Just to show the importance of proper spray timing and seed population rates I thought I would post an example of two plots I have going this year. Granted the plots are 200 miles apart with different soils and weather condition. The pictures below are labeled plot at home and big plot. Big plot is at the farm in Ottertail county. Both plots were planted with the same type of planter, a John Deer flex 71 3 row(see pic below), 3 point planter, but as you will seed the seed population setting were not the same.. The plot at home was planted May 10th and the big plot was planted May 7th. The big plot was limed and soil tested last fall, and fertilized this spring at planting time to the soil test recommendations. The plot at home had no soil test, lime or fertilizer.
Because I am way over the top about plotting I check the plot at home a couple times a week. This is helpful because I am able spray at the right time. I can see how tall the beans are versus the weeds and I can spray the weeds when they are young and much easier to kill. The plot at the farm gets sprayed by timing, 4 weeks after it gets planted. If the weeds are aggressive and I don’t know it they can get above the beans and crowd them out. This greatly affects the early stages of growth of the beans as you will see from the pictures.
Seed population rates also greatly affect the growth of the beans and the weeds. Unfortunately this year I had the planter and drive gears switched on the planter at the farm which caused me to plant the beans much to light, which caused much more open spaces allowing the weeds good access to sun, water and nutrients in the soil. Without the ability of the beans to canopy weeds thrive and overtake the beans.
Lets just say lesson learned on calibrating the planter. Measure the packer wheel, fill the planter with seed. Give the packer wheel one complete revolution and count the number of seeds that came out. This will give you seed per inch being planted.
The beans at home picture has a full grown lab(85lbs) sitting in front of the plot in the beans for reference. The beans are 32″ tall and very well canopied and have been canopied for almost a month. This is a huge help in keeping weeds at bay. I only had to spray this plot one time with gly. The rows are 13″ apart and the plants in the row are about 1″ apart.
The beans at the farm are about 12″ tall and spaced apart about 6″ between plants. The row spacing is the same in both plots, but the spacing between plants in the row is very different. You can see in the picture even after 2 treatments of gly(generic round up) approximately 30 days apart there are still some weeds and the beans are no where near canopying. Again, this plot was limed last year and fertilized this spring at planting time to the soil test recommendations.
Next year will be different at the farm. I am going to overseed that plot with cereal rye in August to fill the gaps, give the deer more food and to get weed suppression. I will make SURE to calibrate my planter next year and monitor my seed to make sure I am getting the correct seed population in the ground. I am also going to move up my spray time to 3 weeks after planting. I am pretty sure if I can keep the weeds at bay and get the weeds to canopy early I can get the same results at the farm that I do at home. It’s a learning curve and I get at least one good lesson a year doing plots. Hopefully this can help someone else from making the mistakes I have made.
Attachments:
beans-at-home-july.jpg
planter.jpg
big-plot-1.jpg
