Joe Breker

Havanna, North Dakota

1984 Workshop

No-till soybeans is not a new farming practice. In the corn and bean belt no-till has been used as a method of soil conservation for many years. One of the reasons soybeans fit so well in a no-till rotation is because of their ability to fix nitrogen in the soil. This becomes very beneficial when following with a crop that needs considerably high levels of nitrogen. Soybeans seldom respond to applied fertilizers when planted into moderate to good fertility soils. In case of soils testing low, the fertilizer should either be deep banded or applied broadcast the year before the planted crop. In most cases soybeans do not need any applied fertilizers which makes them a fairly easy crop to plant. They adopt well to many kinds of heavy residues. Almost all no-till drills and planters can be used with success.

The first time I planted no-till beans we used a modified John Deere Manimerge corn planter. It seemed to perform very well in wet heavy residue which is usually the test for a no-till planter or drill. Sometimes in sticky soils it worked better if I left the colters off. Then I wasn't getting wet exposed soil sticking on the sides of my seed discs and making them slide. My cousin has used both a 107 Hay-buster and my Melroe Bettinson no-till grain drills for solid seeding soybeans. He had a little problem with seed placement with the Hay-buster but the Bettinson seemed to work fine. Weed control and rocks are our greatest obstacles to overcome in this area. You can pick off the surface rocks and as long as you dig no more up the harvesting can be successful and quite simple. We used a John Deere all crop header on our rowed beans and a flex head on the solid sowed. The all crop with rock guards worked the best in rocks. Lucky for no-tillers there are quite a few pre and post emergence herbicides for soybeans but getting them to perform under varying weather conditions can sometimes be a problem. Our rainfalls seem to be too unreliable for using great amounts of pre emergence herbicides. The post emergence treatments such as Poast, Rolan, Pusilade, (for grasses) and Basagran and Blazer (for broadleaf) work quite well and you can use them at a rate according to your weed control problem.

Here are a few chemical programs we have used in the past: 1982 a tank mix of Roundup 112 pint, Prowl 1 quart, and Sencor 318 pound. We did not receive a rain for three weeks after application. The weed control was poor so we had to come back with Poast 1 pint and crop oil 1 quart and Basagran 1 quart and crop oil 1 quart in separate treatment post emergence. We would have combined the treatment but there is sometimes an antagonistic problem between Poast and Basagran. The Roundup did a good job of controlling emerged weeds. It was after new weeds came up that we had a problem.

1983----My cousins decided to use strictly post emergence weed control on the soybeans this year except for their Roundup application which took place just prior to crop emergence. Their Roundup rate varied according to the weed problem. When the beans and weeds were approximately 4 inches high, before they had a chance to canopy, a tank mix of Poast 1 pint, Basagran 1 112 pint, Blazer 112 pint and crop oil 1 quart were applied post emergence with a spray coupe at ten gallons of water to the acre. The weed control was excellent on all weeds except some of the large Kochia. Roast was applied later as a spot treatment to control quack grass in the growing beans.

I guess we feet that the economics: of no till soybeans are good if your weed problems are such that you can control them with initial treatments of herbicides.