|
W Texas | Beans do well on sand if you get rain and good pH. Dont sell the sandy ground short. It can be very productive if fertility is there. It takes in rain better than the tight soils, warms up earlier, and is easier for roots to penetrate deep.
One option might be to harvest your wheat and have your DC seed (milo/beans, etc.) at the ready and plant only if you get an adequate soil profile built up while the wheat is drying down and the first month of fallow. On sandy loam and loamy sand, you have around 1.5 or 1.2 inches of water per foot of soil profile, respectively. Target three foot of profile in that country before planting (panhandle dryland guys target 5 ft on better soils, but they don't have nearly the in season rain prospects as Enid). This would make you switch to short season varieties, but that is a small trade off, and the short season varieties still have high yield potential. Of course, you would be harvesting late and fallowing the ground until the next spring.
Is there a local market for forage sorghum silage? Forage sorghum does really well on sand and you can harvest early, at dough stage, without having to worry about dry down. You could grow a high value crop and have it off the field in 90-100 days. It would be a much more reliable producer than grain sorghum or particularly soybeans.
If you have not planted the sorghums lately, you may not be aware of Dual herbicide and Concep treated seed. This provides and excellent and low cost grass herbicide which will keep your fields clean and increase production, etc. Sorghum doesn't require much nitrogen. Not an expert on soys, but sorghum can be grown on a budget. You can also plant and side dress nitrogen only if rainfall warrants. With Dual and NT, it is tough to go back to wheat the same year. If you till, it is no problem. | |
|
Crop Rotations NW/NC OK
