Dr. Cooper, you would be proud of your bean. Your semi dwarf Apex would rival anything I could have planted. My neighbor Ed was tickled with his first farm average of 70 bushels which is really good where these farms are located. They were Pioneer Y91's and really looked good and cut nicely. That was the first field planted around Martinsville and it paid off handsomely.
The Apex are not for the light of heart. Your field must be level and you really need a header like a draper head to scoop them all up. They put a ton of pods on, five branches in 7.5 inch rows for me. I didn't have the field level enough and left a few pods on the ground but boy did they yield. If you want any for seed, Scott Apple has 300 acres that are probably even better than mine. If you need contact information, let me know. I have his cell phone number and you should decide right now how many you want to plant and tell him so by next April they are in your barn and ready to plant.
They yielded near 60 bushels on the very poorest ground on this new farm. The good ground they will do 30-40 bushels better than that. You do have 100 bushel yield potential just like Dr. Cooper found 20 years ago. If you follow John Haggard's or Jeff Littrell's system they will really crank out the beans like did for Keith Schlapkohl and myself.
I will have a protein test from them in the next week. They are a little lower in protein and a little higher in oil content than other non GMO's. I am curious to see if I produced more than 35% protein, the cut-off area for most non GMO premiums. They can make up in yield what they lack in protein, at least they did for me this year.
Today I might get to plant a little of that new Ohio variety of soft red winter wheat named Lion I told you about. I will see if I can get it to roar like the seed field I inspected in May where my seed is coming from. He sold all the seed off 90 acres so it paid to get my order in early.
SabrEx and radish will help that variety or any variety make more and better quality wheat here.
Ed Winkle
I've enjoyed your posts about apex. Anything you wish you would have done differently? Its hard for me not to second guess decisions made during the season at harvest.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing
David Seck
Thank you David. My buyer liked my PH4389N so well I kind of wished I had planted the whole farm to them but then I would have missed out on the experience with Dr. Cooper this summer. For me, that was priceless.
ReplyDeleteThe dollars are going to be about the same so no, I don't think I would have done anything different.
I do think more foliar sprays like Keith does would have paid but from my tissue test my plants got about all the nutrient they could handle. A little more molybdenum and cobalt was needed which a foliar could have provided in very very small amounts.
Ed