.edu

I found this study from South Dakota State about overseeeing different cover crops into Soybeans. The study is fascinating and contained research areas from zone 3 to zone 7 (so not just South Dakota). Really interesting to see the amount of fall biomass put on by the winter peas. Wasn't expecting that. Oats, cereal rye, radish, and winter peas as a mixture seems like it could be a real winner seeded into standing soybeans at R6.

 

[356]

The neighboring farm over seeded their beans two years ago (and their corn last season). I am looking at this as a possibility this season on our small (60 acre) bean field. The farmer who is doing most of the work did the neighbors over seeding, so I am interested in hearing his perspective. Thanks for sharing the article.

 

[Tpstacy]

I'm going to test out some of these theories on my ~7 acres of soybeans and will update this thread

 

[SwampCat]

My experience with overseeding austrian winter peas into soybeans has been fruitless. I have an elevated deer density and they wont let them get four inches tall. Wheat and rye work fine for me. My experience from down south

 

[swat1018]

Peas barely get bite-size on my farms before they are gone.

 

[SD51555]

They're really coming from behind with the whole idea. All the gains they need to know about have already been discovered. Trouble is, these guys have to keep coming up with things to research, and they have to ensure their discoveries don't interfere with the industries donating their buildings and salaries.

Total stand performance is always better the more mixed and balanced the crop is. There are already guys out there relaying cropping beans with wheat, rye, and oats. Each crop comes off a little below a standard yield, but the two combined end up blowing away either crop alone. It's classic carbon to nitrogen balance. Beans eat carbon and crap nitrogen. Wheat eats nitrogen and craps carbon. If there isn't something there to use the N thrown off by the beans, the beans get lazy and quit nodulating.

I think the future of corn is twin 60" rows with nutrient pushing and grazable covers in between. The obvious cover for a corn field is legume and broadleaf heavy to push nitrogen to the corn and use up the excess nutrients that pigweed and giant ragweed would come for later in the season. Soybeans, pumpkins, annual clover, flax, forage oats, and safflower are easy ones that come to mind. The barrier is specialized equipment and peer pressure at church or the cafe. If I were in the business and had the mechanical skills, that's where I'd be going.

 

[matinc]

SD please explain your beans and wheat theory about carbon and nitrogen. Ty

 

[Catscratch]

This might help;

More soil carbon offers eco-friendly weed control | Cornell Chronicle

Cornell researchers have tested an ecological tool in the fight to control weeds in silage soybean and corn fields: adding carbon to soil in the form of sawdust and rye hay.

news.cornell.edu

 

[SD51555]

SD please explain your beans and wheat theory about carbon and nitrogen. Ty

This isn't theory. It's well proven, just not well adopted for various reasons, mostly harvestability. I'll try to be as brief as possible because it can get windy, and there's also this write up.

Here's Why the Carbon-Nitrogen Ratio Matters

It’s important to understand these ratios when planning cash crops rotations and cover crops in rotations.

www.agriculture.com

For our purposes, a well minded carbon to nitrogen ratio does a few big things.

First, it's a method of biological weed prevention. If you're not only diverse, but also properly balanced on your C:N ratio, you leave much fewer resources for enterprising unintended plants (weeds) to exploit. The problem of being out of balance is classicly shown with clover and grass. We can't keep grass out of a pure clover stand, and we can't keep clover out of our lawns. Alone they are out of balance, and they go towards one another to exploit unused resources and provide nutrients to one another. A good mix is one of high carbon plants (corn, sorghum, millets, cereal grains) and low carbon legume plants (clover, beans, peas). Throw in a token brassica or two, some pumpkins and squash, a few easy broadleaves (chicory, plantain, ragweed, dandelion, thistle, safflower, flax, wildflowers) and you'll be so diverse you probably couldn't find weeds if they were in there.

This is also why our efforts to control weeds with chemicals and tillage do more to prolong their existence than eliminate them. If you plant mono-crop beans and follow with glyphosate, you're gonna get a flush of weeds that thrive in a beans and glyphosate system. If you want it to stop, a person simply has to stop instigating it. The most prolific weeds that are gly-resistant can only survive so long as we keep killing their competition. They all have one big thing in common, and that is they thrive in a no-mycorhhizal fungi (MF) soil because their special talent is that they don't need MF to get nutrients into their bodies. A no-MF soil is one that is frequently sprayed and tilled. In a soil with robust myco-fungi, those super weeds vanish because they cannot compete.

Second, it's the key to biological nutrient cycling and production. Pure stands of a single crop often struggle without fertilizer and they'll need chems to stay weed and bug free. Every living plant poops and pees just like every animal. We don't call it poop and pee, we call it root exudation. Those root exudates are a constant drip of organic acids and sugars to your crop or root zone microbes all season. This is why I say your soil can test near zero for everything and still produce an amazing stand. This is what soil testers do not understand. A living system isn't put-and-take and therefore cannot be measured. It's 24/7 all-season production that matches the pace at which the crop needs it. This is where beans and wheat sing magically together. Wheat is pumping boat loads of liquid carbon to the beans and bean microbes. The beans and bean microbes are eating it up and producing ever more nitrogen to fuel the wheat. When there is more food, we not only poop more, but we also grow more.

 

[SD51555]

The genius in the design of the beans and wheat is that they can flex immensely. When I say flex, I mean in a low population state, the plants that are there can produce significantly more because there is more space available. Soybean trials have been done that show an 80,000 population can produce 85-90% of what a 160,000 population can produce. And wouldn't you know it, the increase in yield is just enough to cover the second bag of seed per acre.

Cereals do the same. Go out right now and find a rye plant and count how many tillers (stalks) are coming off of one clump. If you planted a high rate, you may only get 3-5 tillers per plant. I had one rye plant sneak through in my garden last year, and it threw off 22 tillers that yielded a seed head. Nature is simply amazing if you let it be and work with it.

 

[TreeDaddy]

Beans eat carbon and crap nitrogen. Wheat eats nitrogen and craps carbon.

The gospel of C:N in a nutshell

Damn, I love this stuff

bill

 

[matinc]

SD your wisdom knows no boundaries. Please tell us more.

 

[SD51555]

SD your wisdom knows no boundaries. Please tell us more.

I can't claim any of this as my own discovery. I'm just a naturally curious guy, I love to learn, and I hate doing work and spending money when there are better ways that might work for my situation.

I love even more to go out and try stuff to see if the theory or science is repeatable. Some stuff works out, some doesn't, and there are things I haven't yet been able to solve on my own place. I try not to get overly preachy anymore. I went through phases of becoming a regenerative grower, from:

1. "Hey glyphosate is amazing."
2. "Holy shit, what are all of these new weeds, and why isn't glyphosate working?" and "Why am I always liming in July?"
------- I got off the train at two and went looking for another way.
3. Discovered the regenerative guys on youtube
4. Went deeper, bought the books, shared the ideas, and couldn't wait for the snow to melt and to try something.
5. Then I went evangelizing like many others have done before me.
6. I've moderated my views away from absolutes, hardened my principles, and only try to share when I think it can add value. I'm certainly no expert, especially on the ways of things that I don't do. But I have gotten a few things to work really well.

I've still got problems at my place. It won't be a stop on the parade of habitat homes any time soon. But I've got some wins that I'm really proud of. It didn't rain for three years. I never had a perennial plot fail to produce during those dry years. I've most recently returned to monsoons, and after some intense terraforming, I'm no longer losing plots and soil to heavy rain. I'm also blessed with very heavy soils and short summers, so i don't burn up like those guys that talk funny to the south of me. I haven't bought any NPK fertilizer in maybe 5 or possibly even 7 years. I've never killed a thistle on my place, and I can't keep them alive no matter how much I hope for it.

Still, quack grass, sedge, brome grass, horsetail, and hairy vetch are putting up a good fight. I don't think I'll ever get brassicas to go in a throw and mow always-green system. I've still got one more new blend to try when the time comes I've got to reset a plot. It likely won't work because the soil will never be without dormant clover seed of some sort that will awaken and spoil my plans. But I need to try anyway. If I could leave anyone with one big lesson, it's that things never stay the same. They're either going forward or backwards. Sometimes, forward is backwards. The less I do, I often find my soil slowly reverting to what they were before I got to tinkering.

 

[Telemark]

I don't think I'll ever get brassicas to go in a throw and mow always-green system

Try Winfred brassica. Not sure about the timing with the rest of your mix, but it gets huge.

 

[matinc]

SD. Here are pictures of cc6 summer bland planted July 1. Not doing much but there trying.

 

[matinc]

SD. I was unable to add more comments but this was crimped down July 1 and I did Not use gly. Maybe a mistake but then again. This is my first year trying no till. Any observations from the forum would be appreciated. Ty

 

[SD51555]

SD. I was unable to add more comments but this was crimped down July 1 and I did Not use gly. Maybe a mistake but then again. This is my first year trying no till. Any observations from the forum would be appreciated. Ty

What is cc6?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[matinc]

Sun hemp buckwheat sunflower oats iron clay peas n milo. I see rain over the plot tonight

 

[SD51555]

Sun hemp buckwheat sunflower oats iron clay peas n milo. I see rain over the plot tonight

It looks good so far. That’s a good blend, and it looks like u had good rye to blanket those big seeds. The less you can spray, the better these do-less methods will work. Keep an eye on it and keep sending updates so we can see how it goes.

What are you planning to do with this plot after this blend?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[BrushyPines]

I can't claim any of this as my own discovery. I'm just a naturally curious guy, I love to learn, and I hate doing work and spending money when there are better ways that might work for my situation.

I love even more to go out and try stuff to see if the theory or science is repeatable. Some stuff works out, some doesn't, and there are things I haven't yet been able to solve on my own place. I try not to get overly preachy anymore. I went through phases of becoming a regenerative grower, from:

1. "Hey glyphosate is amazing."
2. "Holy shit, what are all of these new weeds, and why isn't glyphosate working?" and "Why am I always liming in July?"
------- I got off the train at two and went looking for another way.
3. Discovered the regenerative guys on youtube
4. Went deeper, bought the books, shared the ideas, and couldn't wait for the snow to melt and to try something.
5. Then I went evangelizing like many others have done before me.
6. I've moderated my views away from absolutes, hardened my principles, and only try to share when I think it can add value. I'm certainly no expert, especially on the ways of things that I don't do. But I have gotten a few things to work really well.

I've still got problems at my place. It won't be a stop on the parade of habitat homes any time soon. But I've got some wins that I'm really proud of. It didn't rain for three years. I never had a perennial plot fail to produce during those dry years. I've most recently returned to monsoons, and after some intense terraforming, I'm no longer losing plots and soil to heavy rain. I'm also blessed with very heavy soils and short summers, so i don't burn up like those guys that talk funny to the south of me. I haven't bought any NPK fertilizer in maybe 5 or possibly even 7 years. I've never killed a thistle on my place, and I can't keep them alive no matter how much I hope for it.

Still, quack grass, sedge, brome grass, horsetail, and hairy vetch are putting up a good fight. I don't think I'll ever get brassicas to go in a throw and mow always-green system. I've still got one more new blend to try when the time comes I've got to reset a plot. It likely won't work because the soil will never be without dormant clover seed of some sort that will awaken and spoil my plans. But I need to try anyway. If I could leave anyone with one big lesson, it's that things never stay the same. They're either going forward or backwards. Sometimes, forward is backwards. The less I do, I often find my soil slowly reverting to what they were before I got to tinkering.

Watch it bub! Lol

In all seriousness, I've had trouble finding a legume to do well in my summer plots. Best I can come up with is sunnhemp and cowpeas. Honestly just looking for something to produce organic matter and something to cover seed for my fall plots. I have plenty of food for wildlife in my thinned pines during the growing season. It gets super hot down here and the sunnhemp just laughs at it. I went with a bigger seed rate per acre on the cowpeas and am happy with how they look so far this year, still not as tall as I was hoping.

Milo, Jap Millet (going a different route moving forward, it does not handle drought well), Sorghum Sudan, Sunnhemp and Cowpeas for summer plots
WR, WW, AWP, CC, Turnips (more than likely eliminating this moving forward. Best time to plant for me in Oct. does not give it enough time to mature) for fall plots

Think I'm hitting the C:N ratio well enough with these blends?