MadMadHoosier
5 year old buck +
After reading WildThings post about calibrating his drill for various mixtures, I wonder if any of you are planting with a Genesis 5 no-till drill?
I've had mine about a year and a half and have only played around with it a little bit so far. Last year I did not get my fields prepped for planting, but did help a friend plant a 1/4 acre plot he sprayed a week ahead of time. We did not do a proper calibration or depth test, but did look up some drill settings for the seeds we planted. In hindsight I think we used much more seed per acre than was necessary, but he said it turned out great.
This year I was again behind the curve. Primarily because my farm is in Kentucky and I live in Florida and am only there a limited amount of time before hunting season. I'd love to find a way to plant successfully over 1 or 2 (few day) visits, without much or any spraying. With that in mind I tried a little experiment last week. A few fields were bush hogged during a visit late last month. Then last week I further mowed some of them with a new flail mower. Those plots were now fairly short with a decent layer of dry mulched material on top and I planted a mix of radish and turnips with a little clover thrown in because I had it laying around. Again, kind of guesstimated the calibration settings and stuck it in the ground.
Then tried to flail some un-bush hogged fields to do the same. Those fields were just too thick with growth to get a good flail mowing, without spinning the belts on the flail mower. Even after bush hogging, the remaining "green" thatch would bog the flail quite often. So I ran to the local farm supply store and picked up some spray he recommended for food plots. The instructions recommended waiting 7 days after spraying for most planting, but some seeds could be planted after 24-hours. With only one day left in Kentucky, I sprayed the freshly bush hogged fields and planted them the next day and hoped for the best.
Does anyone here have the experience or knowledge to predict what results I might see? Or recommendations on how to do better, (with limited visits), if this years stuff needs to be replanted, or for next years effort? It will probably be another 3 weeks or so before I get back up there, and then we have a big muzzleloader hunt in Mid October.
If I have good deer on the cameras (none to tempt me so far this year) I'll do some archery, but usually am trying to time things for the annual muzzleloader group we host, and modern gun season in mid-November.
Thanks in advance, Steve.
I've had mine about a year and a half and have only played around with it a little bit so far. Last year I did not get my fields prepped for planting, but did help a friend plant a 1/4 acre plot he sprayed a week ahead of time. We did not do a proper calibration or depth test, but did look up some drill settings for the seeds we planted. In hindsight I think we used much more seed per acre than was necessary, but he said it turned out great.
This year I was again behind the curve. Primarily because my farm is in Kentucky and I live in Florida and am only there a limited amount of time before hunting season. I'd love to find a way to plant successfully over 1 or 2 (few day) visits, without much or any spraying. With that in mind I tried a little experiment last week. A few fields were bush hogged during a visit late last month. Then last week I further mowed some of them with a new flail mower. Those plots were now fairly short with a decent layer of dry mulched material on top and I planted a mix of radish and turnips with a little clover thrown in because I had it laying around. Again, kind of guesstimated the calibration settings and stuck it in the ground.
Then tried to flail some un-bush hogged fields to do the same. Those fields were just too thick with growth to get a good flail mowing, without spinning the belts on the flail mower. Even after bush hogging, the remaining "green" thatch would bog the flail quite often. So I ran to the local farm supply store and picked up some spray he recommended for food plots. The instructions recommended waiting 7 days after spraying for most planting, but some seeds could be planted after 24-hours. With only one day left in Kentucky, I sprayed the freshly bush hogged fields and planted them the next day and hoped for the best.
Does anyone here have the experience or knowledge to predict what results I might see? Or recommendations on how to do better, (with limited visits), if this years stuff needs to be replanted, or for next years effort? It will probably be another 3 weeks or so before I get back up there, and then we have a big muzzleloader hunt in Mid October.
If I have good deer on the cameras (none to tempt me so far this year) I'll do some archery, but usually am trying to time things for the annual muzzleloader group we host, and modern gun season in mid-November.
Thanks in advance, Steve.
