Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss 18.5 inches of rain

My landscape guy says to only believe...

http://forecast.weather.gov/

Put in my address and so far so good for me

I received 6" of rain @ the pond here in Harrison Co. and the pond is still rising due to watershed, it might come up 8 to 9". Happy I got it as the pond was down about 18" from the drought.
Tracy

We are about a foot low here. What is weird is we had rain all through July and August when the ponds would normally be low then no significant rain this fall. Good for harvest so far, but ponds sure are down. Supposed to rain today. I hope the pond stays low for another month till we finish bean harvest, but hope it does not go through the winter that way.

snrub, What time of yr do u plant your soy beans? Do you grow corn and then beans? Based on your past post, I understood u might commercial farm? Is that right? I have planted forage beans for wildlife food plotting and when I planted commercial beans here, they were done by the end of June, leaving my no forage for the deer through the summer. Do u have two harvest of beans over the summer?
After several yr's of food plotting here in E Texas, I have narrowed my seeding to Forage beans, Sunn Hemp, Peas, And then fall planting of Rye grains, wheat(awnless) and forage Oats and clovers. 15 acres scattered @ 1 to 4 acres is a lot of work and timing and my respect for farmers has really grown. I see your conflict with the rain (full pool ponds) versus muddy fields.

Tracy

TGW1, look into indeterminate soybeans for the food plot.

Can you plant them in the fall? Or is it better in spring

Yes Tracy, commercial farmer here, although I rarely do anything in the fields any more. Semi-retired and a younger group does the field work.

We plant corn early in April, try to get it mature before the annual drought, and harvest it in September. Plant group 4 and 5 maturity soybeans later in June, let them suffer through the drought, then set pods and mature in the fall with harvest October/November. We are in the middle of bean harvest right now.

Plant some winter wheat in the fall and double crop beans the next summer also.

That is the general gist of it, with lots of variations depending on the weather for the year and the prices of different commodities. Every year is a little different.

I know nothing of planting plots for deer except that they love our soybeans and a small field surrounded by trees in a remote area really gets hammered by the deer. There have been some small fields we just had to give up growing beans because of the deer population. Wife counted 30 in two fields below the house about a month ago. They will eat the corn also off the cob but do more damage to it by just trampling it down and generally stay around the perimeter of the field. So they like corn too.

I don't hunt but have several employees that do. We definitely have grain fed deer, so they usually taste pretty good.

Snrub,

Sounds like you Kansas guys do it pretty much the way we did it when I was growing up on the farm in Indiana except we planted corn in early May. The couple times I remember us trying to double crop beans after winter wheat did not turn out well for us. Didn't get the rain when we needed it and ended up with 18 inch high plants and beans the size of BBs.

A guy at the COOP told me that once I clear a section of land, removing trees, wild blackberry's and such, to just plant Rye in those areas and that will keep things from growing back that I took out, and Rye is easier to deal with when I want to move to something else.

Didn't research this, so it's still a question.

We got about 10% of the rain the other day that this thread is about. Gonna get more tomorrow. October is usually our wettest month, but has not panned out this year. Still too many trees I can't push over with the Kubota that should go down fairly quick.

Either, that's loosing power for some reason, or the ground is still too dry.

I believe they can be planted in the fall, they are killed by a frost and have no set number of days until they stop growing.

Here, we plant them in the Spring to get the most forage out of them. But, unless you have water, they may burn up in the summer there.

Eagle Brand seeds

That is what I've planted and the deer keep them mowed down. I'm sure that there are other places to get less expensive indeterminate soybeans (otherwise known as forage soybeans) vs. grain type soybeans which are determinate (grow for "X" number of days).

I haven't searched enough to find such a place.

Thanks snrub, like I said, my respect for farmers has gone up. With everything that Mother Nature throws out, like drought or Heavy rains and Hail,( We get around 42" here in Harrison Co) keeps water in the pond but can make planting dates different by as much as 60 days in the spring because of muddy fields, when you lack experience as a farmer. Esshup, Eagle brand is my preferred Soybeans after trying different beans. I have done both commercial and forage together when looking to reduce the cost of the planting and I get a lot of forage and beans when mixing the two. JKB, Winter Rye Grain is easy to plant and grow. (throw out the seeds and then mow or brush hog, letting the clippings cover the seed, do this just before a good rain) and the deer love it @ my place. And Pat, plant the soybeans in or around April 1st and they will last through bow season if the food plots are large enough and depending on the number of deer u have, they might last through opening days of gun season here in E Texas.
we got another couple of inches since last post making between 7 to 8 inches total rain. Pond is still low but is looking good

Tracy

Got 0.8+ inches last night so, hopefully, this will jump start the grass seed and get it going before it's time for it to go dormant for the winter.

Thanks Tracy
Will try the soybeans in the spring. The little rain least got the 5 ac food plot of wheat and oats to come up finally.. Hope that it's not to late to get a foothold before its to cold