Soybean Plot Update
Whitetail Deer
Look great. What will you do for weed control.
loprofile, he'll blast them with roundup once they get close to canopy.
We planted Real World beans the last 3 years with good results. Our only reason for planting beans here is to serve as a late-season plot. Bean pods seem to be an incredible deer magnet in the late season. The shatter-resistance of Real World beans makes that possible. With normal ag beans we planted in the past, the pods would shatter a few weeks after maturity. When the beans fall to the ground and rot, they're no good to wildlife.
And there's no real need for additional bean plots as summer forage here in Indiana. The deer live amongst a vast, never-ending ocean of soybeans and corn all summer.
The Eagle brand soy beans were planted on Fri. June the 6th and they are up and growing nicely thanks to all the recent rains. These pics were taken on the 15th after only about one week. This coming weeks warm weather should really bring them on. I installed the "Plot Saver" fence system this year and sprayed the ribbon and the utilization cage outside of the fence. This will be a test as to the effectiveness of the Plot Saver?. I only enclosed about 3/4s of the plot with the "Plot Saver". Hopefully it will work and allow the young succulent beans to get a little growth to them before I take it down here in about 3 or 4 weeks.
I have never heard of the "Real World " beans Pat, I will be extremely interested in how your plots turn out. The Eagle beans are quite pricey but the deer seem to love'em. I'll probably be going back up next week for more pics.
May I offer a suggestion X-Master? You might consider increasing the size of your utilization cage. I'm not sure you'll get much of a sample with that one.
I harvested my Eagle beans in early March of 2014 after a long hard Kansas winter, hundreds of deer fed on them. Still sold more than enough beans to pay my fertilizer, seed and spray bills.
For those who want to plant non roundup ready soybeans and want to know what you can use for weed control... Preemergence use of prowl/generic prowl in combination with dual/generic dual.
This program can also be used on some of the cowpea family.
I am using some $40 a bag non roundup 7.3 maturity beans that will throw pods, grow tall and are very drought tolerant.
For people who are looking to save money and an alternative option....
If one mixes a 1/2 rate of eagle beans with a 1/2 rate of grain type roundup ready beans, the non eagle beans will actually grow taller as they compete for sunlight. They won't yield quite as much beans as a result but this can be an option for people on a budget. Yes, this trick is one of many i'm including in my book.
Pat looks great could pod production have anything to do with over browsing
Attached are the latest updated pictures of the food plot taken on July 4. that is just a couple days short of 4 weeks since they were planted. The plot is doing well along with the "Plot Saver" ex-closure. I only observed 2 sets of deer tracks inside the tape and very little sign of browsing pressure inside either. I do have one problem the "Plot Saver" does not help with. You may be able to notice on the right hand side of the plot that there are considerably more weeds/grass coming up where the beans have been heavily browsed by what I would expect to be ground hogs. Had the same problem last year and I am going to try to remedy that on the next trip up. The unfenced beans seem to holding their own at this point. I re- sprayed the whole plot to burn out the grasses and weeds coming up. Had to do the same thing last year but that should hold them at bay for the rest of the summer as the beans mature. I re-sprayed the tape on the "Plot Saver" again and I'm gong to leave it up for another 2-3 weeks since the beans outside the plot are holding up so well.
Pat , your bean plot looks great - going to have to keep the "Real world" beans in mind for next year.
xmaster looks good my question r them plots large enough to withstand the deer once u let them in . Also when will these plots be hunted or r they just for food source ?
My experience from last year showed that the plot is sufficiently big enough(approx.1 ac) for my deer density but I put the Plot saver on it this year just to let the beans get a little "jump start" before the deer hit them. The one great thing about the Eagle Brand soy beans is that are engineered to "take a licking and keep on ticking". Even when chewed off completely to the ground , they keep coming back providing more hi-protein forage. Over browsing affects the pod production but they are forage beans and pod production is not the primary goal. They also stay greener longer than regular ag- beans and don't die before the first hard frost which allows us to hunt them probably the first couple weeks of our season here in Pa. Check out this latest episode of Dr. Grant Woods - GrowingDeer.TV
http://www.growingdeer.tv/#/whitetail-bucks-in-the-summer-velvet-antlers
Conventional soybeans were bred for maximum bean production and to have one main, combine-friendly stem. They are bred to mature early to facilitate early harvesting.
Forage varieties are designed to remain in a vegetative stage longer, and therefore produce significantly more leaf and stem tonnage over a longer period of time.Forage varieties are bred for delayed flowering.Forage varieties are bred for delayed flowering. Forage soybeans, which have an “indeterminate” growth strategy, plants continue to produce new growth very late in the season.
I have eagle beans in, i have a 7.3 maturity soybean in, i also have a trailing-low grow food grade bean in for testing. But what is impressing the heck out of me is a 4 bean mix that contains the 7.3 beans, the trailing soybeans, lablab and red ripper cowpeas. The pics i had sent to me today from the farm, showed explosive thick growth with less than ideal conditions.
Nutritionist, can you please go an cut an eagle seed bean off at the ground and let us know the results? Hypothesis - It dies
Then since you have so many types can you then cut each one above the first trifoliate and see which of them come back faster? Hypothesis - They are very similar, as all beans will regrow.
These are eagle brand wildlife managers mix at 57 days. I have had excellent pod production all 5 years I have planted them. Last year the pods were gone before christmas, but we had NO acorns and they were stacked with deer until gone. The other years I still had some pods left into April. th Also, I broad cast in winter rye when the leaves begin to green That worked excellent all except last year as we had drought from late October on. The thing about eagle is they out draw every other variety, and I plant them primarily for the major stress period which is July-August in our region. For early bow they are still king, and for NOV-DEC the rye is the big draw.
Having grown soybean for several years this is our first planting of Eagle Brand Soybean blend for Northern areas. So far I have been extremely impressed with the growth of these beans. We have several fields of ag beans, and there is no comparison to the outstanding growth we are experiencing with Eagle Soybeans. To protect our planting we erected a duel fence system powered by a Parmak 6 Solar Fencer. We have had some browsing by what appears to be rabbits but have had no breaching of the fence barrier by deer. My apple crop is doing great in both my commercial orchard and my apple tree plots for wildlife plots. Those trees that were chemically thinned last year came back with a heavy fruit set vs those that were not chemically thinned have a very light crop. Thinning is a cultural practice that I highly recommend if you wish to help secure a good crop year after year. (Photo from last years crop).
http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs141p2_029628.pdf
anybody planting soybeans this late or later ? area to plant is Iowa
Forage soybeans are still soybeans. Cut it off at the ground and it stops growing. Based on the paper, it seems reasonable a forage soybean could grow faster. I suspect at the early stages, say less than 8 inches in height, it is similar.
I spoke earlier about our first try at planting Eagle Brand Soybeans. I took a few pictures to share with you on how well it is doing. We are located in Northwestern Vermont. Our 250 acre property is along the Quebec border. I don't know what to expect as far as bean production and would like to hear from the readers your experiences using this product.
Plants cut off below the cotyledons will not recover from grazing or hail. In any plant stand evaluation, count these plants as dead. Mostsoybean plants regrow from either one or both of the axillary buds located at the node below where they were cut off.
So, tonight i snapped pics of a trial i'm doing thats working exactly as my intentions. The deer were grazing at the height that will encourage regrowth. There two factors coming into play that have the deer leaving about 6" and regrowth points. One, I interseeded with cannamaize. Two, I did something foliar that I observed in a clover field trial. I saw in a 20 acre clover feed, deer walk into the middle of the field to consume clovers in the flagged strip.
I don't want to start an argument, but the eagle brand forage soybeans can do recover from pressure that wipe out other varieties-to include pod/bean production. That has been my experience
The soy bean plot is doing as well as can be expected- much the same as last year. The only one big difference is the increased amount of ground hog predation that the one side of the plot received. The re-spaying of the plot with glycol eliminated all the grass and weeds coming up in them and actually made the ground hog predation more visible. The Plot Saver fence system pretty much did what I expected it to do. It didn't take them long to figure it out once the spray repellant wore off. Two weeks ago, there was very little to almost no deer browsing in the enclosed area but that all changed this past week as the whole plot is being heavily browsed as you can tell by comparing the utilization cage but them again that's what I planted them for. I personally observed a small buck and a pair of fawns go right over and under the Plot Saver into the beans. A small section lot of the Eagle beans were completely eliminated by the ground hogs but most of them are coming back as they did previously. Right now I'm looking for suggestions on what I could broadcast over the bare areas for fall forage? I've seen Winke broadcast Frigid Forage over areas such as this - may be a possibility- but need to do it in the next couple weeks.
On the other small clover plot, I sprayed it with Butyrac and clethidum to eliminate the broadleaf weeds and grasses in it. Hopefully it takes as rain came in about 14 hrs. after the spraying. This was my first go with this and is an experiment in progress.
Sorry I put an old picture with the post. I try to take all the pictures from the same angles to get a real feel on how the plot is doing from one week to the next.
Pat You right again - I would have sprayed it a little more often if it was closer to where I live. I only get over there every couple weeks or so.
With all of the plants touching the e-fence, do you have issues with grounding it out?
Pat,
Good stuff here. If I have the resources available next year I will try an electric fence around my 4 acre plot.
This year I planted my mix of Laredo forage, and crop soybeans with sunflowers on it. So far the bean damage has been minimal, but I have plenty of clover for them as well which has probably helped. Looks to be a good mast year here as well.
I have to quit reading your posts. My wish list keeps getting longer:)
I have RR corn and beans. The beans I just mowed down this week and replanted in turnips and radish. The beans were never going to produce as the deer were eating them faster than they could grow. The bean stalks looked like stumps with sticks poking out.
These pics are from June 29th.
Here is a field pic with the corn. The corn is over 9ft tall now with tassel. Ears are looking great but we need some rain or I am not going to get the yield/food.
The beans are gone now.
Will try and post new pics after the week. One last walk in there before the hunting season to get stands set/checked.
Pat, A couple of questions: -when you top dress your corn....you are simply spreading the urea from your three point spreader or do you have to work it in/cultivate?
-it looks like you are running 30" rows or there about....I assume you do the double row concept to increase production without having to buy a new planter or am I off base?
-do you have any areas where you overseed brassicas, winter rye or something into the beans that are not behind the fencing?
Mark
Pat,
I have a solution for the turkeys! I will also cover the travel cost from MS......Seriously:)
Good looking crops guys ! Here is a pic of my Eagle beans, the first RR beans I've planted. You can see my exclusion cage in the back ground. We have had more than our usual rain for July and we are getting more today. This is a creek bottom however, so the soil stays a little moister here than my other bean plot. Made a critical mistake on these, I did not spray gly a second time until the weeds got fairly large. Sprayed this week and I hope I got them, although I know they are harder to kill when they are tall. Nevertheless, I think they look pretty good for an amateur.
Guys,
What source are you using for your eagle bean seeds. What is the approximate cost?
Same question on the electric fence. Source, cost, solar versus battery? If I should start a different thread just say so. Thanks!
Why was the response deleted? We do have a TSC store close by so I will check there. Thanks.
Thanks Pat.
I have several plots but the four acre is a central destination one. I would like to plant it with beans most years and then broadcast things like rye or oats or brassica etc.
Deer density though is high enough that they destroy this small of a plot. My other plots are edge/divider plots that act as burn barriers for my WSNG.
So I will need a fence and a better method of planting beans than my current method of broadcasting. I have a good tractor and boom sprayer but do not use them with my current planting method as I would run over too many beans.
the drills are too expensive at this stage of my life. Any suggestions like what people did before the drills? I had a planter but that was in poor condition. Lesson learned!
Thanks!
Pat,
They look fantastic. Hope you get to arrow a big one early season.
Here is the latest on the Eagle soybean food plot. I have attached a couple pictures of the progress. They are being utilized quite heavily as you can see by the looks of the utilization cage. All of the tops outside the cage are nipped off pretty good. Still some ground hog predation but even those beans are trying to come back. I think I'm going to take the old "Garden Weasel" up this week and over seed those areas that the ground hogs have chewed off with Imperial Whitetail Winter-Green Brasica blend. We'll' see how that progresses in future updates.
Who's that - not my post - never saw him before in my life???? Here's the second bean plot pic.
Here's my effort this year. This is Eagle Forage soy in a plot of about 1 acre. I have two other plots on the other side of the property in regular RU ready soy and they look pretty close. I didn't do any exclusion fencing. I will mow and then disc in all the remaining soy by around the 20th of August and then plant with BFO overseeded with clover and maybe some turnips in a couple spots. I don't have a seeder, so all of my seeds are broadcast with a 3 point spreader. I use an Earthway for the clover and other smaller seeds and then cultipack. You can see the bucks have no problem using the gravity feeder. They're eating about 200# a week right now, both day and night. Fun stuff and some great looking plots guys!
