# Farm crops that make lots of/good honey.



## lowhog (May 5, 2015)

From what I understand soybeans are good. I have trefoil, sweet clover and alsike clover on our farm for the bees. Red clover they can't get to. Plenty of milk weed and goldenrod on our crp.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Wouldn't hay be the worst for bees? Herbs are good but I not sure you want to plant a field of them.


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## Joe Hillmann (Apr 27, 2015)

Acebird said:


> Wouldn't hay be the worst for bees? Herbs are good but I not sure you want to plant a field of them.


An actual planted and well maintained hay field probably wouldn't be any good for bees. The fields I am thinking of have all sorts of flowers blooming in them all summer long. If they were only cut once every other year they would probably turn back into wildflower prairie.


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## warrior (Nov 21, 2005)

Soybean is hit or miss. I've got two forty acre plus fields within a half a mile and never seen a drop of honey off it. Yet I hear folks in the Mississippi delta do well on beans. Beans are funny as it can be seasonal (rainfall), location (soil types) or type (cultivar) or a combination that determines whether nectar will be produced.

Hay, cut or uncut, is usually grass or mostly grass which produces nothing but pollen which is little used by bees. Only alfalfa and clover are regularly grown for hay that provides nectar but the best time to cut for hay is while the plants are young and tender (highest nutrional content and palatibility) and before bloom or seed set.

Field peas (black eye, crowder, etc.) Have extra floral nectaries and in some areas and seasons (see above) produce a surplus.

All cole crops (brassicas) supply abundant pollen and nectar if allowed to bloom and set seed. Since all but the odd rat tail radish are grown as leafy greens it is rare for them to go to bloom in common agriculture. If you have seed producers then you're in luck. I hear cabbage honey tastes like cotton candy.
The only other brassica commonly grown for seed is canola or oilseed rape. All brassica honeys are prone to rapid crystallization. 

Not the Midwest but cotton produces well in the right areas.


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## tech.35058 (Jul 29, 2013)

Joe Hillmann said:


> What common farm crops that grow in the Midwest and can be mechanically harvested in the first year (no tree crops and no crops that require more than a year to mature) are good for honey production?
> 
> So far the only ones I know of are canola, buckwheat, hay fields that don't get harvested until late in the season, and sunflowers.
> 
> ...


I guess it depends on whether you are planting a crop to manage for nectar , or wanting to place your hives to benefit from other peoples crops.
Last year, I moved hives from out yards back to the "home" yard so they could take advantage of the neighbor's local soybeans ( tiny blue blossoms).
I never saw a bee on a blossom, hive weights dropped until the goldenrod kicked in.

I planted small patches of buckwheat. the bees ignored it until I got some of the "mancan" variety, which the bees love. If I tried I think I could keep it blooming until aloween here. ( 2016, I will try, if I don't have something better going! 
I have planted Alsike clover, just overseeding existing grass fall of 2014, got no findable plants in the jungle that is my field.
Halloween, I actually tilled a small plot & planted a mix of winter peas, forage oats, & "medium red" & alsike clover, the intention was to plant the whole field & manage for nectar & square bale hay, but had tractor problems, so ended up just overseeding again. Where I tilled it, it looked good, but now appears to be mostly grass of some sort and tiny none blooming pea plants.
I am contemplating trying to burn it off, since I cant seem to till it, but I would like to have the tractor running to plow fire breaks. If the tractor would run, I would skip the burning & just disk cut it. 
I read some where that Alfalfa would support a hive per acre, if not cut before the bloom, but Alfalfa is not really a local crop in my neighbor hood.
Good Luck ... CE


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## capitalbeesupply (Jul 28, 2013)

Joe Hillmann said:


> What common farm crops that grow in the Midwest and can be mechanically harvested in the first year (no tree crops and no crops that require more than a year to mature) are good for honey production?
> 
> So far the only ones I know of are canola, buckwheat, hay fields that don't get harvested until late in the season, and sunflowers.
> 
> ...


Yes all these are possible in Wisconsin, but there is another side of this...just because it is a crop that can be mechanically harvested doesn't mean there is a commercial market for the crop. For example, buckwheat, canola and sunflower. We grow black oil sunflower as bee forage but there isn't an elevator or oil processor within reasonable distance to sell it to...so we had to develop our own market for it and dry, clean, bag and sell as bird food. Another farmer in the area grows some as well but he presses it for the oil and makes bio-diesel. Canola is a similar issue here. Alfalfa is typically cut around 10% bloom, but once in a while some let it go although if you let it go you'll have an early summer bloom and a poorer late summer bloom than if it was cut. Buckwheat can be good forage in fall to fill in during dearths if you time the planting right. The closest mill here that would take it to make flour is too far away, so when we grow it we end up letting it go for the summer and till it back in late fall. With regard to soybeans, which we also grow, I think what most people get for honey flow from them is actually honeydew when aphids infest them every three or four years....although it could be that the variety we plant just doesn't give much nectar. On clovers, yellow and white blossom sweet clovers make good forage for bees but are biennial bloomers (and they are technically considered invasive in Wisconsin even though they were planted as livestock forage). The short white clovers (referred to as Dutch or Ladino) are good as are the red clovers. Not sure about green beans.....

Rich
Capital Bee Supply
Madison, WI


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## Joe Hillmann (Apr 27, 2015)

tech.35058 said:


> I guess it depends on whether you are planting a crop to manage for nectar , or wanting to place your hives to benefit from other peoples crops.


The farm where I plan to keep my bees has 30-40 acres of field that the year after next will probably be rented out as crop land and the owner would rent it at a discount if whoever rented it planted crops that help the bees so I am trying to come up with a list of crops that I would like to see planted. The problem with a lot of crops is they harvest them before they bloom.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

3 yrs of having bees on soybeans, 1 yr worked them no surplus nectar , 1 yr was a bust didn't even bother with them , and 1 yr they produces sweet loads of honey, very similar to clover honey. Need 3 things ( at least in my area) 

1 proper variety as not all varieties reportedly produce, (don't ask which ones, I'm not sure there are about a million different varieties.) 
2 Early heavy moisture
3 Hot dry summer

miss any of the 3 and it's a bust for me


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## Bee Nut (Oct 10, 2015)

capitalbeesupply said:


> The short white clovers (referred to as Dutch or Ladino) are good as are the red clovers. Not sure about green beans.....
> 
> Rich
> Capital Bee Supply
> Madison, WI


Rich, I believe you mean Crimson clover. Red clover nectar is inaccessible by a bee's proboscis and isn't actually red. The blooms on red clover are pink, whereas Crimson clover blooms are red. Easy to get the two confused.


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## cheryl1 (Mar 7, 2015)

Anybody know about turnips? Some farmers here are planting them after harvest for a winter cover crop. They stink something awful but I'm wondering if they would make fall honey. 

Just a thought-but perhaps the reason you need a wet spring for a soybean honey crop is because the farmers plant a shorter season variety due to not being able to either get into the fields early or are replanting a washed out crop.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

They sure do love turnips...


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## Geno (Apr 23, 2015)

Borage, Ladino, White and Yellow Sweet Clover managed for pollen and nectar. Not mowing more than three times per year, preferred end of June, July and August. Mow no lower than 10 inches. Works great in Southern Illinois.


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## zhiv9 (Aug 3, 2012)

When is almost as important as what. Having something to fill in between the main flow and fall flow is best. Early August blooms of buckwheat or second cut alfalfa are heavily worked, when the same crops are ignored during the main flow in late June and early July.


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## capitalbeesupply (Jul 28, 2013)

Bee Nut said:


> Rich, I believe you mean Crimson clover. Red clover nectar is inaccessible by a bee's proboscis and isn't actually red. The blooms on red clover are pink, whereas Crimson clover blooms are red. Easy to get the two confused.


Yes you are correct...all these clovers get confusing....


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

warrior said:


> If you have seed producers then you're in luck. I hear cabbage honey tastes like cotton candy.
> .


I have never seen flowers on cabbage or brussel sprouts. Is that a two year plant that seeds the second year?


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## warrior (Nov 21, 2005)

Yes, brassicas are biennials. 
Actually you can get seed in one year but they need to go through a warm cold warm to cycle. All of my fall planted greens get planted in Aug - Sept. I eat on them all winter and by May they've all bolted. This year's warm winter has my garden confused. I've got chinese napa cabbage and mustard in bloom since January.
It's rare for me to have a heading cabbage bolt since I either eat it or the heat comes on to fast but when they do the head will bust open to send up a stalk of blooms.


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## warrior (Nov 21, 2005)

Never had brussel sprouts go to seed on me. I'm still trying to master the best way to grow them.


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## Sunday Farmer (Nov 13, 2013)

cheryl1 said:


> Anybody know about turnips? Some farmers here are planting them after harvest for a winter cover crop.



Turnips and mustards are awesome. The overwintered turnips in the spring produce a nice spring flow. I'm lucky enough in NC to have several yards where wild mustard blooms prolifically. One is next to a yard that is usually a nuc yard. What a treat. New nucs dropped, and instead of feeding them the diverse fields and road edges take care of them. 

They are a great cover crop (and inexpensive) aerate the soil, and easy to till back in. Now if we can just stop turning southern pastures into a monoculture of fescue 31........


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

warrior said:


> It's rare for me to have a heading cabbage bolt since I either eat it or the heat comes on to fast but when they do the head will bust open to send up a stalk of blooms.


Last summer was a hot dry one which raise havoc on the cold weather crops. I pulled the last brussel sprout plant from the frozen ground last weekend to give to the chickens. The cabbage did bust open but I didn't see any stalks. We got a lot of multiple heads from one plant last year.


> I'm still trying to master the best way to grow them.


I would think you could start them in August, water the heck out of them and have awesome heads all winter long. They will withstand very cold weather and frozen ground.


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## cheryl1 (Mar 7, 2015)

Do turnips produce a fall flow? They get plowed under first thing in the spring, as soon as the farmer can get into the fields


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Joe Hillmann said:


> What common farm crops that grow in the Midwest and can be mechanically harvested in the first year (no tree crops and no crops that require more than a year to mature) are good for honey production?
> 
> So far the only ones I know of are canola, buckwheat, hay fields that don't get harvested until late in the season, and sunflowers.
> 
> ...


Are you going to plant and harvest this crop yourself? Are you a farmer? Do you have any bees? How long?


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## RichardsonTX (Jul 3, 2011)

I thought Alfalfa was a big crop for honey production in the north. How is that the case if they are cutting it before it blooms?


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

RichardsonTX said:


> How is that the case if they are cutting it before it blooms?


I think you have to make a decision whether you are growing it for bees and green manure or animal feed.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

RichardsonTX said:


> I thought Alfalfa was a big crop for honey production in the north. How is that the case if they are cutting it before it blooms?


_Some_ alfalfa is grown for seed production. If the 'crop' is alfalfa seeds, then the plants need to mature past bloom to produce seeds. Those blooms are available for nectar collection.

If the 'crop' is simply alfalfa for 'animal feed', then it may not be appropriate to let the alfalfa bloom before harvesting the crop, and nectar production may be minimal. 

http://www.forages.psu.edu/topics/hay_silage/management/alfalfa.html
- and -
http://pubstorage.sdstate.edu/AgBio_Publications/articles/EC733.pdf


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## RichardsonTX (Jul 3, 2011)

Acebird said:


> I think you have to make a decision whether you are growing it for bees and green manure or animal feed.


I don't grow alfalfa or have any bees near it so I'm not making any decisions about why I'm growing it. To clarify my question, I was wondering how beekeepers make a honey crop off of alfalfa when it's cut before it blooms. The "they" part of my question was referring to the farmers/ranchers who are growing the alfalfa. 

I've never heard of much alfalfa being grown here in Texas but I know there is some being grown. What I've read about it is that it's cut by the growers before it blooms. But, I read in books like "The Hive and the Honey" that alfalfa is a big source of nectar in the north. 

Clover is also mentioned as a big source of nectar in the north. How's that?

Here in Texas I try to find places where as much of land around me is not being used much so that I can benefit from wild flowers.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Alfalfa is a deep rooted plant that will do well in arid country. My experience (and I've had a lot of it) is that you get alfalfa honey when the plant is moderately drought stressed and heat forces it into an early bloom when there isn't enough tonnage to be worth the time cutting and baling. This scenario often plays on the second or third cuttings and usually not on the lush growthy first cutting.


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## zhiv9 (Aug 3, 2012)

RichardsonTX said:


> I thought Alfalfa was a big crop for honey production in the north. How is that the case if they are cutting it before it blooms?


They usually get the first cut off at 10% bloom, but for second or third cut they often get busy or it rains and its too wet to cut it and they have to leave it longer. It doesn't take too many days for the bees to capitalize.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

RichardsonTX said:


> Clover is also mentioned as a big source of nectar in the north. How's that?


Many plants are not intentionally grown. Nature does it and bees and the birds help propagate it. It is amazing how adaptive nature is. Even though you mow your lawn the plant will create shorter stems that don't get cut off. Dandelions do the same thing. Everything struggles to survive.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Seed alfalfa crops are a gravy train


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Ian said:


> Seed alfalfa crops are a gravy train


If you don't get sprayed.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

jim lyon said:


> If you don't get sprayed.


no if, when 

faster thinner stronger ...


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## lowhog (May 5, 2015)

Got sprayed last year on soybeans. Minnesota ag will not take dead bees for testing. Makes me think they are on the farmers side and don't care about bees. If it ever happens again I'll send the dead bees direct to the EPA.


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## Joe Hillmann (Apr 27, 2015)

sqkcrk said:


> Are you going to plant and harvest this crop yourself? Are you a farmer? Do you have any bees? How long?


I wouldn't be touching the crop unless it was something that can be bailed. Even then I wouldn't want to. It would be the person renting the crop land. But they would/may get a discount on the rent if the plant something that produces a nice honey crop verses if they plant corn.

As of right now I only have three hives and have two nucs coming this spring. Plus I have a friend with two hives who doesn't want to expand who will let me take splits from his in exchange for letting him take splits from mine if his don't survive through the winter. I hope to be up to 8-10 hives by the end of summer. 

Within 3 years I hope to be up to 50 hives which is the point here in Wisconsin where tax breaks on the property apply for sure.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

So why are you looking into crops that produce lots of good honey? So you can move your bees close to those crops?


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## Joe Hillmann (Apr 27, 2015)

sqkcrk said:


> So why are you looking into crops that produce lots of good honey? So you can move your bees close to those crops?


Hopefully I can explain it so it is understandable.

Right now the owner of the property uses the tillable land for hay production and the rest for pasture. And he goes to what many would call extreme measures to keep the land looking nice. He is getting to the age that he is thinking of getting rid of the cows but then his property taxes will be about 8 time higher than they are now because it would no longer be farm.

So he would then want to rent it out but he is concerned that if he rents it for someone to keep cattle there they would destroy the woods(which cows do). But if there were 50 hives out there then the woods woulds would be still taxed as pasture. Then he could just rent out the tillable land to keep the taxes on the entire farm low and still getting the rent money fro the tillable land.

From helping/learning from a nearby beekeeper my long term goal was to get up to about 40 production hives so this would will speed up my plan by several years.

If this agreement works out the benefit I get is a place to put my hives and a nearby crop that helps the bees. The owner gets lower property taxes without having to rent out the woods for pasture. And the renter would get cheaper rent if they are willing to plant a crop that helps me.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Crop land is typically at odds with bees because who ever rents the land will want to get something off from it. Other than peas and beans and buckwheat, I can't think of any other crop where there would be a yield crop and a honey crop. A beekeeper has to be careful with crops as a honey yield unless you are moving hives. A single crop can end up starving bees if there is nothing else throughout the season.


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## billfosburgh (May 8, 2015)

are you sure they are turnips? here in my part of In. they are planting radishes as a winter cover crop. 1000`s of acres this rear. the crop dusters are seeding them from the air


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## cheryl1 (Mar 7, 2015)

Yes they are turnips. He leaves them to rot in the fields and it smells absolutely awful. I will never allow that in the fields around my house. At one point I knew what variety turnip they are but I've forgotten now. I've slept since then


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

Acebird said:


> Crop land is typically at odds with bees because who ever rents the land will want to get something off from it. Other than peas and beans and buckwheat, I can't think of any other crop where there would be a yield crop and a honey crop. A beekeeper has to be careful with crops as a honey yield unless you are moving hives. A single crop can end up starving bees if there is nothing else throughout the season.


If you would only post about things you actually know something about you would post maybe once a month. What you said about farm crops is 2/3s totally wrong. No one gets any meaningful honey from peas. No one in Wisc where the OP lives gets any honey at all from soy beans. In Wisc if you want a honey crop plant hay and only take at most two harvests from it or better one harvest for hay and combine the second for seed. Be aware that hay means different things in different parts of the country. In the east any old weed field is called hay as horses will eat just about anything including their wooden stalls. West of the Ohio border is where real hay is grown. Either sweet clover or alfalfa. Both are great honey producers. If you plant both yellow and white sweet clover in different fields you extend the season as yellow is about done when white kicks in. Another good choice would be sun flowers. Any of those will beat the best field of native weeds hollow. For a good spring crop get next to a farmer planting GMO round up ready corn repeatedly in the same fields. Such fields get taken over by flowers like yellow rocket that yield great until the farmer sprays and by then you do not need them anyhow.

The OP talked about part of the land being in woods. If those woods have a decent stand of maples, tulips, locust and basswood there should be a steady flow from late March to early July from the trees. In a good year such a mix of trees can easy put two or three supers on a hive unless you have too many hives for the number of trees.

If you try buckwheat be aware you must plant the right kind of buckwheat or you will get no honey at all from it even if you have 1000 acres.


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## lowhog (May 5, 2015)

We have many different clovers on our farm and the longest lasting bloom was Alsike clover and the bees love it. What I was told Alsike clover can harm horses if they eat it green. Our honey bees also hit Trefoil very hard which is a very long lasting bloom and is another major honey source. Our bees very seldom touched sunflowers but hit our cucumbers hard. Alsike clover can produce up to 500 pounds of honey per acre. More than doubling other clovers.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

lowhog said:


> Our bees very seldom touched sunflowers


Bees go after the pollen in the fall and then the squirrels eat the seeds. Squirrels are amazing. They can hang from a bird feeder for 20 minutes on one toe nail. How long do you think you could last hanging from one finger. I am sure I can't do it.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

One interesting book hitting on this topic is Kim Flottum's Better Beekeeping. There are perhaps 3 other titles about bee plants. Check Larry Connor's Wicwas Press, www.wicwas.com

It would make sense to plant overlapping nectar / pollen crops that paid even a small profit if there are a few that pay well. This will not entirely eliminate robbing season every year, but it should really help. Mr. Flottum's book even suggests several rental / lease agreement terms, and expounds the need to hash out all contract negotiations on a good boilerplate.

Do check to see if borage works in your area. It may be the bees' very favorite flower. I get excellent results from rosemary on dry years. I try to never miss poison oak or other sumacs, as bees in our area with 20 lbs of sumac honey seem to almost always survive winter. Temper that last statement with IPM mite management. Goldenrod is the Fall favorite in many states, you may try to introduce it near the forested area. Make sure it is the right kind of goldenrod - many species don't yield much.

Good luck. Excellent thread, BTW.


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## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

In my area they grow alfalfa exclusively for animal feed so it gets cut late bud / early bloom. However in July some farmers divert water from the alfalfa and as someone else in the thread mentioned, when you get the drought stressed alfalfa that starts blooming you can get a really decent flow from it. I've seen a dought stressed field bloom when it was 6-7" tall.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Joe Hillmann said:


> The farm where I plan to keep my bees has 30-40 acres of field that the year after next will probably be rented out as crop land and the owner would rent it at a discount if whoever rented it planted crops that help the bees so I am trying to come up with a list of crops that I would like to see planted. The problem with a lot of crops is they harvest them before they bloom.


It might be worth a trip for the landowner to go to the local FSA office and see if this piece of land qualifies for the crp (conservation reserve) program. In essence the federal government rents this land for a given amount of time and while it is primarily some sort of grass they give you a number of different bee friendly options can be mixed in with it. The program is designed to take marginally productive and/or highly erodible ground out of annual row crop production. To qualify the ground must have a cropping history. The landowner retains control of the ground and must control noxious weeds. One downside is they don't want a regularly used vehicle track on the planting.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

jim lyon said:


> One downside is they don't want a regularly used vehicle track on the planting.


I use to fly model airplanes and our club rented land form someone who was getting a kick back from the government for not planting anything (but it had to remain tillable). It was an excellent flying field because the planes didn't get damaged too much during a dead stick (engine failure) except when the golden rod got to be 7 ft tall. Then it was like landing in a field of tomato stakes. Except for the airstrip itself which obviously was mowed this was a bee friendly field. So basically you could plant nothing. I am not sure but I think something had to be planted like every 5 years to continue as a crop field.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

I wouldn't use the term "kickback" in describing a CRP signup. I own a hundred acres of CRP ground which I committed for 10 years. I didn't do it for the dollars as I could undoubtedly have done better cash renting it. The bees do well off of the alfalfa that's interspersed but that's kind of hard to quantify, mostly I just enjoy seeing and hearing the variety of wildlife that can be seen and heard. On a side note, I have a small wetter area that has quite a few Canadian thistles that has defied yearly attempts to control. Once while spraying them I spotted some small birds nesting in them and it dawned on me that they surely do it for protection from predators. I kind of lost some enthusiasm for my eradication efforts, though I'm sure some nearby landowners might not agree.


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## lowhog (May 5, 2015)

Yellow finch will get most of the thistle seed before it blows over to your neighbors. I quit spraying my thistle last year.


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## Ddawg (Feb 17, 2012)

warrior said:


> Soybean is hit or miss. I've got two forty acre plus fields within a half a mile and never seen a drop of honey off it. Yet I hear folks in the Mississippi delta do well on beans. Beans are funny as it can be seasonal (rainfall), location (soil types) or type (cultivar) or a combination that determines whether nectar will be produced.


It's been all miss for me.. We have over a hundred acres with a lot in soybean and I have never seen a drop of honey from it.


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## Joe Hillmann (Apr 27, 2015)

Since most crops depend on the specific variety or weather conditions and then only during a short time period, I am starting to think that keeping the fields what they are, wild hay with lots of flowers and a 15 acres of trefoil, would be the best. The trefoil blooms for over two months and the hay fields have some type of flower in them most of the summer.


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## Tim KS (May 9, 2014)

jim lyon said:


> *I wouldn't use the term "kickback" in describing a CRP signup.* I own a hundred acres of CRP ground which I committed for 10 years. I didn't do it for the dollars as I could undoubtedly have done better cash renting it. The bees do well off of the alfalfa that's interspersed but that's kind of hard to quantify, mostly I just enjoy seeing and hearing the variety of wildlife that can be seen and heard. On a side note, I have a small wetter area that has quite a few Canadian thistles that has defied yearly attempts to control. Once while spraying them I spotted some small birds nesting in them and it dawned on me that they surely do it for protection from predators. I kind of lost some enthusiasm for my eradication efforts, though I'm sure some nearby landowners might not agree.


I have to agree here. Although I'm no longer engaged in full-time farming, the words 'kick back', when referring to gov. program payments, still brings about somewhat negative thoughts & feelings. :no: :shhhh:


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Nygers!


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Tim KS said:


> I have to agree here. Although I'm no longer engaged in full-time farming, the words 'kick back', when referring to gov. program payments, still brings about somewhat negative thoughts & feelings. :no: :shhhh:


Perhaps someone doesn't know what a kickback is. "a payment made to someone who has facilitated a transaction or appointment, especially illicitly."


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Yellow finch will get most of the thistle seed before it blows over to your neighbors. I quit spraying my thistle last year.

I get threatening letters from the Weed Board if I don't kill the thistles...


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## lowhog (May 5, 2015)

Michael Bush said:


> >Yellow finch will get most of the thistle seed before it blows over to your neighbors. I quit spraying my thistle last year.
> 
> I get threatening letters from the Weed Board if I don't kill the thistles...


 Michael the township can't see mine from the gravel. I get a letter every year telling me to keep weeds under control. Now I mow it with the brush hog after the bees are finished with it.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Michael Bush said:


> >Yellow finch will get most of the thistle seed before it blows over to your neighbors. I quit spraying my thistle last year.
> 
> I get threatening letters from the Weed Board if I don't kill the thistles...


Me too also an occasional visit from the local county guy in charge of spraying roadsides and I feel I'm pretty proactive in weed control. I'm not a fan of Canadian thistles and they are nearly impossible to control in low wet ground. I swear they can pop up above the grass, bloom and go to seed all the same day.


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## lowhog (May 5, 2015)

The thistle seed can stay dormant in the ground for many many years. We planted pine trees a few year back and everywhere I trenched the thistle popped.


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## zhiv9 (Aug 3, 2012)

Michael Bush said:


> I get threatening letters from the Weed Board if I don't kill the thistles...


Organic farmers in this area choke it out with one or more dense buckwheat plantings. Buckwheat pretty much out competes anything.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I swear they can pop up above the grass, bloom and go to seed all the same day.

It seems the more you dig them up or otherwise attack them the faster and the more determined they are to bloom...


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## lowhog (May 5, 2015)

In the past when I sprayed I had very good luck with Curtail. Within 24 hours they are dead.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

jim lyon said:


> I'm not a fan of Canadian thistles and they are nearly impossible to control in low wet ground. .


One end of our garden is wet (next to the bee yard) and it is covered with these thistles. I have resorted to mowing these every two weeks to keep them from flowering. In the spring the garden is peppered with young plants that I till and hoe for about three rounds before they give up.

Buckwheat will not choke out phragmites. Nothing will choke out phragmites.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Michael Bush said:


> It seems the more you dig them up or otherwise attack them the faster and the more determined they are to bloom...


For an established root system the organic solution is to cut it off at the base not pull them up. Pulling them up will break off the roots and create more plants from what is left.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>For an established root system the organic solution is to cut it off at the base not pull them up.

Then they just bloom close to the ground...


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

You have to continue to do it until the root system gives up from lack of nourishment. If you pull the plant up the root will break and that multiplies the number of plants. I have decided to mow and eventually grass will choke it out.

I will try to find that website again and edit this post.

http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/plant-problems/weeds/canada-thistle-control.htm


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>You have to continue to do it until the root system gives up from lack of nourishment.

I don't have time to cut off every thistle on 18 acres over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

https://www.google.com/search?q=box...=TffWVpC3FYX-jgTP3JHwAQ#imgrc=4Oh_5pvlw5rGcM:
No tractor with 18 acres?

Do it three times and plant something.


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