Winter Beans
- Thread starter Oakley
- Start date
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Guest
Tundra making an appearance.
Sprayed a couple of weeks ago with Gallup and Nirvana.
I really cannot understand why the crows haven’t touched them. I’ll have too many plants if anything.
Very very impressed with how they tolerated wetter patches on headlands etc.
Sprayed a couple of weeks ago with Gallup and Nirvana.
I really cannot understand why the crows haven’t touched them. I’ll have too many plants if anything.
Very very impressed with how they tolerated wetter patches on headlands etc.
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Guest
I’ve looked into sowing them at the end of January/early February.
Not much information out there but it has been trialed a couple of times in England.
Basically, they will vernalise but yield would be a bit behind a good crop of spring beans and harvest date could easily be a week later.
It’s not something I’d be keen on to be honest even though spring seed is very scarce and the quality of the winter Tundra seed is excellent!
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The winter beans had some power. Up through 4 inches of soil.
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The Tundra are showing no ill effects from the weather. Motoring along nicely without being too advanced.
Probably too thick but time will tell.
Probably too thick but time will tell.
rustymcsocks
Well-Known Member
Looking good. Did you put some fert down with them??
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Just some K
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Nice to see nodulation starting on the winter Tundra.
Bean Weevil wasn’t an issue.
Bean Weevil wasn’t an issue.
Hardysplicer
Well-Known Member
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The dust from around here can be used as a P fertilizer. The pea plots last year didn’t receive any fertilizer whatsoever.Strange choice to place with seed ?
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Great nodulation on the Tundra.
I wonder will winter beans fix a bit more N than spring beans since they’re growing for longer.
I wonder will winter beans fix a bit more N than spring beans since they’re growing for longer.
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Just an update on the Tundra winter beans. Apologies if you’re getting sick of me going on about them. Please feel free to mute the video :woot:
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Pity I can’t post a smell. The winter beans are flowering away. First fungicide went on this day last week.
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A little update on the progress of the Tundra winter beans
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Haha, you’re welcome.
A few words of caution though;
I sowed them late (with the aim of reducing disease pressure), I couldn’t believe that the crows didn’t touch them - maybe this was due to the deep planting method or was it just a low crow pressure winter? I don’t know for sure. There’s no doubt that any cereal planted in January suffered a lot of crow pressure.
Also, mine aren’t harvested yet so I’ll have to see how they yield.
All that said, they look promising so far and hopefully they’ll achieve my aim of an equal if not higher yield than spring beans with no extra cost and less exposure to a late spring and/or dry summer.
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Beans never appealed to me due to the late harvest so Winter Beans might solve that issue. Will try a small field in the Autumn and if it turns into a disaster I’ll plough them up in the Spring. Nice to try something new. On a separate note your comment about crows was interesting because I’ve never had such an easy time with crows than this year- didn’t touch anything in Autumn/Spring....didn’t even get a chance to try out my new Bangalore Mk2!!!!
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How were you thinking of sowing them? We chose the Sumo DTS as it put them down 4” . As well as keeping the seeds away from crows, my hope that the depth would slow down emergence and in turn give less disease pressure (the earlier they emerge, the sooner they come into contact with disease spores).
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They’ve been tried on and off over the years Nash with nobody generally raving about them.
I’ve tried plots in the past but were always sown in November with regular Suffolk coulters - the result was lots of crow damage and big disease pressure - so you can see the reason for my efforts above with a different approach.
Frost shouldn’t bother them whatsoever, they’re very winter hardy.
The reason I’m experimenting is a selfish one in ways - I want to see if they can fit into the rotation on our home farm.
We have been growing WOSR happily over the past couple of years but after 2021 harvest, we will have been around all the land with WOSR within 4 years. Beans will be the next break crop and when we’ve grown them around the place we’ll go back to WOSR - therefore keeping a long break between successive WOSR crops & successive bean crops.
My current rough aim is WOSR/WW/WW/Beans/WW/WW/WOSR with some malting barley slotted in here and there. Wheat will be seed. So beans or WOSR 1 year in 6.
We have a 50ac block of WOSR in the above rotation and I looked at it yesterday. The last break crop there was beans. Without wanting to put the kiss of death on it, I think it might be the best crop of WOSR we’ve ever grown. It’s chalk and cheese in terms of disease levels compared to the trial plots (which are being grown in a close rotation).
Of course, weather can upset the rotation but this is the plan anyway.
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Know as the North Cork method. Winter Beans can be very weedy since they got rid of Simazine .