S.T.Fanatic
5 year old buck +
from experience it is easy to go to heavy with milo. I wouldn't plant more than 2#/acre
Changing up my planting strategy
- Thread starter River-X
- Start date
SD51555
5 year old buck +
No equipment: I'd do peas/barley and try to pack them in with anything I've got, and I'd go early.
With equipment: I'd do peas/oats and drill them straight into the brassica residue as early as possible.
I'd also throw on chicory and flax for fun.
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
Very informative Buckhunter. I briefly perused your website - impressive. Will definitely give it a more thorough review when I have more time.
BrushyPines
5 year old buck +
This is the exact reason why I'm asking. Lol Went way too heavy on milo last spring and it choked out the buckwheat and cow peas by July.
Buckhunter10
5 year old buck +
Thank you, sir! I have silently followed you on here for a while and I am equally impressed with your knowledge and plantings.
To be clear, I am not trying to be overly pushy on threads here - I don't want to rub folks wrong. So this will be my last post on this thread, with any mention of the seed company. However, I do want to help educate where I can and that is how/why the website has been created the way it is.
I love soil science. I learn constantly and email our partners at WARD Labs weekly to continue to learn. I built the website to be loaded with information and education. It is literally an endless world and even the topsoil scientists in the world admit to not knowing everything about the bio-signaling that occurs below our feet. Take CO2 respiration, for example, this is a great qualitative measure of microbial populations but as a stand-alone figure, it doesn't tell us much. As we add duration to the C02 respiration, we are able to identify constants - which is far more quantitative. Couple this with a PFLA test to see our fungal populations, over time, and conventional soil testing to show increases in solubilized nutrients - we can truly see if/how a system is functioning.
The biggest key to all of this is photosynthetic energy capture. We MUST keep deer browse controlled. Not only does leaving the field with a rumen full of nutrients hurt our ability to build our soils, but there have also been ample studies down that show how the photosynthetic capture of nutrients and root exudation is hindered by overbrowsing. In some cases, it is unable to ever recover for that particular plant species.
I hope to chime in here more often and I will keep my Ohio thread updated more frequently as well.
Good luck to all and happy planting!! Diversity is king!
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
Once again - Very Informative! Please keep on posting. Many of us are looking for the best education we can get on soil health. Keep up the good work!
Just took a brief look at your farm tour - impressed again!
I would also recommend serious thought be given to what your desires are, your restrictions, your seasonal conditions, etc. My deer density is such that I cant grow beans, peas, or sunflowers - they wont let them get six inches tall. I keep bees, and most of my honey customers prefer a light honey - so no buckwheat. I dont want any plant that grows over four feet tall - like sunn hemp - because a thick, taller cover invites feral hogs into the plots. If you turkey hunt your plots, rye will stand too tall in my plots for gobblers to use them. To put on sufficient growth here, brassicas need to be planted the first of Sep - in 100 degree heat and usually a drought. I dont want to plant cereal grains that early, because even if there is sufficient moisture, the plants will be big and tough by deer season and not preferred as a food source- and that is IF the army worms dont wipe them out due to early planting. On my ground, milo typically does not produce a viable seed head without fertilizer.
In my 45 years of food plotting, I have planted almost every kind of food plot seed. I have plots that have been going for ten years with no fertilizer inputs and no dirt turning. A fall planting and probably a summer bush hogging and an odd herbicide application if needed to control a noxious weed.
Seed mixes that work great in south Missouri may not be the best for MN or TX. But, it usually takes a lot of trial and error to figure that out. If you know some other successful plotters in your area, you may be able to save some learning curve by picking their brain. But, then again, part of the fun of food plotting is figuring out what works in your area.
In my 45 years of food plotting, I have planted almost every kind of food plot seed. I have plots that have been going for ten years with no fertilizer inputs and no dirt turning. A fall planting and probably a summer bush hogging and an odd herbicide application if needed to control a noxious weed.
Seed mixes that work great in south Missouri may not be the best for MN or TX. But, it usually takes a lot of trial and error to figure that out. If you know some other successful plotters in your area, you may be able to save some learning curve by picking their brain. But, then again, part of the fun of food plotting is figuring out what works in your area.
Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
Have you considered offering a mix with the small and large seeds packaged separately? Just thinking about setting the drill to get some of the bigger seeds 1/2"+ is deeper than what is recommended for the tiny seeds like fixation balansa.
That's one of the things that makes @Wild Thing 's home mix approach attractive.
Not sure of relevancy to this thread but I put this video together yesterday to show how we are using cattle to terminate fall plots for spring no til planting all designed to improve the micro biology of the soil. We are drilling 5 lb sunnn hemp, 25 lbs cow peas, 5 lbs sunflower, 5 lbs buck wheat, 1 lb okra, and 1 lb sorghum almum
Buckhunter10
5 year old buck +
I have thought about it but after having our team run the mixes through their land pride and other similar drills, setting average depths (1/4inch)- it's been a non-issue. Also when trying to get a mix that will work for traditional tillage, to drills to broadcast - it is hard to guarantee consistency for all parties when separated. Often guys buy an acre and seed two different plots - therefore we leave the quality control of mixing two packages onsite to the grower - not saying it cant be one but trying to reduce as many variables as possible is important to us. Therefore, we felt it best after years of broadcast and drilling all mixed, to bring to market it all mixed. We did this over the past 3+ years (before we launched the company), over multiple soil types and states.
No wrong or right way but just the way we have done it with success and what we believe is best for our customer base. Thank you for the question!
Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
Thanks for the response. I can see why a single mix would make sense for the majority of your sales but was just curious about possibility of option to split them up.
I don't have experience to have a valid opinion on the issue but I paid for a small seed box on the new drill and would like to use it until experience proves that it's wasted effort.
Buckhunter10
5 year old buck +
absolutely!
Hey even if you try some of these mixes (not just mine but your own or others even), the small seed box is never a waste!! You can use it for frost seed/frost drill clovers the following spring, you can use it to drill in thin spots with brassicas/clovers at a lower rate per acre. Great for use for clover/alfalfa mixes around orchards, especially if you have orchards that are often mowed or bush hogged, etc. Lot of cool ways to use the small seed box or simply calibrate the larger seed box for the multiple mix way!
Either way, just have fun with it and enjoy every minute of the ride!! Playing with the soil is awesome!!
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
There are pros and cons for farmers, but I can't find many cons for deer managers. I've been saving thousands a year in fertilizer in recent years. Deer don't need ore even prefer magazine quality plots. Farmers are limited to planting monocultures for the most part because of harvest equipment. The act of harvesting is removing nutrients. For deer managers things are different. We can focus on long-term soil health and nutrient cycling. It turns out many of the crops that are soils builders tolerate poor pH and infertility quite well. As we mix legumes and grasses and build OM over time the soil fertility improves. The only "harvest" is what wildlife eats and it is compensated by their droppings. Mixing crops and tolerating most weeds (many are as good or better deer food than our crops) benefit both soil health and deer and other wildlife.
As some others have said, it takes time for the soil to heal itself after the damage of deep and/or frequent tillage. Be patient. Start with easy crops like WR/Buckwheat/Clover/Sunn Hemp and the like. Don't measure your results by yield. Measure them by objective. If you are doing QDM at scale, you will be planting for specific stress periods. If there is crop left in the field after the stress period, it was a success. If you are planting for attraction during a particular period, if deer are using it during that period, it is a success. Over time, fields were look better and better, but by the time they do, you won't care how they look.
Thanks,
Jack
TreeDaddy
5 year old buck +
It is very relevant to those of us in east texas and zone 8a
"Know thy Locality"........an eternal verity in habitat management
bill
TreeDaddy
5 year old buck +
River-X
5 year old buck +
I will try and lay it out without being too wordy.
At my home farm, I have about 9 acres in cereal rye which was planted in the fall. I am going to split that field and drill half of it into soybeans, sunflowers, and crimson clover. The other half of that rye will be drilled with Green Cover Summer Release blend.
Also on that farm there are 5 plots that I have tilled in the past, one is a beautiful stand of clover that was seeded last spring and I am leaving alone this year.
The other 4 had brassicas on them last fall and are cleaned out. Those 4 will have buckwheat and peas drilled in so as to start to establish some quick growing stems and mulch.
And all around those 5 plots is nearly 6 acres of Timothy and Alfalfa which has been established for about 5 years now. This will get Summer Release blend with a few areas that I will add extra soybean and in other portions I am going to add significantly higher rates of sun Hemp, Sunflower, and adding in Chicory.
As always, I appreciate any feedback whether its what I want to hear or not. If anybody sees any major flaws in the plan, give a shout.
Buckhunter10
5 year old buck +
Sounds awesome!
I think the key to building soils - or maximizing the potential of our soils- is not solely focusing on what is planted now, but on what will follow. In an effort to maximize our soil's ability to the nutrient cycle and communicate with the soil microbial populations, increasing our bacterial to fungal networks - over time.
When I look at most foodplotters we want a heavy grain and brassica mix for hunting in the fall. Often many of these mixes use beans as their main N source in the Summer - beans are a legume but they dont fix an astronomical amount of N.
One of the reasons no-till, regen, conservation ag, whatever we want to call it - fails - is due to the inability to cycle nutrients. We must pay attention to the Carbon To Nitrogen ratios and be highly confident we have enough N in the system for the microbes to breakdown the Carbon and not too much N that our microbes mine our OM.
In conclusion- looks asweome, buddy! Just start planning the fall mix now to follow these Summer mixes and enjoy every second of it!!
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
Really enjoyed the video Baker. Interesting to see how the element of "livestock grazing" can add to the regenerative ag concept. Not many of us in Upper Michigan have cattle and goats like you've got in Louisiana so we just have to rely on our deer to provide the "livestock grazing"....and they aren't near as good at it as your cattle and goats are.
Buckhunter10
5 year old buck +
Yes, this should be achievable but will be highly dependent on
1. CEC
2. Nitrate reading in soil (6inch minimum)
3. OM
4. Previous cropping
We need 60-120lbs of N to yield 50-100 bu/a of milo/grain sorghum. CEC x 10 is a rough estimate of your soil nitrate holding capacity, N credits from previous cover crops, and organic N mineralization can be factored in at 1%-2% of your OM (3% OM= 30-60lbs N per acre per annum). Another way of noting this is, Each % of OM allows 10-20lbs of N to be mineralized throughout the year.
So with that being said, in a well-managed system - can you have milo/grain sorghum produce seed, without fertilizer - yes. This is where it is so critical to understand the cycling aspect of nutrients. We cannot expect to have sunflowers and milo grown year after year, following a heavy fall grain mix -without adequate N in the system. We simply will have N tie-up and the plants to microbes will suffer.
Note the above is assuming a monoculture and bu/acre is fairly high. So we can also assume that the production of milo in a mix will have slightly fewer requirements. I also believe in a higher microbial active soil, we can assume better N uptake and cycling than the previously assumed data. Even N uptake through plants direct absorption of the microbes themselves via the Rhizophagey cycle could be considered but I don't know how quantifiable this is currently, even with tissue testing.
One additional thing to note is that as we add diversity, and reduce disturbance in our soils - we will increase bacterial and fungal populations. As we do this, our fungal networks release glomalin which is a biotic glue that helps to aggregate (hold together) the soil. This, with good cycling, can increase our soil's efficiency, water infiltration, OM, etc. To achieve this we need diversity, so even with extremely diverse mixes, not all is lost (from a soil building perspective), if we don't get full-grain production in the first year or two. If roots are growing and plants are photosynthesizing -we are doing a great thing!
Hope this helps.
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