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C IL | Not common here either, anymore. Poor man's 15" planter, I guess. Saves running down 100% of the rows in the wheel tracks from where you just shift over 15" and keep driving straight with a regular 30" planter. Saw it more in no-till to avoid driving down stalk rows.
Don't see it as much anymore. Lots of interplant planters or separate 15" bean planters. More concerns about mold and disease in narrow rows. More concern about early painting, so folks just blow beans in on 30" rows if they don't have a different planter.
Used to see it more in later season beans (wheat beans). Now there are bigger machines, more 15" machines, and less wheat beans around, so there isn't as much concern about leaf index (or whatever the light interception deal is called now).
Wide variety of research on 15" beans. Conventional wisdom from university used to be that the additional yield from 15" rows didn't actually pay for the interplant cost of a planter, but everyone had it anyway. Then 24-row planters got into vogue, and there were few interplant 24-30 planters, but a lot of folks kept their 12-23 or 16-31 or had a drill.
Now the research is coming again here in favor of narrow-row beans. 3.2 bu or whatever, as per becks. More then double what extension used to say. We have some huge bean seed that won't fit into our SI meters on our bean planter, so I'll probably diamond row in a couple hundred acres of beans since it won't take but a few extra hours with a 24-30 planter, and it's getting later than we'd like, here. | |
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20/20 and box beans
