paul the original - 7/21/2020 22:00

I was curious if the beans actually add any N to the corn. As we have that ‘nitrogen from soybean stubble yes it does no it doesnt’ discussion on this site every spring. I was thinking the growing soybeans would be using whatever they produce for now, but just curious if something is being provided to the current corn crop or not. I would think that nice of a forage soybean would be tying up a fair amount of P, K, and other nutrients and compete with the corn for fertility in some ways.

I believe there is supposed to be some extra corn yield as each plant gets more sunshine in the wider rows?

Biomass would be provided by a row of corn where the beans are, so that seems a non issue either way.

Likewise, the row of corn would provide weed shading as well, so a non issue.

Biodiversity is an interesting thing. My corn fields have little difficulty finding biodiversity in the weeds that show up. Sigh.

What do these fields get rotated to in future years, you really wouldn’t want to plant corn or beans next year, you would be building up both plant pests as the field wouldn’t ever be rotated out of those crops.


Been watching the couple of you doing this the past few years, it is very interesting.

But I am puzzled by what is really gained.

I don’t want to knock it, it’s different and interesting. I don’t want to just be tossing cold water on anything different then what I do.

Really enjoy the pictures and the effort to share over the years!

Paul