In the Pod: Soybean Updates

You're listening to In The Pod, soybean updates, a weekly trek into the latest soybean information from NDSU Extension. Soybeans in North Dakota are not treated equally. The growing conditions can be dramatically different depending on the location. Jason Hanson, owner of Rock and Roll Agronomy, has a story from the Ramsey County area. Jason, bring us up to date on the soybeans in your area.

Sure. So I'm in the Central Ramsey County part of North Dakota, primarily Webster, Garski, Starkweather. Soybeans probably been our biggest challenge crop that we had this year. I think the biggest reason is we started seeding earlier May, early beans, the big excitement about early soybeans seeding and all that kind of stuff. The eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, and into the fourteenth, we were in the nineties for temperatures. So people were trying to chase moisture, probably planting a little deeper instead of an inch, probably inch and a quarter, inch and a half. And then May 15 came. We went from 96 degrees air temperature to 36 with three to four inches of rainfall, cold rain, and that had a big impact. So if I was to go through and look at something that stood out this year was vigor of soybeans this year was not good. It spans every variety and there are certain situations that stood out even more. The factors that I saw, planters were better than air seeders as far as the type of stand that we would like to see out there. Were they perfect? No. If you were dropping one forty, one fifty, there was stands down 85 to one twenty. Seemed to be a 100,000 to a 110,000 was kind of that point where it at. Soybeans that were seeded after that rain looked better than soybeans before. Okay? But still take into consideration the planter air seeder thing. Residue management was a big thing. So fields that had a tendency to have gotten worked, they look better because the ground was a little warmer, darker, where if there was more residue, direct seeded, no till, those beans up to probably last week, if you were to pick a field, you go, I don't know if I really want that field as my own field if it was in a no till or direct seeded situation. Reduce the stands, a lot of sporadic gaps in our populations out there. But now we've kinda gotten we're into this r one stage. I'd say we are anywhere from a foot to strong 18 inch tall beans out there. Stuff is filled in. I still think my planter beans look better than my air cedar beans. Our challenge now is that we're coming into R one. We really could use a rain. The state of North Dakota, it seems this year, if you're getting a rain, it isn't coming nicely. It's with hail and big winds, and the number of tornadoes this year has been kinda crazy. We have just missed all of that. So we're kinda riding off of our big 2024 year with the amount of moisture we had, and we're getting to the point now where cereal's kinda critical, but soybeans is gonna be a real challenge coming in here.

What's the weed situation right now?

Our biggest thing out here is still kochia. I have better kochia control before my rain seeded soybeans because I had smaller kochia. If I had any kochia that was up, it was a challenge this year. It was just a windy spring to try to get pre emerge products out. I think the last seeded soybean field that I look at was put in on the June 18. Those are pretty small. Those are only like one, two trifoliate beans so far. Kochia is our number one problem. We did pick up another field the day that we're recording this, Bruce, with another waterhemp field that we found. In our area, it's very classic. Any places that were water sits around ditches or sloughs, this hasn't been a custom harvesting thing. So it's pretty much a waterfall delivery mechanism that got this in here. We have to treat that accordingly.

So what are you doing to manage kochia?

How we've tackled our kochia this year, our pre emerges did very well, and it has almost all been Liberty applications. And we got very blessed with a lot of heat and strong humidity. And our weed control, I'm very satisfied with it this year. But the very unpopular things that you have to tell your farmers to do is we're gonna slow down when we spray, and we're gonna spray more water. They listened.

They did it, and we're happy with that situation. Anytime we can crush kochia, it's a good day for Jason Hansen.

Thanks, Jason. Our guest has been Jason Hanson, owner of Rock and Roll Agronomy. You're listening to In the Pod, soybean updates, a weekly trek into the latest soybean information from NDSU Extension supported by the North Dakota Soybean Council.