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Southwest MO | We raised korean lespedeza for seed for a lot of years. It was not Serecia Lespedeza which is a noxious weed. We would scatter it on top of the wheat in Jan-feb I think about 40 lbs/acre with a seeder on the back of a 4wheeler or pickup. As far as chemicals we used to use 2-4-d Amine at a qt per acre, with I think a qt of crop oil, and Select for the grass. back then (we quit in the mid 90's to go to no tilling SB in wheat stubble) comman ragweed and dodder were the hardest weeds to control. dont know what new chemicals would work on it now.
In the fall we would cut it with our regular combine, we would slow the fan down as slow as it would go, and cover up the openings on either side of the cleaning fan with cardboard, leaving only a hole about 3" wide on each side. When its ready to cut you need to stop everything else and go cut it NOW! when its dry a hard rain or even a hard wind will thrash out the seed and you can loose a lot in a short time. Lots of years we would stop combining beans to cut the lespedeza before we lost it. make sure you have a sharp sickle in the head to reduce shatter.
20-30 years ago it was easier to double crop lespedeza than to work the wheat stubble several times and plant double crop beans. Then no till came along and made it easier to doublecrop the beans, and $5-6 beans made more $ than 25-40 cent a pound lespedeza. You will have to do the math to see if it pays now. I havent looked at it for awhile, the places we used to sell it quit, and it would be hard to compete with $14 soybeans. I think our yields in sw MO were around 600-800 lbs per acre
Edited by Eric SW MO 2/25/2013 20:38
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Anybody raise or has raised annual Lespedeza for seed production?
