Volunteer Spring Beans and Spring Wheat

[Billhook]

We cultivated a couple of our fields ready for drilling Winter Wheat and Winter Beans. Of course it has not stopped raining ever since and we actually have a couple of fields that look as though they have been drilled, even seem to have drill coulter lines but they are all shed seed from last harvest Spring crops. Rather tempted to leave them to see what happens in these mild Winters. May be some extra fusarium but maybe cheaper than cost of spraying off, cultivating and re-drilling. Anybody every left some Spring Wheat or Spring Beans volunteers over Winter with a reasonable result?

 

[Case290]

Left a field of winter beans once was a good looking crop all winter spring but full of weeds come late spring even with herbicides and Also chucked a bit of Fungicide on and only managed 2.5t of 8 acres. I’d just make use of it as a cover crop .but don’t recommend taking it to harvest. I won’t be bothering again.

 

[Billhook]

Thanks for that, I will ponder!. Just thought since we would be spraying it off anyway in the Spring, perhaps wait and see how things look then because if it again is wet as this last Spring we will never be drilled by the end of April!

 

[AT Aloss]

We cultivated a couple of our fields ready for drilling Winter Wheat and Winter Beans. Of course it has not stopped raining ever since and we actually have a couple of fields that look as though they have been drilled, even seem to have drill coulter lines but they are all shed seed from last harvest Spring crops. Rather tempted to leave them to see what happens in these mild Winters. May be some extra fusarium but maybe cheaper than cost of spraying off, cultivating and re-drilling. Anybody every left some Spring Wheat or Spring Beans volunteers over Winter with a reasonable result?

Grew volunteer spring beans this year on 2 fields. I harvested 2.2 tonnes/hectare, they were quite short and there were pods I couldn't get low enough for, so a bit of missed yield there. There were quite a lot of thistles I couldn't control. I sent samples in February to PGRO & got them tested for stem nematode & ascochyta. They got the all clear. They got a fungicide & some trace element and were ready to harvest end of the first week in August. Not very exciting outcome but I think I had a worse bit of winter wheat that had more effort put into it, but that's the legacy of 2020.

 

[Billhook]

Yes Thistles would be a worry

 

[average farmer]

I thinking of taking this to harvest, will assess in the spring but has really grown this last week with the mild weather

 

[yellow belly]

i did beans after beans in 2014
and beans wheat beans
never again
beans always yield better on land that has not had beans for 10 to 15 years
6 years or more between beans is a good rule

 

[Brisel]

There was a thread on leaving spring wheat volunteers in here a few weeks ago. I'd be worried about them running to seed in the autumn & grazing them with sheep was mentioned to prevent this. Spring beans are more susceptible to frost than winters, otherwise you could theoretically do this.

You'd have disease & weed problems with any crop grown from volunteers & I've yet to hear anyone bragging about big yields from doing this. There's a sound reason for crop rotations!

 

[AT Aloss]

i did beans after beans in 2014
and beans wheat beans
never again
beans always yield better on land that has not had beans for 10 to 15 years
6 years or more between beans is a good rule

That's a fair point, I think we got away with it (to some extent) due to there having been a long break from beans which I didn't mention in my post.

 

[Billhook]

Here are the volunteers, they look good in the sunshine today . No thistles or black grass to be seen