Soybean School: Learning from 20 years of double cropping

As cereal crops race to the finish line across Ontario, many growers are weighing the option of planting soybeans after a first harvest, which is already underway in some winter barley fields in southwestern portions of the province.
Embro, Ont., farmer Ian Matheson and his family have been double cropping soybeans for two decades. He says it's become part of their cropping system and their expectations are set at 30 bushels per acre - yields can head north or south of that target depending on planting date and conditions after planting.
On this episode of the RealAgriculture Soybean School, Matheson and Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness soybean specialist Horst Bohner discuss the keys to double crop success on this Huron County farm - from ways to get straw off fields faster to expedite planting, populations and how deep to set the drill.
When it comes to planting, Matheson hopes for an early July winter barley harvest to allow for early planting - he prefers to use winter barley in a double crop system because it's typically ready for harvest seven to 10 days before winter wheat.
"Normally, we count on getting into barley by the fifth to seventh of July. I'm pretty confident we're going to be into June harvest this year. So it could very well happen that we have beans in before the first of July," says Matheson.
As he's gained more experience with the double crop system, Matheson says his practices have evolved considerably. When it comes to planting "historically, our cut off was always July 10. That was our cut-off 15 or 10 years ago. As years have gone on, we've ratcheted our maturity back on the beans and we're growing a double zero or even triple zero (variety maturity). And I'm comfortable planting up to about the 20th of July."
In the video, Bohner and Matheson also talk planting populations - when using a drill they'll try to get 280,000 to 300,000 seeds per acre in to the ground. For double crop beans, 7.5-inch rows are preferred and planting deeper is a good option. Last year, his best beans were planted at 3.5 inches.
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[@pcola4594]

Thank you for the videos!
From Kansas

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Thanks for watching!

[@JohnDeere8370r]

Good video