Drill large seeds, broadcast smaller seeds or drill all?

[Wild Thing]

Wow, just about thre the kitchen sink in that mix.

10 lbs an acre of oats.... Never seen a plot that low with that in there...... With all thats in there, it should be that low.

In a multi-seed blend you want to make sure there is room for everything to grow adequately. I did use the "Smart Mix Calculator" on the Green Cover Seed website as a basis for calculating the amounts of each seed needed and I am confident it will be fine. And...don't forget there are 2 other grasses in that mix - sorghum and barley which have to co-exist with the oats.

Here are oats used in a nurse crop which were drilled at 48#/acre. It just depends on what your goals are which determines the rate at which you want to plant...





After the oats have done their job they are terminated...



and you have a nice crop of the desired forage - in this case, alfalfa and clover...

 

[Wild Thing]

Wow, just about thre the kitchen sink in that mix.

Diversity is the key to healthy soils. I am not using any synthetic fertilizers anymore so I depend upon my cover crops to cycle the nutrients needed to feed my following crops.

 

[Skeeter]

This is what I came up with for this year:

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Do your radishes bolt when planted this time of year? What kind of soil temp are you looking for to plant that mix?

 

[Wild Thing]

Do your radishes bolt when planted this time of year? What kind of soil temp are you looking for to plant that mix?

I will let you know later this year Skeeter - LOL. I have never planted radish this early - it is usually July (with brassicas) or August (with fall cover crops). This is actually my first year in quite a while of planting spring cover crops.

I generally look for 60 degrees, 2" deep at 9 AM for beans and most others. Corn, peas, etc can be planted earlier but 60 degrees is a good soil temp to plant at here in Upper Michigan.

I am actually pretty close to that now...



It was the same in an adjacent plot where I will be planting this cover crop this morning...



This is one of the plots where I will be planting the spring cover crop. Last year it was sugar beets and brassicas, but because I include some clovers in with my brassicas and then broadcast rye over the brassicas in August, I keep my soil covered instead of having bare dirt in the spring. This vegetation is just beginning to come up now but, because I am not using synthetic fertilizers this year, I want it to grow a lot more before I terminate it and plant my 12-seed cover crop. The more it grows, the more nutrients it will provide to feed my cover crop when it is terminated. I will be planting into this in about 2 more weeks.

 

[homerj1]

Forage radish planted before the summer solstice will bolt quickly

 

[Foggy47]

I bought a soil thermometer over winter to do this same thing. My plans pretty much mirror those you have Wild Thing. Thanks!

 

[Wild Thing]

Forage radish planted before the summer solstice will bolt quickly

I will be planting 2-3 weeks before then but as long as it does its job helping to create/maintain healthy soil that is OK with me. I will plant more radish with my brassicas in July and in my fall cover crop in August.

 

[Foggy47]

I have a Tar River SAYA 505 Drill. Earlier this week..... I did fashion the means to drop seeds from my small seed box to a location behind my openers (or alternately they still can be dropped in the "trench" as configured from the factory). With my improvement.....I can switch the drop tubes to either location in a few minutes. Great Plains drills do much the same as what I have done (scatter small seeds on top)......and I believe the small seeds may be buried too deep by the SAYA drills... and judging from my efforts last fall. My solution is cheap and should work very well. Less than $35 dollars including hose clamps (not shown). (....But I just did this.....so the proof will follow.)

That long legged clamp is a chain link fence product and the tube is an electrical conduit cut in half....with the "bell" end discarded. My pics do not show the hose clamps I just added.

EDIT: In my sandy soils....the seed trench pretty much is closed immediately after the double disks pass by.....so my small seeds dropped (in the fashion shown) will basically be uniformly broadcasted by my method here. I suppose I could also cultipack......and packing is fundamental in my soils......but that seems overkill? Time will tell.

Last fall I put down a mix much like that shown on page 1 by Wild Thing....but I put 100 lbs of Rye in order to create my first heavy stand of "mulch".

 

[omicron1792]

LOL - Happy that you asked BigBoreBlr

It was a bunch of really old sample seed packets I got from Whitetail Institute years ago. I just happened to run across them in the bottom of a box when I was mixing up my seed last year. Figured I might as well get rid of them so I just mixed the seed in with the rest of my small seed. It made a real colorful blend with all of the different colored coatings....but I'm not sure if any of it actually germinated. But at least I cleaned out everything in the storage box

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Looks like sprinkles for ice cream.