# No till beans after 1st cut hay



## MikeRF (Dec 21, 2009)

With some of our 1st cut stands looking disastrously thin I am considering no tilling beans as soon as the crop is off. (Bean price sure makes this look attractive)
One neighbour who has lots of experience with beans after hay insists that the old hay has to be plowed out instead of no tilled to stop auto toxicity affecting the bean crop.
Anyone have any thoughts on the dos and don'ts of hay/beans/hay within 12 months?
Mike


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## CockrellHillFarms (Aug 30, 2011)

All I would say is its always better to plow it under but you can do it. People do it all the time! It doesnt have to be plowed under just killed it and plant. I've been thinking about doing the same thing on some ground. Bean prices look pretty good right now.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Personally we've never had luck following a hay crop with beans, but those times it was already dry to begin with and the hay crop had already used up all the moisture in the top 6-8" of soil so emergence was poor then those fields were short on moisture the rest of the year.


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## covenanthay (Oct 2, 2009)

_We just finished planting a field last night. Our experience, thought limited, has been good planting beans after first cutting._


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## MikeRF (Dec 21, 2009)

covenanthay said:


> _We just finished planting a field last night. Our experience, thought limited, has been good planting beans after first cutting._


 Did you no till or work the ground you planted?


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

BTW, we no-tilled those hay fields. Trying to chiesel it with all that sod would have been a joke at best, all our plows were cut up and hauled in for scrap years ago.


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## covenanthay (Oct 2, 2009)

MikeRF said:


> Did you no till or work the ground you planted?


Generally we no till but this year it is so hot and dry that we couldn't no till so we used a Salford RTS and then a
Great Plains drill with a coulter cart. worked very well-now if it would just rain.


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## Grateful11 (Apr 5, 2009)

Mike what was your first cutting? My wife just drilled in Soybeans and Millet over very lightly disced Oats stubble that was cut for hay. She just lightly disced with the CaseIH 475 disc and then went in with the drill first time she's ever tried it. Lightly disced because no No-Till drill.

BTW: Some of her Oats got over 5' high this year. She made 35 4x4' round bales on one 2 acre field. She mowed 12 acres yesterday to be baled Monday. Combining with the ol' IH 82 Combine will probably start in a week or two.


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## NDVA HAYMAN (Nov 24, 2009)

I have no tilled into sod a lot of times with out any problems at all. Beans do well HERE planted like that. Of course, no water, no beans. We do have one local guy here that takes off a crop of timothy every year and then plants beans behind thatand reseeds the timothy each fall. Mike


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## Bob M (Feb 11, 2012)

Mike, I have been thinking about planting beans behind my timothy also, and reseeding in the fall. If no-tilled any chance some of old timothy coming back. Around here timothy goes dormant in the summer. I have been trying to think of a way to get a 2nd crop of something off these fields and still have timothy the next spring. Bob


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