Roundup Ready Corn & Soybean Food Plot

[dbltree]

May 29th 2009...

Where the soys are exposed, they decimate them...

but...where they are hidden by the red clover they are still safe...

Where it is rye only, they are also doing fine!

The red clover is very thick and it's tough to find the little soybeans plants...

From above you wouldn't know it was even"planted"

The no-tilled rows are faint

but closer inspection reveals the baby soys

I'm going to watch progress and not spray until I have too and because it's not tilled, it's really not a problem

The rye isn't real thick as you can see here with my son standing in it so it's only the red clover competition I need to watch

 

[dbltree]

AJAdams sent me some pics of his soybeans...dang, if I had some great looking beans like his I would want to show them off too!

These beans have very good color while in the southern part of the state many beans are a little yellow from the cool wet weather. Some heat right now would be welcome.

It appears there are other crops close by which is helpful in keeping a bean plot from being decimated like mine.

I really expect mine to be murdered shortly but I'd love to find them looking like these!:way:

Deer densities vary across the state and even in any given section so it's always hard to predict how deer will respond to any type of food plot.

Sunday morning I counted 20+ deer in perhaps a 30 acre field of beans about the size of Andy's, put those 20 deer in a 2-5 acre plot and they will wipe it out in short order.

If they can survive however they will be an awesome draw in late fall thru winter.

Keep us posted on how these work for you this fall AJ

 

[ajadams]

These beans were planted into a plot that was turnips last winter that I put some rye and red clover in to plow down this spring. No other fertilizer was used, we will see how they do. Shrek 1 (Maximum forage food plots) planted them for me May 24 with a 2 row JD planter after I disced the plot several times. We have had good rain so hopefully we get a little more heat to help them grow. There is a few weeds and I am hoping to get it sprayed in the next week or so. There are beans on the other side of the fence so hopefully I will be safe.

Thanks for posting them for me Paul.

 

[dbltree]

As I noted in the clover thread, 1 -1/2 quarts of glyphosate (roundup) didn't even phase the red clover where I had no-tilled the soybeans!
I should have hit it with 2-3 quarts of 2-4D before the soybeans emerged!

A couple spots where I ran the sprayer over it twice it did severely burn the clover but otherwise it's now some very clean red clover

The cereal rye was already nearly mature so it's already nothing but stubble and had it not been for the severe damage cause by a horrific hail storm, the soys would have been protected for a time from heavy grazing pressure.

The soys in the red clover are struggling to comptete with thick mat of clover

and anywhere they are exposed at all they are taking a beating from the intense grazing pressure from a very oversized deer herd.

I finally got around to putting up an exclusion cage to show how intense the grazing is. I planted nearly 300,000 seeds per acre on fertile soil but it's still not enough to feed the number of deer I have.

Grazing pressure is so intense that they have literally "mowed" my clover and alfalfa and if not for some weeds coming up I would never have even had to clip it.

No-tilling soybeans into cereal rye is a great method of planting and semi-protecting beans if one can plant beans in a less pressured situation. Broadcasting cereal rye back into the standing soybeans at 150#'s per acre in very late August thru early September will allow one to continue the process and insure an all winter source of food...

 

[IQDM]

How do you add photos to threads without having that picture already online? cant I just add it from my documents? I have some good pictures of soybeans planted between corn but I cant seem to get them on here? whats the fast way to upload them onto threads?

 

[JNRBRONC]

How do you add photos to threads without having that picture already online? cant I just add it from my documents? I have some good pictures of soybeans planted between corn but I cant seem to get them on here? whats the fast way to upload them onto threads?

Nope, you can't upload direct from your hard drive. You have to host them somewhere, photobucket or IW gallery, etc.

 

[IQDM]

Here is a picture of some RRcorn and beans on our land in Wisconsin

 

[dbltree]

Here is a picture of some RRcorn and beans on our land in Wisconsin

SWEEEEET!!! That is awesome stuff right there!! Thanks a bunch for sharing the picture!:way:

 

[IQDM]

This is what this field looks like now.... Tons of winter food to help deer keep their fat reserves strong well into spring!

 

[dbltree]

This is what this field looks like now.... Tons of winter food to help deer keep their fat reserves strong well into spring!

That is just awesome! Thanks so much for sharing these pics in this thread!

I just have too many deer and they killed the beans leaving only the corn but yours is proof that RR corn and soybeans can be grown in a successful combination! :way:

 

[ILL BUCK]

IQDM, man that looks great!! How bout sharing some info about what kinda row spacing that is??

 

[IQDM]

The spacing is corn 15 inch soybeans 15 inch corn 15inch. so you still have your 30inch between your corn rows... I have a great plains drill which has row spacing every 7.5 inches. In the big seed box I cover every other seed drop with duct tape which gives me my 15inch row spacing then I cut out cardboard to the exact shape of the grain box to make dividers between every 15 inch seed drop (to seperate the corn seed and soybean seed). I then duct tape those dividers in, fill it with the two types of seed and away I go... The one nice thing about the drill I have however, is that I can adjust the depth of seed per row so that I can plant the corn at about a good inch down and the beans about a half inch. Like dbltree said a high deer density can distroy a nice plot like this, but I do a lot of work on keeping the density down and the buck to doe ratio even... My shotgun is just as much a tool for me as my chainsaw and great plains drill... because when we are rolling into march and the deer are still working on these corn and beans (corn will be gone first then beans) I know that they still have a good fat reserve when they start growing those all important headgears!

 

[bowhuntr311]

(corn will be gone first then beans)

I dont have alot of expierence with corn and beans but this suprises me. I figured the exact opposite. Do you do something special to keep the deer from mowing the beans down in the summer.
As Dbltree stated he and alot of people have to many deer to keep them from killing them off. And anyone has enough other food it would be dbltree I would think.

With 15in rows do you still spray RUP, with out running over your plants?

 

[IQDM]

I do spray with RoundUp when the corn and beans are about 6 to 8 inches tall... I drive in-between the corn rows and run over the beans... The beans will pop right back up in a few days and will have minimal damage.... obviously the larger sprayer you have the less rows you will need to run over. For example we have a 45' sprayer and I can do my 3 acre food plot in just a few passes.

When I say that the deer eat the corn first then the beans, I am talking about the winter months.... The corn just seems to be the first thing to be gone in the winter and then they hit the beans. Where I hunt there is often deep snows and so the deer tend to eat anything above the snow first. It's actually really great because with my beans (with or with out corn planted with them) the deer will clean out the whole field above the snow, then when the 12" of snow melts during a warm couple of days in mid to late winter, the deer have 12" of soybeans that are now exposed! I call it my TIME RELEASE food plot!

as for keeping the deer from eating our beans before they mature... I have tried a few different things to keep the deer away...
In one plot I have, the corn/beans were very close to heavy cover and as soon as the beans started comming up they (the beans) were basicly attacked by the deer and so I put up a plot saver fence to keep the deer out. For the most part it worked... I still saw tracks in the plot but not near as much as I had before and the main thing is that the beans were being allowed to mature. Later in the year however, a deer ran threw the fence and got all tangled up in the white fencing tape! So needless to say I will not be using a plotsaver system anymore! I will be looking into a solar/electric fencing system and will let you know how it works.
In another area I had a 1.5 acre plot of corn/beans and I also planted a 1.5 acre plot of just soybeans right next to it... while the plots were growing, I noticed more browse pressure in the strait beans which I would assume took a little pressure off of the beans in my corn/bean mix.
I would prefer not to fence the deer out of my plots because 1 I dont have the time to be doing all that extra work. and 2 I'm planting that food for the deer to eat, so if they want to eat my 28%+ protien soybeans while they are growing then thats ok with me... I just plant enough of it that they cant possibley eat it before it turns yellow.
Oh yeah and one other thing.... I shoot a crap-load of does! some people are against it. (especially around here) but I am a believer in QDM and a balanced deer herd which isn't over populated. over all thats prolly the main reason why my beans are sucessful.

 

[whitetail fanatic]

Has anyone else noticed that some of the standing corn now has mold growing on the kernals under the shucks? A lot of areas across the midwest, including here in southwest Wisconsin, had so much rain during October without enough dry days in between to dry the corn ears out that mold started growing on the kernals. I talked to one farmer that said he's never seen anything like it in all his years of growing corn. My question is, will this reduce the attractiveness of our standing corn food plot to deer, turkeys and other wildlife? Also, could the animals that eat this moldy corn get sick or be harmed in anyway? Our corn got planted a little later than we wanted (around the first of June) and the cold summer didn't help with maturity either. Our kernals were dented by the first hard freeze (23 degrees on October 11) but the stalks, leaves and shucks were still green. Not sure if that matters, but I would think that probably caused more molding problems than with corn that had already turned brown by the time we got the first hard freeze.

 

[dbltree]

Has anyone else noticed that some of the standing corn now has mold growing on the kernals under the shucks? A lot of areas across the midwest, including here in southwest Wisconsin, had so much rain during October without enough dry days in between to dry the corn ears out that mold started growing on the kernals. I talked to one farmer that said he's never seen anything like it in all his years of growing corn. My question is, will this reduce the attractiveness of our standing corn food plot to deer, turkeys and other wildlife? Also, could the animals that eat this moldy corn get sick or be harmed in anyway? Our corn got planted a little later than we wanted (around the first of June) and the cold summer didn't help with maturity either. Our kernals were dented by the first hard freeze (23 degrees on October 11) but the stalks, leaves and shucks were still green. Not sure if that matters, but I would think that probably caused more molding problems than with corn that had already turned brown by the time we got the first hard freeze.

We just had the wettest October since 1895 so it's not suprising that some folks haven't seen this problem before. Mold has been a problem in past years on our own farm however, in areas that flood.

Dry stalks act like a straw and sucked water up into the ears and caused kernals to mold and that scenario is happening to some extent across the country. I have not heard of serious mold problems in our area in corn but it has been a problem in some soybeans and may cause some seed shortages this next year.

Mold can be dangerous but most animals will avoid it unless force fed in confinement so I doubt you will have anything sickened from it but they may not utilize it if the mold is bad enough.

If we have continued wet cool weather I'm afraid the problem maybe exacerbated....

 

[Sligh1]

Those pics above look AMAZING!!!
-Question bout rr corn/beans together: Do you feel you get great yields on both or any problem with competition? *Let's say your corn ALONE would produce 150 bushels per acre & beans ALONE would product 45 bushels. If you're only concerned with tonnage for deer, I'd be fine with let's say 130 bushels of corn with 25 bushels of beans for instance when COMBINED if it was reduced (seems to me if either one was reduced, the beans may suffer more????). BUT- if it's now 70 bushels corn and 20 bushels of beans, maybe that's not worth it. BASICALLY- I'm going for tonnage per acre for deer, you all feel good with this combo? (When I plant ALONE I also plant seed super thick/heavy because of deer grazing- example 250,000 seeds per acre on beans, even more on edges- works AWESOME!!!).

-Has ANYONE ever had a Round-up ready corn plot near regular Standard/Atrazine corn? Has anyone noticed deer prefer the regular/standard corn more? Some have told me this BUT you all know how folks get some ideas that aren't correct. Not sure if you believe it's true or not. *If it is, I have 100's of acres of regular corn that I would hate for them to have a strong preference for (of course they'll eat RR corn, curious on preference thought.).

 

[dbltree]

The corn won't suffer at all but the beans are not going to yield the same as if planted seperately, so if one has unlimited acres to plant and total yield is important that I would plant seperately.

This combo works well for people like me who have ground in CRP and the acres available is limited, in which case the total dry matter yield will be higher for a combination plot then if only one was planted.

Personally I have not noticed any difference bewteen deer preference between either RR corn or soybeans.

I would also add that I actually used Dual magnumII for residual weed control and never used glyphosate because Dual is safe for both corn and beans.

This allows the use of conventional seed which is mich cheaper and often available for free from groups like Pheasants Forever....

 

[Sligh1]

Oh, how do folks that plant BOTH deal with crop rotations? Just plant the combo plot year after year in the same place (only adding fertilizer & lime as needed)? Since the reason of rotation can be solved by planting both at once- is that the idea, year after year same plot?
*The advantage I am looking at is, I ALWAYS want to have as much beans as possible - deer on my place prefer beans over corn but still eat corn. So, worst case i'd still have my beans mixed in with the corn. So a giant production field planted to WHATEVER could always contain some beans no matter what if I did this seperate plot.

 

[MK M GOBL]

I agree with dbltree. Yeilds will be much higher if planted seperately. I would split your plot in half, plant the corn on one side, and the beans on the other and then rotate them each year. It will be more cost effective in the long run considering that you will end up with more food and better utilization of the nitrogen fixated from the soybeans.