Cover crop/bedding mix

[homegrownbucks]

I have a 1 acre area I’m considering trying to make a cover crop bedding area. I have Egyptian wheat and sunflower seed on hand and want it to be talll but also offer food into fall.

Currently the area is a 1st year plot containing a mix of rye, red clover, sunflower, soybean, radish, turnip and rape. Also a decent amount of cool season grass and weeds.

Not sure how I should approach this in spring exactly and wanted to see what advice I could get on what else to possibly add and timing of planting/procedure for planting to attempt to throw and mow something like this.

 

[MickT]

Are you wanting forage or grain? I think corn would fit the bill.


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[homegrownbucks]

Leaning towards forage but cover above all. Hoping it will be able to hold deer after corn and bean harvest in the area as it’s in a pretty low cover area

 

[scott44]

I do a mix of e-wheat, sorghum, millet, sunflowers kind of a whatever I have left from the previous year but this is the base. I usually get too impatient and want to plant something so the middle to the end of May I start looking to get it in the ground so I lightly disc it and cultipack it in. This next year I'm going to try and wait a little longer and do a throw and mow/roll if there is enough thatch otherwise I'll disc it lightly again. The deer really like it and it acts as a screen but I can't really say I've ever seen them bed in it. Here's some pics from this last year.

Planting

A little over a month's growth.

Mid Aug. some ragweed and grasses in there but they don't seem to care.

Oct. / Nov.

 

[homegrownbucks]

Any particular rates on what you put in that mix? I expect some foxtail and ragweed for sure and that’s fine. Another patch on this land was fallow and grew 10’ tall ragweed which looked awesome in summer but thinned our a lot once frost hit, but they did bed in it some in summer anyway.

 

[scott44]

Any particular rates on what you put in that mix? I expect some foxtail and ragweed for sure and that’s fine. Another patch on this land was fallow and grew 10’ tall ragweed which looked awesome in summer but thinned our a lot once frost hit, but they did bed in it some in summer anyway.

I was shooting for 40#/acre of seed which was a little on the heavy side. Someone else on here showed the smart mix seed calculator on Green coverseed.com. It seems to give good results
https://smartmix.greencoverseed.com/

 

[Bszweda]

results look good!