no till bean field in late autumn

after i got home from campus errands took me past the no till soy bean field from last season so i stopped to have a look around...it is on sterling creek road and the area was obviously intended to be developed into housing or commercial enterprises before the great crash obviated the need for more town house condos or one more strip mall...it has been "available" for so long that nature has begun to reclaim the sidewalks...when the farmer harvested the field earlier this fall they left a carpet of mulch consisting of old corn cobs ( this was a corn field in 2012 ), corn stalks, and shredded bean stalks...it was a couple of inches thick at the time and now it has compacted down and frozen into the contours of the field...the upshot seems to be pretty effective erosion control and an organic mulch ( corn cobs have about six pounds of nitrogen per ton...it's not extreme fertilizer but that's not the point...we use too much anyway )...i am curious to see if a crop goes in here in the spring...if the monoculture rotation holds up it will be dense yellow number two and there will be planting in late may...unless some sort of walls sprout up instead.. if i didn't know better i'd say that the green stuff in the bottom photo is the ubiquitous purselane...an edible succulent i have planted elsewhere...more on whatever comes up later.