Combines Harvesting buckwheat

[bean_grower]

Don't worry about next years harvest. I was always told that buckwheat was the last crop a farmer raises before the auction.

 

[Silver_Shoes]

We had a guy here that was dealing in buckwheat several years ago, it always ran through the cleaner before being shipped no matter the combine. I have no idea on advice to give ya with it.

 

[NDDan]

Had a guy raising some buckwheat many years ago but don't recall him having trouble cleaning. If you couldn't correct with all the normal settings you may have to prevent making the short straw. Are the corners well rounded off of helical barsIJ Are helical bars shimmed by double stacking or shimming with 1_4" flat ironIJ Do you have green stem helical kit installed or the channel iron helical kitIJ Do you have reverse cylinder bars installed in both machinesIJ Swathing may help if material is to green to flow well with helical setup you have. Even if material is dry you need to flow material with minimum breakup to make cleaning easy. Sorry I don't know of any special tricks for buckwheat. Maybe someone else has been there and can help. Good luck

 

[tj]

What model years are your combines, and what style concaves do you have in themIJ If they're older machines and the concaves are the older models with welded in mesh as opposed to round wires, the depth of the crossbars is too great, and won't let the buckwheat straw roll across. This holds back your ground speed and doesn't let the machine load properly -- pretty close to a whitecapping condition you might see in other crops. Hope this makes sense.

 

[John]

He is growing buckwheat as part of an organic rotation. The Birkett Mills, Penn Yan, NY purchase alot of buckwheat.

 

[John]

Thanks for the input. John

 

[terrybee]

Swathing is the way to go! A friend of mine direct cut his buckwheat with a JD 6620 and it was a nightmare (a lot of plugging)! I was lucky enough to pick up an old JD700 swather (I call it my NASCAR swather, it only turns left) and the Sund pickup on my K2 worked really well. I let it dry for 11 days and it was down to about 17% moisture (next year 2 weeks),the direct cut was over 24%. One problem with buckwheat is that it is a fairly high volume_low weight seed and with too much air you can blow a lot of it out over the chafer. I managed to get a really clean sample but my losses were too high, so I backed the air down to almost 0 and wound up with some stems, but did cut down on the loss. Swathing works well with buckwheat because it is an indeterminate crop that stays green even after the vast majority (75-80%) of the seeds are ripe so you will always be fighting tough green stems and leaves with direct cutting. The other problem is that the seed will reabsorb the water from the green stems and you can wind up with problems of the grain heating and spoiling in a few days (you can also run into some real handling problems). The stems in the swathed buckwheat are dry and are cleaned out on delivery to the mill, and a little dockage is better than harvesting loss. Good luck next year.

 

[terrybee]

Swathing is the way to go! A friend of mine direct cut his buckwheat with a JD 6620 and it was a nightmare (a lot of plugging)! I was lucky enough to pick up an old JD700 swather (I call it my NASCAR swather, it only turns left) and the Sund pickup on my K2 worked really well. I let it dry for 11 days and it was down to about 17% moisture (next year 2 weeks),the direct cut was over 24%. One problem with buckwheat is that it is a fairly high volume_low weight seed and with too much air you can blow a lot of it out over the chafer. I managed to get a really clean sample but my losses were too high, so I backed the air down to almost 0 and wound up with some stems, but did cut down on the loss. Swathing works well with buckwheat because it is an indeterminate crop that stays green even after the vast majority (75-80%) of the seeds are ripe so you will always be fighting tough green stems and leaves with direct cutting. The other problem is that the seed will reabsorb the water from the green stems and you can wind up with problems of the grain heating and spoiling in a few days (you can also run into some real handling problems). The stems in the swathed buckwheat are dry and are cleaned out on delivery to the mill, and a little dockage is better than harvesting loss. Good luck next year.

 

[terrybee]

I don't know HOW MANY times I have heard that one (pardon me while I catch my breath from laughing ! Ah! Buckwheat aint so bad especially if you are as lazy as I am. I planted on June 26 and cut on September 8 and combined 11 days later. None of this messin around in the April mud. Input costs, no-till, 1 pass with roundup (generic of course) $5, fertilizer $0, lime $0, insecticide $0, fungicide $0, seed (44 lb) $14. Yield 24 bu acre (hope to do better next year) at $6_bu. $144. Not too bad if you have a few acres laying around not doing anything, besides the turkeys and deer like it. I am STIll waiting for my soybean fields to dry out (or freeze) enough to get onto them. Buckwheat looks better all the time.

 

[bean_grower]

You must be up here in Western New York also. I'm actually thinking about it for next year because of the fretilizer cost and that it works well planted late. You must swath it and then pick it up with the combine later. How does that work if the swaths get rained onIJ Will they dry outIJ I have never had anything to do with buckwheat so it would be a whole new deal to me. For the record the old timers that told me about buckwheat being the end of the line said they lost there crop when the shocks got snowed on. That should tell you how long it's been since buckwheat was grown around this neighborhood.