Broadcasting cover crop Mixes.

Freeborn

5 year old buck +
I plan on over-seeding a mix of seeds like WR, Clover and Radish on my corn and was wondering how to apply them with one pass. With the different seed sizes seems like it will be very difficult to get by with one pass.

How are others applying a mix of different size seeds and getting good coverage with the mix of seed sizes?
 
That’s the conclusion I keep coming to is two or more trips. I have limited acreage (2 acres soybeans and 2 acres Corn) and don’t want to run over my crops with an ATV to spread and maybe incorporate seed. This means I’ll be spreading and incorporating by hand which means 3 trips which I am trying to avoid.

Without taking out the annual crop its labor intensive to put down a cover crop unless you are willing to run over your annual crop. Unless I put the cover crop down very early in the annual crops growth cycle which I am hesitant to do as I want the annual crop to produce a good yield.

With my sandy soil and the inconsistency of rain I think some incorporation or packing is required which I figured on doing manually so getting the number of trips down would help. Any way I look at this it seems like it will be a very manual process.
 
Yep, there are no easy answers with the available methods to apply seed now. I need a broadcast spreader with three separate chambers that meters seed at independent rates and drops them to the bottom of a broadcast spreader. I doubt I will find that in a walk behind spreader so it looks like I'll be making several trips.
 
You could strap two solo's to your chest....and spin right and left hands. ;) (I'd pay a dollar to watch that circus....lol)

I've always kept my seeds separate when broadcasting. Usually the bigger seeds need more cover....so those get planted first and either dragged or packed. Then the smaller seeds followed by my cultipacker.

I use my Herd Seeder for the bigger seeds.....but prefer (measured seed weights and) a hand held whirly bird seeder for the smaller seeds. Now that I have all plot sizes measured......I calculate the weights of seed wanted...and only apply that rate to the plot. Seems we get a better result.....ESPECIALLY with brasica.
 
............Gotta say.....I am blessed with seeders. I have a Herd GT77 for my 4-wheeler. A Herd 3-point, PTO driven seeder for my Tractor. A Solo chest mounted seeder. 3 hand held whirly bird el-cheapo seeders. Seems the El-cheapo hand held's get used as much as any. I hate walking.....but these seeders are the most effective for the smaller seeds.
 
............Gotta say.....I am blessed with seeders. I have a Herd GT77 for my 4-wheeler. A Herd 3-point, PTO driven seeder for my Tractor. A Solo chest mounted seeder. 3 hand held whirly bird el-cheapo seeders. Seems the El-cheapo hand held's get used as much as any. I hate walking.....but these seeders are the most effective for the smaller seeds.
Hard to beat the hand held cheapos I have had one for a decade and can't loose or break the darn thing ? Great for small seeds !!
 
I do it all the time, clover, peas, oats, brassicas and rye. Throw it all together. You guys are just too stuck on those picture perfect plots, and those exact planting rates. When your growing a cocktail, it doesn't matter. Throw it all together and ration as you go. If there is 3 pounds of clover spreading in one section, you'll have maybe 5 in another, the deer don't care.

When I let my rye reseed itself it could possibly be seeded at 3000/ acre. That's as high as it will get, but 1500/ acre is common. Depending on what I've initially seeded at, or how many times I've let clover reseed itself. My red clover could be putting down 200 plus pounds/ acre.

With this management, you are always covered. When I'm interseeding oats and brassiacas into my plots, it doesn't matter how even I'm seeding it. I'm always going to have a lush green field. Especially when I'm just flattening something like rye. It's gonna take more time to germinate cause it's not really contacting the soil. That gives oats the chance it needs to dominate and give the full potiental of bio mass. While the rye stays short and tender like the experts say it needs to be. Best of both worlds....
 
Just having a variety of plants growing together is making things better, things like n credits besides. No one wants a monoculture anywhere else on their property, why do it in the food plots? Farmers grow mono cultures, food plots don't have too.
Mixing the small and large seeds, and making sure the hooper doesn't get too empty will help keep things even. If
there is always seed in the hooper, the weight of the seed on top, will help keep the seed at the bottom the way you mixed it. Just like when you spread fertilizer, eventually at the end, the finest stuff settles at the bottom. When it's full, everything is going over the top of that fine stuff, it just looks worse at the end.
 
I broadcast all my seeds when planting. In order to get even coverage I set my spreader on 1/2 recommended rate and go one direction [north/south] and then other direction [east/west] when all the seeds are same size. When broadcasting different seed sizes I broadcast the larger seeds in one direction [north/south] and the smaller seeds in the other direction [east/west] which gives me fairly even distribution of both seed sizes. Dipper I know the deer don't care but if you get a bunch of brassica seed in one area you tend to get stunted plants and turnip bulbs will be very small.
 
We mix our blends in a cement mixer from harbor freight....for about 5 min.....add inoculant if it was free or needed. If you truck the seed for miles...sure some vibration related separation with occur....briefly remix in a plastic tub by hand before spreading if need be.

Oats (10-15 lb) in the fall blend will stabilize different seed sizes, keep them mixed and aid in flow.

Buckwheat (4-10 lb) does the same in summer annual mixtures.

NOT NECESSARY to have the same diversity on every square foot of every ac.....Nature doesn't work that way!
 
I broadcast all my seeds when planting. In order to get even coverage I set my spreader on 1/2 recommended rate and go one direction [north/south] and then other direction [east/west] when all the seeds are same size. When broadcasting different seed sizes I broadcast the larger seeds in one direction [north/south] and the smaller seeds in the other direction [east/west] which gives me fairly even distribution of both seed sizes. Dipper I know the deer don't care but if you get a bunch of brassica seed in one area you tend to get stunted plants and turnip bulbs will be very small.
Sure, but if you mix brassica with other things I wouldn't ad much at all. Roughly pound/acre, 2 max. Your not going to see any clumping of brassicas when you planting a bushell of rye and oats/ acre, along with other things.
 
If there is too much concern over coverage, mix big seed and stage on one side of field , mix small seed and put on opposite side. Use hand spreader and refill changing seed at each end.
 
Freeborn - I work with a number of farmers who are putting on cover crops for water quality benefits. In corn for grain we have been applying it the end of Aug. however some of the research is showing that end of july might actually be better. I however have not gotten a farmer to try that method since they are afraid of yield hits. I guess I can't blame them. I personally have not used a cover crop in corn since we have gone away from corn for the residue issues and we are trying to built up our organic matter. We do commonly place cover crops into our beans and we seem to always go back to the hand seeders. Lots of walking but seems to work best with the various seed sizes.
 
Thanks MNAaron, I'll be rotating corn and soybeans and the plan is to try and build nitrogen credits in the beans and OM with the corn. I plan on over-seeding Medium Red in the beans and WR/Oats/GHFR/clover in my corn. What mixes are you seeing that are working for providing either Nitrogen or OM?

What have you seen work for overseeding soybeans? Have you heard of any sucess with an early application (early July) of clover or other mix? I'm concerned about negative affects on yield and/or the soybeans shading out the clover and killing it.

In total I have 4 acres to overseed so I'll end up doing it manually.
 
Freeborn - Last year on Aug 30 with aerial applied 40lbs rye, 30lbs oats, 2lbs purple top turnips and 2lbs forage radish into standing corn and then the farmer applied 1/2 inch of water. Worked out surprisingly well. We could have possibly gone with a higher rate but we had good coverage in the rows.

Into our beans we usually apply something similar to this: Rye 50-60 lbs, Oats 30-40 lbs, Forage Radishes 4-5 lbs and Red Clover 6-8 lbs. This rate get tweaked every year depending on how much seed we have leftover and want to get rid of. We apply when the leaves start to turn yellow and then hope that Foggy does his rain dance.
 
Thanks for the link and the tips! What row width are you planting your beans and corn in? With Soybeans there is little room between rows to broadcast and in the past I have run over allot of beans. I would like to avoid this. I want a better soybean yield so I am thinking of going with 12" rows but might go 24 if it would not effect yield and help me get better performance with my cover crops. What do you think?
 
We plant our beans at 12 inches and corn at 30 inches. This year we started a new plot and wanted to run beans to clean up the weeds for the first year or two. We accidently planted (broadcast in this case) beans and corn in the same location. Be interesting to see what happens on that portion of the food plot.
 
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