Planted a field last tuesday with a no till. good news is I've got things sprouting and it looks great, but bad news is, I may have got a little heavy handed with them in some spots.
Do you guys do anything to thin them out? or should I just let it ride and get what I can? I'm learning on my no till and while it's great and I'm pumped with how they're growing, I know when bulbs come around, they'll be a little tight.
That is one reason I don't drill them. They surface broadcast so easily and do better overall in a mix. I won't plant PTT at more than 5 lbs/ac and drop it to 2 lbs/ac in a mix. We tend to error on the "more is better side" which is not often true. Even with fertilizer, there are only so many resources to go around. Mixing crops means everybody is not after the exact same resources. Fewer plants per sqft doesn't necessarily mean less for deer.
You may have a better drill than I do. I do like the seed metering system on my Kasco because it will plant about anything, but you do have to calibrate it each time. Slight adjustments in settings can make a big different in seed output. So, I set it, calibrate it, reset it as needed to get my rate, recheck the output, then go plant and don't touch the settings.
I started by keeping a cheat sheet of settings for each crop/mix each year but found that when I set it at the "same setting" next season, it would put out a different amount of seed.
When I first got the no-till drill, I wanted to use it for everything. In time, I found out that just doesn't make sense for me. I'm better off surface broadcasting and cultipacking my fall mixes with seed that germinate well when surface broadcast and saving the drill for more traditional row crops like beans and corn in the spring. Before I got an independent cultipacker, I would sometimes use the drill in the fall for my mix with PTT in it. The trick that worked the best for me was to disconnect the seed tubes from the planting shoes. They would just bounce around and drops the seed on the surface anywhere and the cultipacker on the drill would press it in. (you may have individual closers on your drill rather than a cultipacker, so this may not work for you). That worked fine and the mix looked more like it was broadcast than drilled. When you drill, all the seeds are in rows. This works well for row crops but not as well for my mixes.
Sorry, I don't have any good thoughts on thinning. Maybe a cultivator run perpendicular to the rows?
Thanks,
Jack
