Originally Posted by Old_Toot
Originally Posted by Dillonbuck
Originally Posted by Old_Toot
Originally Posted by Bristoe
The guy who owns the farm that adjoins my place has been alternating between soybeans and corn every year since I've been here. Corn was last year. He's planted beans this year.


Beans are good for the soil.



How sure are you about that?

They do add nitrogen.
They also need a lot of other nutrients to do well.
Not just P and K either. But a list of macro and micro nutrients.
People think of nitrogen as the thing plants need.
It just one of many, and some others are required for the plants to be able
to use the available nitrogen.


They tend to lessen the need for more nitrogen when double cropping beans followed by winter wheat.

I doubt you do little double cropping up in Pa. But I could be wrong.


There's a fair amount of double crop beans planted after wheat and barley harvest in the southeastern part of the state. Say south and east of State College. But the beans come off late enough in the fall that it's often hard to get seeded back to wheat in time. So they wait until the following spring and plant corn. The N from the beans is still there for the corn. The big problem is that soybean residue breaks down easily and doesn't provide any residue cover over winter. Soil erosion can be pretty bad in bean stubble.

Dale

This space for rent