Terminating Bean food plot

bcoving

New Member
I planted soybeans and Lab Lab as a summer foodplot. It did well but I need to terminate it at some point so I can plant my winter foodplots. What is the best way to do this? Should I bushhog it wait a week then spray with round up or spray it first then bushhog?
 
What are you planting for your fall plots? Where are you located? If it's a cereal grain, small clovers and brassica's, you can wait till the leaves start to yellow on the beans and just broadcast (a little on the heavy side) over top and let the leaves fall on top of your seeds. If your beans have seed pods on them, the deer will feed on those later in the year.

The beans and lablab will be dead at the first heavy frost and the seeds you spread, will germinate on their own.

What kind of equipment do you have, or were planning to use, if you were going to till up the soil? Are the deer still feeding in your beans or are they long gone?
 
The deer are still eating them. The problem is there are weeds in with them. I was gonna wait until beginning Sept. before I terminated it. Im in North MS.
 
(I typically wait till the end of September or early October before I put my fall plots in and I am in middle Georgia. I always hate to terminate something if the deer are still using it, as well)

Some options?:
I am assuming you don't have roundup ready beans, but you can spray it all now, with glyphosate, and wait 3 weeks and then till it up. It makes the tilling so much easier with dead roots in the ground, that have lost all their moisture. You'll have to work it up again before planting, but waiting to the end of September to plant, puts a weed killing frost on your side, for anything that wants to germinate after you plant.

You could just go ahead and spray 1/2 now, leaving some standing beans and weeds to keep the deer hanging around, and do the above.

You could do nothing now, wait till you see the leaves yellow, spread your seed and fertilizer, then bush hog everything over top (I am assuming you will have lots of biomass), which will cover the seeds, CNC's throw and mow method.
 
Once I spread the seed out and mow the beans on top how will I kill the weeds? Will they die too with the first frost and mowing them down?
 
Once I spread the seed out and mow the beans on top how will I kill the weeds? Will they die too with the first frost and mowing them down?

Crimson n'Camo wrote the book on this method, if that is the route you'd like to pursue. Lots of informative info., here! Most broad leaf weeds can be controlled by mowing and typically will die when cold weather hits. Grasses, in most cases go dormant in the cold weather, so they aren't usually a problem. Check his thread out.
http://deerhunterforum.com/index.php?threads/a-soil-test.2530/
 
Would this work? Throw Austrian winter peas and oats out in early October. Mow the beans on top of that. Cultipack spread clover cultipack. Wait 2 or 3 weeks and top seed rye grain. Next spring in May throw out roundup ready beans and mow the rye on top of it. Come back in June and spray the beans with round up then repeat the entire process again.
 
I would do as some of the others have suggested and broadcast your seeds into the standing beans as soon as the leaves start to yellow. The weeds will go dormant and shouldn't cause a problem. The deer will hammer the bean pods come Jan/Feb, along with whatever else you have planted under them.
 
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