S4E16: Double Crop Soybeans

Recorded: 2/23/25 

Are you looking for opportunities to pack more crops into your rotation? Double crop soybeans may be for you! Double-cropping soybeans refers to growing soybeans immediately following a cereal grain crop. In this episode, we invite Dr. Carrie Knott of the University of Kentucky to discuss the agronomics of growing double-crop soybeans and the potential for double-cropping in Pennsylvania.  

Hosts: Ryan Spelman and Justin Brackenrich, Penn State Extension
Guest: Dr. Carrie Knott, University of Kentucky

Links:
Carrie Knott
Considerations for Double-Crop Soybean Production
Financial Considerations for Double-Cropping

Photo credit: Del Voight, Penn State Extension

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Transcript

Ryan Spelman (00:18)
Welcome to another episode of the Agronomy Highlights podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Spellman. I'm joined here with my lovely co-host, Dwayne Miller. Dwayne, how are you doing today?

Dwane Miller (00:28)
Hey, doing great, Ryan. We are, we dodged a big snow bullet here, at least in the East Central part of PA. There was this monster, right, monster snowstorm that was predicted. And somehow at the last minute, it took a turn and, or a right turn if you will, and shifted about 50, 60 miles East. So.

We were supposed to get hammered with over a foot of snow, we ended up with three inches. What about you guys out there? Yeah.

Ryan Spelman (01:01)
That's right. We dodged it too. We got even less than that one inch, two inch. We were supposed to have six inches to a foot and didn't. I feel bad. was telling you before the show, my folks are in mass and they're sending me pictures. It looks like they got all of it. They have over two feet and it's a wet snow.

Dwane Miller (01:22)
I'm ready to leave them have it right? Let's turn that's right here to spring that

Ryan Spelman (01:28)
That's right. Yeah, it's been a long winter. Hopefully it's a good reset when it comes to some of our pest populations in the field. But yeah, I'm ready for spring. So let's talk about spring. Let's talk about some of the fun things we get to do this spring.

Dwane Miller (01:45)
So

we're going to like this episode where We're dealing with a very late spring, early summer issue here. We've got Dr. Carrie Knott from the University of Kentucky is going to be with us and she's going to be talking about what they found in their double crop soybeans and in some of her research. So, Ryan, you mentioned we needed to find a double crop system. So.

This is in my mind, this is, all right, we're going to be planting a winter grain of some kind, whether that be a wheat, a rye, a triticale, barley. We're gonna come out, we're gonna harvest that crop off, and then we're gonna come in as soon as we can afterwards, and we're gonna plant soybeans. So we're gonna get two crops out of that one growing season.

Ryan Spelman (02:36)
Yeah, that's right. And it's funny that one of the reasons I said we should define this is because in my area, you know, we don't do a lot of double cropping. So when I started working around field crops and I heard this word double cropping, you know, this exotic term, I was thinking, you know, two rounds of soybean. And I couldn't wrap my head around it because I was like, why aren't you just growing one crop of soybeans the whole season instead of two? But no, it's that you're growing a winter.

know, cereal crop, harvesting that and then planting soybeans in the later part of the season. So once that all clicked, made a lot more sense to me.

Dwane Miller (03:13)
Yeah, Ryan, know, double crop doesn't mean two crops in the same field, right? This is. Yep. I'm glad. I'm glad we had to we had to clarify that. But you're right. So double double cropping is something that is relatively newer to to a lot of our growers. And we'll talk about some of the opportunities that are there for double crop soybeans. I think.

We'll get into a lot of agronomic practices. We're gonna get into some cultural practices. I think we've got a lot of good tips for those that are thinking about or doing some double cropping.

Ryan Spelman (03:50)
Yeah, that's right. I'm excited about it. Like I said, we don't do a lot of double cropping in my center, you know, west part of the state. I think there are areas that it can work. I think when we were talking ahead of time in Pennsylvania, at least, you know, we say kind of south of 80 that these are all places that you might be able to pull this off. I know in the southeastern part of the state, we do see a lot of double cropping happening. So hopefully our listeners, depending where you are in the state, what state you're in, right?

You can kind of think about this and say, is there an opportunity? When am I pulling wheat, harvesting wheat? You know, do I or barley? Maybe you use barley so you can get out earlier. Is there a window that you can get a soybean crop and how can we do this successfully? So we have, like you said, an expert on to talk about this. that's Dr. Carrie Knott of the University of Kentucky. So, you know, I think we've introduced this well enough. We'll bring her on to chat with us about this.

Ryan Spelman (04:47)
Now before we introduce our guest today, here is a quick word from our sponsors.

speaker-0 (06:02)
I think we've got a great guest in Dr. Carrie Knott here from the University of Kentucky. Carrie, you want to say hi to the crowd? Introduce yourself.

speaker-1 (06:11)
Absolutely. It's great to be here. I'm Carrie Knott. I'm from the University of Kentucky and I actually was born and raised in Kentucky. So I've been here just about all my life. And you know, I'm just real excited to talk about the double crop system. I mean, I do a lot of research in this area. And so just sharing that with with a broader audience is great. Yeah.

speaker-0 (06:32)
How long have you been with the University, Kerry?

speaker-1 (06:34)
So I've been back, I said I've been born and raised in Kentucky. I did a brief stint down in Louisiana and then came back in 2013. So I've been back in Kentucky almost 13 years and spent most of that time sort of with the winter wheat double crop soybean rotation. That's where most of my research has been focused. We've done a little bit of full season soybean research in that time, but most of it's on that double crop system.

and making it work more efficiently and profitably, right, for Kentucky. And that really at end of the day is why we do it, right? It's profitable.

speaker-0 (07:11)
ability, right? What's your official title down there?

speaker-1 (07:15)
I am the small grains and soybean ⁓ extension agronomist.

speaker-0 (07:20)
awesome.

speaker-2 (07:21)
Great, so I'm curious just kind of in your origin story here, you know, what got you interested in the double cropping systems and some of the agronomic context around these double cropping systems that you're learning about?

speaker-1 (07:36)
Yeah, well, my predecessor did quite a bit of work recently. He was here for many, many decades. His name was Dr. Jim Herbeck. And towards the end of his career, right before I took over that role, he did a lot of vetting or re-verifying some of our full season recommendations about planning dates and populations and different things.

But he never really kind of circled back to any of the double crop recommendations that we had as a university. so prior to about, I think we started this in earnest in about 2015, 2016. I brought some graduate students on in 2017. But prior to that had been 45 years or so since there were any, you know, detailed

replicated trials to investigate, you know, whether or not there were better ways to do the double crop system.

speaker-0 (08:39)
Okay. So I want to just set the stage here. And again, you know, we've got differences between Kentucky and Pennsylvania agriculture, but Carrie, if you want to talk to us about what kind of conditions make double cropping beans a viable option down there in Kentucky, give us an idea of how prevalent it is percentage of acreage that might be full season versus double crop. What, why are they prevalent down there?

any any factors that limit their success.

speaker-1 (09:10)
Yeah, so down here, you know, about two thirds of our soybean acres are going to be full season ⁓ and only about a third of our soybean acres are going to be in that winter wheat double crop bean rotation. And that really has to do with our soil types, right? And so our deep soils, our fertile soils, well drained soils are going to be in our winter wheat double crop soybean rotation. ⁓ We have

Fried Japan soils, I'm not sure if you guys have those. It's basically a cement layer in our soil profile at about 18 inches. It can go from 18 inches to several feet deep, but then that limits sort of our water holding capacity and how deep the roots can go. And so those Fried Japan soils aren't great for wheat production for obvious reasons, right? So there are just parts of our state that we can't grow wheat.

So therefore, double crop soybeans. So basically our biggest challenge is year in, year out is weather and water availability. So.

speaker-2 (10:13)
Gotcha. you know, I think that context of wheat, right? I think wheat, we deal with that in Pennsylvania as well. There are places that do wheat well. And you know, some of our deeper soils in the southeast do really well with wheat. Some of the soils, the deeper soils in my area, kind of in the valleys do well with wheat. And then you get kind of to the northwest portion. And it depends. We deal with some of those fragile pan issues as well there.

And I know if Justin was on, he'd talk about how it's a challenge growing wheat in his area as well. Dwayne, it looks like you had something.

speaker-0 (10:47)
I think this, you know, it's interesting and there's been more and more talk about double cropping beans, I think from a revenue standpoint, Kerian mentioned to the other day, this all boils down to profitability and how do we make those acres pay? Couple things that may have sped things up with the either desire or trying out double cropping is we have

You know, we've got, we've got an issue here in Pennsylvania with, uh, with Don and wheat, vomit toxin, and folks have been taking weed off maybe a little bit earlier than they have in the past, drying wheat, uh, getting it off, getting it off the field. And that sets the stage in the calendar for the opportunity for us to do some of this and try some of this double cropping where it might not have been the case 10, 15 years ago. So I think.

Taking that wheat crop off earlier than we have been in the recent past gives us a calendar opportunity to at least explore those type of things.

speaker-1 (11:53)
Well, and that's one of the reasons that it's so profitable, winter wheat in Kentucky is that our producers typically are going to be harvesting, you know, at higher moistures. We're talking, some of them start pulling, you know, at 20 % moisture on the wheat grain and they're going to go put it in a drying system, right? And so what they have found down here at least is that if they start pulling it off then

You know, that's going to give them two to three weeks earlier, as you said, in terms of a planning date for the double crop soybeans so that they have better, you know, yield of the soybeans. But then also what they're doing is drawing and holding that wheat till the next year when the prices are really strong on wheat. And that's how most of our producers are capturing sort of that really high profitability potential.

in our, you know, the entire system. So they have large grain bins, they dry it, they hold it, and then they market it and contract it and sell it at a later time.

speaker-0 (12:59)
I think a lot of our growers, you know, they might be doing that same thing if they can take it off and dry it, store it on farm. The only thing that might differ is I hear a lot of guys around the area saying, well, we got to get that wheat out of that bin. We need it for corn. You know, we're typically we'll we'll harvest there in late June, but come come September.

we gotta start making sure we have that grain out of there and moved and the time to clean that bin out for fall grains.

speaker-1 (13:29)
Yeah, and this is all assuming we're going to take it for grain, right? We have some producers that take it for silage. You know, they're going to cut it for some sort of forage, right? And so they're going to be, you know, taking that off much sooner than if it were a grain crop, the wheat, and then they're able to plant the double crop soybeans much earlier. And then even down here, you guys, we have a risk of frost, right? We do have a risk of if we plant late enough,

in the year, say in July, mid to late July, which can happen depending on weather patterns, that we might have that double crop soybean frost out on us. So we're never out of that risk. We always worry about that year in, year out, just about. ⁓ Thankfully, we don't have that happen very often, but there are ways to still harvest that crop if it gets frosted.

speaker-2 (14:19)
So maybe this is actually probably a good segue into the question about this planting date, right? Like obviously our planting dates will differ being more Northern than you guys, but you know, general rules of thumb for a double cropping system of like, how do we avoid some of those sensitive frost periods? How do we think about the system and timing it right with wheat? Can we move our wheat planting around anyway? Or, and then, you know.

what time do you target that soybean planting, you know, after the weed as well, if there are any kind of timing tips there.

speaker-1 (14:52)
really what I recommend is really going after your variety selections, right? And this isn't just in soybeans, it's in wheat as well. And so some of our producers do not go for the full season, those really long maturing wheat varieties, if they know that they have to have really good double crop soybean yields, right? Or if they're concerned about frost, depending on where, where they are in the state, we call it the southern tier, which is right north of the Tennessee border.

you know, if you're anywhere other than there, you know, if you're more in the central part of the state, your frost is going to come sooner. And so really most people are going to try to do a, you know, a mid early, you know, so not a medium length, but a little earlier than a medium length wheat variety, get it planted and that way they can harvest it sooner. As I said earlier, there's people that are toying with

pulling this off, you know, even as high as 20 % with, ⁓ you know, stripper headers. ⁓ that's just a few producers. ⁓ it's by far not the most common method. but there are people that are doing that and then drying it down, you know, and honestly, the Millers and bakers love that better, right? The, the quality is so much better on the wheat when you're taking it earlier in the season. And so

⁓ you know, you're going to avoid any dockages for quality test weight, phyma toxins even. ⁓ and then for the double crops, what we were doing, you know, several years ago was saying, okay, we're starting to hear chatter that you need to go with a short season, right? So you should go for a really short soybean variety. And so that's why we put so much effort into that. And what we found is that that is not true.

And really several of my counterparts across the nation have done additional research about the same time as me. know, everybody's asking, you know, nationally these questions usually about the same time, but everybody's finding, I mean, we're talking, you know, Illinois, Ohio, some other parts of the country. Michigan, I think, did a study as well. You really need your full season. So whatever is adapted for your area for

soybeans. So for us, it's a late four. Most farmers grow a four seven, four eight, four nine ish, sometimes a five, we would never grow a five for double crop. But we would bump up against those late fours because that is our longest maturing adapted sort of relative maturity group that does best. And so that's what we're finding. You know, despite the risk of the frost, right, that's really where we need to be going.

speaker-0 (17:39)
So your research found that, picking a double crop variety go with the longest type of maturity that a full season bean would support in your growing conditions.

speaker-1 (17:43)
Resem.

Yep. That's right. Now I was disappointed. have to admit I was so disappointed. Do you hate it when you come in with these biases or hopes? Yeah, they get blown out of the water, but you know, I mean, it just goes to show that, you know, farmers know what they're doing, right? They might tinker around with the three fives in our area, but it's those long fours that really work best for us.

speaker-2 (18:17)
Yeah, you know, I think this is kind of a really interesting topic, right? Because like you said, you know, I think in all other crops, we might come to a different conclusion, but soybean maturity groups are quite different than, you know, some of our other crops in the way that that growth is programmed. Right. And so in my area, we're maybe closer to like on the lower end, ⁓ some of our group twos higher end is like high group threes to give you context. But

I've heard some of the same things that people who are double cropping, it's those later ones. Can you maybe elaborate a little bit for our listeners on why that is? Like why do soybeans behave in this way? Because logically you would think, okay, I have a shorter season to produce soybeans here, so I should go with a shorter maturation, right? But that's not quite how it is. So can you explain why that is, why soybeans grow the way they do and how?

speaker-1 (19:12)
Yeah, mean, it's pretty simple even, you know, for corn for sure, but to some extent wheat, right? Like you have a very defined period when it's going to be producing, you know, the spike where the seed, you know, is made or the ear for the corn, right? You know, it's one, basically one unit it's putting its effort into. And so you, you know,

tillering a side in wheat, you know, once you're into the spring and it's producing one single head, then you know all the reserves are going to go to that. In soybeans, think about it, you have all these flowers across all these nodes and all these pods that are developing, right? And so if at the beginning of the flowering period, you have some sort of drought stress and it drops all the blooms or aborts all of the

early developing pods, right? In a wheat or corn plant, that's it. You get zero yield, right? In soybeans, it says, ⁓ shoot, I don't have any place to put all this photosynthesis I'm making, all these sugars. Hey, let's keep flowering, right? And so it's just such an amazing crop, right? Soybean is so resilient. We say this over and over. It's resilient. It can bounce back. And it's because

It has this long range of flowering that allows it to compensate, right, for any adverse conditions throughout that period. And so, I mean, if you think about it in terms of that, and you try to personify this plant, if you have a full season adapted for your area, if you have a little blip in heat that aborts anything, the flowers, the pods, the seeds, then,

If you have the longer maturing group, it'll have longer time to continue to put on flowers, pods, seeds. Does that make sense? So you're lengthening that reproductive period and allowing it to be more resilient for your entire double crop season.

speaker-0 (21:19)
So something I've seen in my locale here is I think at least the last five to 10 years, it seems like growers are maybe shortening their varieties, their maturity groups in a full season setting where some of the hybrids and when you look at the yield data where somebody might have grown a three eight.

they might be looking at a two seven now, but I just want to stress that in a double crop situation, you're saying, okay, let's, let's look at what is viable in a, in a full season scenario and, look to the long window of that. So even if somebody. Again, may have been planning a two eight, two nine being in a double crop. If, if our locale, what's would suffice for a.

for a mid three, then go for that as far as I'm sure.

speaker-1 (22:19)
That's right. Yeah. And we do have some farmers here as well that grow late twos, right? So they're trying to diversify their cropping system for full seasons, right? And so they'll start off with maybe some late 2.8s, 2.9s and go from there. But again, as you said, we can't do that in double crop. We don't have the luxury of the full growing season, right? To allow us to do that. So.

speaker-0 (22:44)
Let's just circle back. talked about, you know, planting date a little bit, but how important is getting that bean into the ground as soon as possible following that first crop coming off?

speaker-1 (22:59)
So our research shows you're losing 1 % a day. So whatever your yield potential is, max yield potential, it's 1 % a day you lose. So I mean, we're talking about a very significant yield decrease just by a rain that keeps you out of the field for three or four days.

speaker-0 (23:17)
Yeah,

that can add up pretty quick, doesn't it?

speaker-1 (23:20)
Yes.

Yeah. And I mean, even when my graduate student was doing this work, you know, the first year she had three years study the first year. let's see. She had two different planning dates and the first year it was only 10 days between harvest and weed at 20 % versus 13%, you know, so that was a 12 day. But then the other two years we're talking about three weeks and that had to do with a bunch of rains that come in.

you know, sort of around that June timeframe. And we weren't planting here till mid July, which happens. It's not a horrible, you know, it's not unheard of, but it's pretty late for, you know, us to be planting in mid July. Usually like to have everything in for double crops by 4th of July. But often it doesn't happen just due to weather.

speaker-2 (24:10)
Yeah, you know, and I think when we when we're thinking about July and planting in that time, if you know, I'd imagine down your way. But we've been having some drier summers, right? So it might not be that, you know, a challenge to go and and harvest your wheat. But I'm curious, you know, when you do plant those soybeans, what are some things that you need to keep in mind maybe when it comes to planting depth on how you set up your planter?

when A, you might have some moisture problems, we might be in a droughty time, and B, you also have lot of maybe residue. So I'm curious what your thoughts are on best practices and with all that in mind.

speaker-1 (24:53)
So yeah, I mean, it's really important. And, you know, I always preach that every field you go to, you should be checking depth, right? It's really annoying. I don't know how it is for y'all, but I mean, down here in Kentucky, we have a lot of very small field sizes. And so, you know, you could spend most of your day traveling between your fields, right? And spend very little time planting, you know, smaller fields, depending on where you are in our state in Kentucky.

And so, but it's very important that you're checking depth and you know what you're doing in a double crop system is you're chasing the moisture. And so let's say that I always like a minimum of one inch, no greater than two inches in soybeans. And I always chase that moisture. So if there is moisture at the one inch depth,

and you do not see sort of a droughty pattern, does that make sense? In the next 10 to 14 day forecast, I say planted at an inch, it will come out, it will be fine. If you are dry at the one inch mark in the soil profile, or the weather forecast is saying you're gonna get a droughty period, I would probably go closer to an inch and a half or two inches and chase that depth.

that has adequate soil moisture, right? Another thing for us is we don't typically recommend any sort of seed treatment on our double crops, soybeans. A couple of reasons. First of all, for the fungicide seed treatment, we don't have any of the problems, right? That seed treatment's usually gone after Phytophthora or other things that are in cool, moist soils. You're not gonna have that, right?

And for the insecticides, know, we don't need them in our system. And so I've had farmers tell me, which I haven't been able to verify this, but lots of farmers anecdotally tell me that seed coat adds at least an additional three days. So to get enough moisture to break through and get the soybean to germinate, they feel like

they delay three to five days for emergence from the soil and that's just too long, right?

speaker-0 (27:05)
That's interesting. I'm glad you brought that up. That seed coat can lead to a longer period of time for it to break down.

speaker-1 (27:16)
That,

you know, farmer that told me this actually during a drought year said he had an aerial image and he ran out of, you know, beans that had a fungicide insecticide seed treatment and he finished off with untreated. And he said he had an aerial photograph and he could tell throughout the entire growing season, a huge visual difference. And then when he harvested at the end of the year, I can't remember what he said, but there was indeed a yield.

know, benefit for not having a seed treatment, right? Because they were able to get growing and established a little bit quicker.

speaker-0 (27:54)
Any thoughts, Kerry, on an inoculant? So since we're talking about stuff on that seed.

speaker-1 (28:01)
yeah, I mean, if there's been any trouble with say, you know, any sort of emergence or nodulation problems or anything like that in your fields, you should be inoculating, right? There are fields in Kentucky. We say if it's had soybeans in it in the last three to five years, you should be fine, but there's gonna be fields that have had soybeans every three to five years, but they stay really wet.

and sloppy and just gross during the winter. And basically what you're doing is creating an anaerobic situation that kills those rhizobia, right? And so we'd say, if you have any field conditions, you know, that stay saturated or you have problems, then you should inoculate. And inoculants like a super cheap insurance, right? A lot of farmers just throw it in cause it's pennies, you know, it's not that much per acre.

and they just do it. I mean, there's no concern as the agronomist here in Kentucky for doing so.

speaker-2 (29:02)
That's yeah, I think that's a great point and I'm glad you brought that up Duane because I think you could take the thing about, know, okay, I don't need a seed treatment and just forget about your inoculant. And I think this is a good opportunity if A, I'm saving money on my seed treatment, right? And which is also a benefit to the risk that you take on in some of the areas near us of double cropping. But, you know, let's add that cheap insurance of that.

of your inoculant. think that's really important. So I'm curious, so since we're still kind of in this planting window here in our conversation, what when it comes to, you talked about pulling the weed off early, you know, and being able to drive that on gives you a little bit extra time. Now, what about managing the residue? So I know in our, we do a lot of no-till, right? And I imagine in, you know, when we're talking about double cropping, a lot of times we're talking about a no-till system.

What's your thoughts on managing residue? Should we manage it? Should we bail straw? Should we lay it over? What are some, for moisture, know, what are some best practices when it comes to residue management?

speaker-1 (30:07)
Well, we don't really worry about that. Does that sound terrible? But I mean, we don't have to deal with that, right? The only complication honestly is that planting, right? And so when you are planting, you need to make sure you're planter. And we found that planters are much better than drills, right? We do have some farmers that still drill in double crop soybeans, cause that's the equipment they have, but it is so much better to go on 15 inch rows.

with some sort of planter with row cleaners, right? And so those row cleaners are able to throw the trash out of the way. And then in the 15 inches, they have room to throw the trash, right? All the residue sort of beside the rows and then get the soybeans into place. And, you know, my biggest concern is always you can't, so therefore you are dealing with all this wheat straw. You kind of have to wait for the dew to burn off, right?

Cause otherwise what you're gonna get is maybe some sort of hair pinning, right? It's much more of a problem, you know, with the corn stover when you're trying to plant your wheat, but this same principle happens with the wheat straw and the double crop soybean planting. It can hair pin in, you don't have good, you know, seed to soil contact. You might not close the furrow like you want.

And so just making sure you wait for those really good conditions so that your planter can do its job and cut that straw and throw it out of the way and get the, you know, one to two inches to chase that, that water content in the soil is very, very important.

speaker-0 (31:45)
Could you talk to us a little bit about, so we mentioned row spacing. Any of your research focus on seating rates or any recommendations around that?

speaker-1 (31:55)
Yeah. so it's at least in Kentucky, seating rates, a little bit of a misnomer. don't, we don't really recommend a seating rate. We recommend a harvest population. And I think it's because of all these things that we've been talking about, right? Like it's hard to get through some of the residue. It's hard to get, um, you know, depending on the year, good, you know, um, you know, planter spacing and everything. So

We say that for our full season, we want to harvest 100,000 plants and for our double crop, want to harvest 140 to 150. And we got a little flex there because we have researched that in a drought year, 140,000 plants out yields 150, which makes sense, right? More water or less water, you want less plants, more water, you want more plants. so bottom line,

you know, some of our research shows that you have to plant a seeding rate of 200 to 210,000 seeds to ultimately get your 150,000 plants harvested. So you have a very significant sort of reduction in harvest ability due to residue and other things. Yeah.

speaker-0 (33:16)
I think that those numbers ring pretty true, I think, to what we've been hearing here in PA. And I would put forth the saying, begin with the end in mind, right? And that 100,000 and the 140-ish is the target for the end of the season. And we've got to figure out what we've got going to limit those populations.

I know one thing we have here in Pennsylvania is the four legged white tail deer. And that has a lot to do with what some of our populations look like and what we to seed to be able to end up with that population.

speaker-1 (33:58)
In the Western part of our state, it's pretty aggressive. Yeah, we have the deer and the predation from them. I mean, they'll just get in a row and just, know, chomp, chomp, chomp. I'm sure the same as y'all. And then they'll come back the next morning with the new growth or a couple of days later. And they're like, Ooh, new tender growth, chomp, chomp, chomp. You know, it's very, very much a problem. So yeah, if you're around those fields, it's very difficult to get your maximum yield potential because

Those plants are under stress all the time.

speaker-2 (34:28)
Now, yeah, we definitely, we feel your pain from the deer damage. I mean, this is always a topic of conversation at every soybean meeting we go to. We come to talk about something else and everyone has questions about how do we manage deer. So we can understand that. so you kind of said probably best practice here is 15 inch spacing.

Drilling, It's going to be more of a challenge with residue and being able to predict the emergence. I'm curious, have you ever tried 30 inch rows with this? In my thinking about it with the shorter season, think the reason why that might not be effective is you can't get canopy and you're not maximizing the space. Is that correct? Or have you had success on 30 inches?

speaker-1 (35:14)
mean, of course you can get success, but you're not going to maximize your yield potential, right? So there are some and actually, researchers for sure. So our plant pathologist down here always plants 30 inches, right? Just so that he can get through the plots, he can rate them, he can do whatever he wants. And so we have done some 30 inch as well for some of our research just because we had to a couple of years. But if you want to really

push the bounds of yield and profitability. It's those 15 inches that we know, you those narrow rows we know are going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. And really, you know, if you have the equipment, it's not going to cost you anything. Yeah. But if you don't, you can certainly do 30 inches. But I don't know that I have a good rule of thumb as terms of yield reduction. I think

Typically in a normal year, not a drought year or good water year, we're talking 20, 25 % is kind of what I hear nationally, but that maybe has changed some too over the years.

speaker-0 (36:16)
I know in our locale, I tend to see a lot more drilled beans for double crops. That's the equipment that's here. If they're planning full seasons, all right, we might have that corn planter on 30s and we'll switch over there, but for double crops, it's usually a drilled bean.

speaker-1 (36:38)
And it can work, right? You're just going to have a little bit more cost in seed because you're going to, you know, you're going to have less, more loss, right. And stands with a drill than you would a planner. And so your input costs for seed are going to be a little bit greater. So that's another thing you're going to have to adjust for, you know, kind of go out. And if you're not sure what your stand loss is, you know, for a couple of years, put out whatever seeding rate you think and get a harvest.

you know, population and figure out what your loss is. know, at least in my research in certain fields, you know, I have a couple of fields that have real deep soil that 15 % stand loss even in double crops is about right. So I have some tougher ground that does have a fragile pan on it, but it grows wheat okay. And I like to do research back there and we're talking 25, 30 % stand reductions, right? So you just gotta know your fields.

and be willing to make those sort of adjustments on a per field basis.

speaker-0 (37:38)
think that's a really good point. Not every field is created equal and oftentimes as farmers, I'll put my former hat on here, just get, man, I just get tired of changing sprockets around on the plan and checking this and checking that and now just dump it in and go. But this is where the dividends can pay if we take time and maybe

Put a script there and understand that treat fields differently and might reap the rewards of that.

speaker-1 (38:09)
And you know your fields as a farmer, you know which ones is your problem child. You know what I mean? And so, you you can, even if you don't want to get out of the, you know, cab and check depth and, you know, check, you know, how everything's going, ⁓ you kind of know, you're going to know which ones you need to up your, your seating rate on or not for sure.

speaker-2 (38:32)
Yeah, a few episodes ago, we did a show on saving money and how to make better economical decisions and do a budget. And we talked a lot about record keeping. And I'd imagine this is a similar, if you're trying this for the first time and you're trying this in different fields, actually doing the work of writing down what was the seating rate I use, then going out, taking a stand count and saying, what did I get?

You know, over time, if you're going to continue with this practice, that would probably pay dividends as well to really understand in your system what works because there's so many variables in this system, right?

speaker-1 (39:10)
Right. And anytime you try a new crop, I mean, you can't give up after the first year. You got to give it three or four, five years, right? Because you got to learn the nuances of what you're trying to do. That's what I tell our farmers down here all the time. You got to give it some time.

speaker-2 (39:26)
yeah. I like, yeah, and it's hard, right? But you're right that like there's a some magic five year number, right? Where a like to really lock in, dial in your management strategy. We talk in the organic world about this five year period of like transitioning and actually reaping the benefits, right? So maybe there's something to that number there. So I'm curious, so.

One thing that we kind of haven't talked about here is fertility. So, you know, I don't think we need to dive too far into this, you know, is there anything when we're thinking about the double crop system that we should change fertility wise, our recommendations compared to a full season bean, you know, are there, starters, would you recommend, you know, all of sudden you have a lot of residue and I know.

you know, soybeans are nitrogen fixers. Is there anything to having a little bit of starter or, know, anything notes on fertility like that?

speaker-1 (40:23)
That's

the best thing about the double crop system. You don't need any of that stuff, right? You just you plant it and you go you have to make sure you have a Good base. I mean you can't put this in, you know drain down soils I mean you need to make sure you have adequate P and K there Depending on you know where you're at and I'm not a fertility expert, but you know sulfur is coming into

play in some of our fields here in Kentucky just due to, you know, sort of our environmental conditions, ⁓ having less sulfur in the atmosphere, right? And so just making sure you know your fields and for sure do not put this in fields with really high nitrogen carryover, right? If you have way too much nitrogen in your system,

you're gonna impede nodulation and then man, you're gonna have a very dismal failure, right? I mean, we cannot afford to put all the nitrogen needs for soybean crop, you know, to provide it to them. We need to let them do their jobs and make their own nitrogen.

speaker-2 (41:29)
Yeah, sure. That's a great point. yeah, and I'd imagine a double crop system, right? You really want some strong nodulation because you want some rapid growth, right? So anything you can do, like it sounds to me like what you're saying is, you know, focus on your wheat fertility, dial in that wheat fertility. And then, you know, the soybeans should be able it's like kind of, I don't know, but the nutrient cleanup crew out there.

⁓ and then the restorative, you know, nitrogen part of that, that cycle as well. I don't know if that's a good way.

speaker-1 (42:01)
be deficient on potash right that's the thing.

speaker-0 (42:04)
I

was going to say, right, that's the big one is we need to make sure we're not, we take care of our potash needs.

speaker-1 (42:11)
Yep. And a lot of times you'll see some flashing or certain things, you know, in, any of your soybean crops, you know, and it's not that it's not available in the soil profile. You have some sort of restriction on that furrow. You might have some sidewall compaction. You might have some root, you know, problems, compaction usually that the roots just aren't growing.

After long periods of drought or even saturated conditions, you're going to flash a potash deficiency. It doesn't mean it's not in the soil. It means the roots aren't either big enough to take it up or the plant is on a pause, right? In a drought situation, it's just not doing anything. It's dormant.

speaker-0 (42:56)
All right, let's shift gears a little bit. Talk about the opportunity for double crop beans with respect to pest pressures. So we talked about one of our pests, the white tailed deer, but specifically, you know, maybe disease and other pests. How does it compare in a double crop system to full system soybeans?

speaker-1 (43:21)
I as I said earlier, we're not worried about some of our early cold season diseases, right? Those root rots, the phytophthoras, the pythiums, those sorts of things, you're still gonna have possibly some foliar diseases. So for us, it's always frog-out leaf spot. not sure what sort of foliar. Yeah, you can't get rid of that stuff.

speaker-2 (43:40)
Strong, huh? ⁓

speaker-1 (43:44)
you know, if you, if you have good, you know, variety selection, that'll help with some of that. So I don't know that you have any more, you know, any sort of pathogen diseases that you have to worry about. You just have to scout. Now in terms of double crops and sort of thresholds and things, that's where your insects might be more of a problem. So we might have stink bugs or June bugs or

Bean leaf beetles at different parts of the year for us that we have to worry about. Maybe stink bugs for sure that we scout more for double crop. But not every year we have problems, right? So it's more of a IPM, know, integration of scouting and then making your pesticide choices.

speaker-2 (44:34)
Now, when you talk about some of the insect, you know, defoliators like our Japanese beetles, bean leaf beetles, that kind of thing could be more of a problem. Is it because you just have like smaller plants in general? So like the leaf, the proportion of leaf tissue is even more important or is it like that there's more pressure from the pests themselves? So that makes sense.

speaker-1 (44:58)
It depends on the year, That's the total extension answer, but it can't be. If it's early in the season, that's right. They're tiny little plants. And if the insects are already booming, then yes, it comes down to defoliation rate. However, it also comes down to weather conditions, right? And some years, these insects are worse than others. So at critical,

speaker-2 (45:02)
It depends, we say that a lot here.

speaker-1 (45:26)
you know, growth stages for double crops where the full seasons are already established and canopied and kind of chugging along, right? So yes, it really has to do with timing of growth stages and environmental conditions and pest pressure. I mean, there's some years you barely have to scout and then there's others you're out there all the time.

speaker-0 (45:47)
one one pest that I was thinking about and maybe in a double crop situation all right we've got a we've got a little bit warmer of a climate putting those seeds in the ground boy 2024 for us in Pennsylvania was just a banner year for slugs and wow they

speaker-1 (46:05)
Yeah.

Us too! 24 was terrible!

speaker-0 (46:09)
Decimated, Stans.

speaker-1 (46:11)
Yeah, I think that was the year we had trouble in double crop situations with slugs and snails, just all the law risks. Yes. I mean, it was unheard of. You know, our entomologist was so excited and I told him, you should not be this excited. But yeah, I mean, it was was really bad. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, it's it's it's a question that I think nationally we're trying to understand. Is it weather condition that's driving?

these mollusks and things to be more harmful or is there something else going on?

speaker-0 (46:46)
I know I made a recommendation for somebody to replant a third time. And I was like, look, we're past it now. There's no possible way. And they called me again and said, all right, come on, take a look at this field again. And it was just some of the most incredible things I've ever seen. But and that's the beauty and the challenge, if you will, about agriculture is no two years are going to be the same. Right. And like you said, we're

Everybody's just trying to figure this out with especially with respect to that pest and how it functions and try to get a handle on what next year is going to going to be for us.

speaker-2 (47:25)
Yeah, actually that's interesting to me, Kerry, that you mentioned that you guys had slug pressure in your double crop beans, because I would have thought, yes, you do have a good level of residue, but I would have thought in the middle of the summer that surely you're a fat. Yeah, but I guess it's it if the slugs are there, they can still make use of that evening cooler time periods and there's

speaker-0 (47:41)
We're passing.

speaker-2 (47:54)
There's a lot more adults, so maybe it could be worse. And I guess I didn't think about that, but...

speaker-1 (47:59)
And I think we had a lot of cloudy days that year. So even during the week and during the day, there was just a lot more feeding. So it was very much a challenge.

speaker-2 (48:11)
Interesting. Well, we're dealing with it too. Our entomologist said, you know, I came here to learn about insects and then I spent most of my career talking about a mollusk. But so, All right. So, Dwayne, do you have anything else agronomically that you want to ask? I'm trying to think if I think we.

speaker-1 (48:21)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (48:30)
I think I checked off all the stuff on the list here that I had wanted to talk about.

speaker-2 (48:35)
Kerry, is there anything agronomically with this double crop system that you want to cover that we haven't talked about yet? ⁓ I have one. What about when it comes to the later part of development, maturity? Do you see often we run into a challenge where we do have a higher moisture bean that we're dealing with? And do we need to manage that? is usually if you pick the right variety, you're OK?

speaker-1 (48:59)
if you pick the right variety, you're going to be okay, right? And so you'll have enough time for any sort of, you know, normal dry down period and then harvest. And like I said, even if you get hit with a little bit of frost damage, you know, usually if you pick that right maturity group, you'll have time for it to kind of get over that frost damage and still be able to harvest it right now. Having said that, I know that some of the really

much further north than us in Kentucky have problems every year, know, like Wisconsin and, you know, Minnesota with their double crops and they might have some harvest aids. And so we just don't have to, we're lucky, we're far enough south. We don't have to deal with that year in and year out.

speaker-2 (49:45)
Sure, Duane, I'm curious, since you might have more folks double cropping in your area than mine, do you often see folks that are double cropping have some sort of storage that they can dry the beans afterwards? Is that kind of a prerequisite or is that not necessary?

speaker-0 (50:04)
I think most of the folks that I have seen using a double crop situation, they may be taking those off and selling them as cash grain and not storing.

speaker-2 (50:18)
Cool, all right, well then I'll ask the first part of my last question again. So is there anything that we didn't cover that you wanna cover before we move to a wrap up? Up, Kerry.

speaker-1 (50:28)
I just think, you know, the double crop winter wheat, you know, or, you know, winter annual, whatever, know, canola is getting real big down here again. You know, any of these sort of double cropping opportunities, it's just a very elegant way, right? To have a cover crop for your wheat that you can harvest or take for a forage and then, you know, have a double crop soybean as well. And so I just think it's really a cool system.

speaker-2 (50:57)
Yeah, I think elegance is good way to say that. I mean, in my area and how I'm seeing this, know, in my area where the season length is a challenge, I do have a lot of dairy farmers that do a double crop forage system, but they're going, you know, they're using wheat or rye as their forage or triticale and then following with corn. But, you know, this is making me think, you know, if they can work soybeans in there, they can do a very similar thing.

and harvest that wheat as a forage and break up that corn wheat, corn wheat cycle that is catching up to us with some of our pests here. I think elegance is a good way to say it. And I think we're in an era in agriculture where the more we can pack in, the better economically for soils. We're really learning a lot about that. Now, I'm curious, looking ahead, when it comes to this double cropping system,

What you think, what innovations do you think could make this system more consistent and profitable for farmers? Are there equipments, varieties, know, management systems that you're interested in researching and what you're kind of looking at in the future?

speaker-1 (52:06)
don't know if it's really an agronomic answer, you know, I think as the weather forecast, the weather models and different weather predictions get better and better, I think that's going to allow us in agriculture for any crop to do a better job, right? And so, you know, I've become

almost borderline obsessed with predicting, you know, weather. And so for us down in Kentucky, we have sort of an annual thread of spring freezes that could impact our wheat crop. Okay. But it's really got me interested in how the weather forecast, the prediction models and everything have come to be. And I really think that hopefully in the not too distant future, those predictions are going to get better and better, right?

And I wonder if in 50 years, you know, our grandchildren are going to be making agronomic decisions based upon, you know, predicted forecast, you know, six to nine months out. You know what I mean? So, you know, we know as a farmer before we plant our crop or even make our cultivar decisions, what our growing season will be. And then we

adapt our cultivar and agronomic management decisions to match that. If we're going to have a drought, we might choose a different variety, reduce seeding rate, larger row spacing. Do you see what I'm saying? And then maximize your profitability in that way. If you are predicted to have endless water, you know, maybe not a flood, but

water every time you need it, then what are you going to do? You're going to narrow up that row spacing. You're going to increase your populations and you're going to maximize the yield that way. And so that's really as an agronomist, if we're kind of pie in the sky hoping that's what I want to see that we have better information as farmers so that mother nature is not exactly our foe, right? We seem to fight her a lot.

And my hope is one day she will work with us.

speaker-0 (54:17)
It seems like you ask a farmer what's one of the biggest frustrations and challenges and it is. It's environmental challenges. So dealing with something like that in predictive science would be a true game changer for folks.

speaker-1 (54:35)
We'll never harness it. We can never control it. But if we can make informed decisions, we are going to be better, right, as farmers.

speaker-0 (54:45)
That's one thing we should be striving to do as farmers is get better each and every growing. You got one shot to plant the crop, you got one shot to harvest it, manage it as best you can, but each and every year, each and every growing season, try to gain that 1%, just 1 % better, 1 % better every year.

speaker-1 (55:08)
Right, that's right.

speaker-2 (55:10)
Yeah, well, I think that's great way to end it. And I think this episode has been a really great crash course for anyone who's interested in double cropping, you know, what it's all about, how to do this properly, how to think about it. I think this will be really helpful. So Kerry, I really appreciate you coming on to do this with us. if there's anywhere where you want people to reach you or find your research, this is your chance to plug that.

speaker-1 (55:33)
I think I'll have to get back to you. I'm not sure because we recently had to change our websites. Y'all know this right? Due to the ADA compliance.

speaker-2 (55:44)
That's fine, we can drop it in the show notes, you know, after the fact.

speaker-1 (55:47)
perfect.

speaker-0 (55:48)
Well, Kerry, I want to say thanks again for joining us from all the way down from Kentucky and sharing some of your insight on double cropping beans down there. I'm sure it's been a help for some of our farmers in Pennsylvania. I know I've learned a lot too about that double cropping system and opportunity. So thanks again for joining us.

speaker-1 (56:09)
Thanks, it was a pleasure.

speaker-0 (56:11)
Catch you next time on the Penn State Agronomy Highlights Podcast.