Growing Soybeans

We've got high idc on most of our ground, tried Soygreen and another foliar product and saw no difference. Apparently high rates of it in furrow works great, but I think it was $35-40/Ac last time I looked. We've started to skip seed treatments and just double innoculate, seen no drag maybe even a slight improvement plus a few $ in savings. I've read that putting some oats in while seeding can help a lot, but if you're toying with that kind of thinking already I'd highly recommend seeding cereal rye the fall before and planting into it green. The fields we've tried that on have never flashed at all and we've gotten noticably better weed control. We've also stuck with Xtend beans and used XtendiMax, it's not as scary as it seems. It worked amazing for us this year with steady moisture, saw full residual control for almost a month.

If you are putting beans on land that has not seen beans for a long time , pay a lot of attention to inoculant. Dont over look the importance of these products. Use liquid and peat or even better if you can apply some inoculant into the seed row. Some farmers say prime the land a year ahead with inoculant.
Also try some eco tea with the seed if you have the set up to do so.
In regards to idc, variety choice is very important, so get out a product book and compare.

In terms of seeding, dont worry if you are seeding at the end of May. It is really important to wait till the soils warm up. I dont think you really need all the seed treatments added to the seed. As mentioned above spend the money on the inoculant and on eco tea for plant growth.

In terms of variety, pick a variety with large seed size. What I mean by this is some varieties have a characteristic larger seed size. At harvest this really adds a lot of bushels to your hopper compared to smaller seed size varieties. That is something I have noticed over the years. Keep the beans clean is obvious but important. They do not like competition and will change its growth if wild oats or volunteer canola get to be a problem.

One thing to remember soybeans hate compacted soils. Do not harrow the field before seeding . Best is to get a 15 inch row planter to plant the beans. Disc drills will work but seem to compact land more than a planter. Also the benefit of a planter is the beans node a little higher off the ground.

If you have grown round up ready canola, make sure you include Odessey with your glyphosate. Dont worry about fungicides . In the end beans need a fair bit of moisture in August to hit there potential yield. That is why I quit growing wheat because the same factors for a big bean crop usually hamper your wheat quality.

Biggest thing in my book for starting to grow soybeans is definitely inoculant like everyone said. In my experience and other farmers that I have done crop advising for the best seems to be granular and don’t by the cheap low rate stuff.
As far as liquid inoculant on seed I don’t personally believe in it. Have followed too many air seeders that had some trouble with granular inoculant bridging up in tank and you can easily find those areas due to no nodules even though the seed was inoculated with liquid.
Tag team is the inoculant brand that seems to have the best track record for us here in the states. Nice granules that don’t bridge up in tank and also seems to be the ticket for good nodulation. Make sure to read the bags for use rate depending on row spacing.
Have had some beans seeded pretty early down here and even some snowed on and they didn’t seem to flinch from frost. Takes them awhile to come out of cold ground but haven’t ever had a reseed due to frost.

I read an article on UofMinn that said something similar about the Soygreen. Seems pricey too.
Xtendimax is glyphosate with dicamba? The residual controlled kochia? Volunteer canola? Or which weeds were you going after?

XtendiMax is dicamba. Don't know how much it controls volunteer canola. We had a field completely covered in wild buckwheat last fall, put down authority supreme in fall which held ok but with the late planting was letting a lot through by the time the beans were up. Hit it with XtendiMax and every last wild buckwheat was roasted brown and crisp down to the roots and never came back. Had very good control on lambsquarters/round leaf mallow/kochia plus good grass control. One caveat is good moisture, we sprayed onto bone dry dirt/crop before and gotten no rain for several weeks and it was no different than straight glyphosate.

For varieties we've been mainly Thunder, they've got a few good ones that look as good as anyone else around. Prograin Maya's and Syngenta Y4s have been the other proven yielders around here, the Syngentas have poorer idc tolerance tho

Xtend beans are rapidly becoming less popular here. Post emerge application restrictions and cutoff dates are reakly putting a damper on them. I've never grown them instead opted for enlist. Heard several guys jumping off the xtend ship for next year. Yields decent, weed control starting to lag.