My experience with “Buffalo Farming”

[WTNUT]

I think some call not till planting into cover crops each spring no till Buffalo Farming or something like that. Essentially it is the practice of planting cover crops like wheat, rye, oats, etc into your corn and beans during the fall and allowing it to head out in the spring. Thereafter, you no till drill your corn into the cover crops in the spring. Some spray herbicide to terminate the cover crop while others use a roller to crimp and kill it.

For me, I sprayed herbicide and used a Great Plains 8 foot no till drill to drill my corn this spring. Here are my good and bad points.

Good:

1. It saves a tone of time.
2. It eliminates at least one and maybe two applications of herbicides.
3. It conserves moisture and keep soil temperatures down when the heat of the summer hits.
4. It builds organic matter.
5. See number 1 again.

Bad:

1. My overall yield was down quite a bit from traditional plow disc and using a corn planter, but I think I can improve it dramatically next year through some things I learned.
2. With a thick thatch of rolled cover crop, I believe it is very difficult to get the nitrogen as well as the potash and phosphorus into the soil when you only broadcast fertilizer.
3. I plan on getting away from 22.5 rows next year (drill plants every 7.5 inches and last year I blocked three openings between each row drilled. In 2022, I am going to try to plant the population that worked best for me in 2021 which was 34,500 ( I tried everything from 28,000 to 37,000 this year). I will plant two rows 7 inches apart and then block off the drill to skip 30 inches and then plant two rows 7 inches apart. My thought process is the drill does not evenly space plants like a planter. By planting two rows close together it will fill the rows better and hopefully more evenly space the plants. I will also broadcast my fertilizer 30 percent of it before I drill and then the remaining 70 percent will be spread when plants are 8-18 inches tall.

For me time is more important than overall yield. I am hoping this is a good balance between saving time and getting a better yield than this year.

For those wanting to know my yield was down about 15-20 percent.


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[Kdog]

Did you consider planting clover as your cover crop?

 

[SwampCat]

Did you consider planting clover as your cover crop?

That is what I do. I was driven to that because deer density increased on my place and I couldnt grow beans, the presence of hogs prevented a crop like corn or milo, so that pretty much left only clover as a summer crop. I plant wheat into my clover with a Woods Seeder disk gang set very unaggressive. You could also just spead wheat into the clover if you caught any kind of favor with the weather. I use no fertilizer, depending on the clover to fix nitrogen for the wheat. I use very limited chemicals, typically relying on some timely bush hogging. Pretty much as simple as it gets - and provides a year round, high protein food source, where plantings like milo and corn provide very little benefit in the summer. Some of my food plots have not been turned over with a disk in four or five years.

 

[SD51555]

I think some call not till planting into cover crops each spring no till Buffalo Farming or something like that. Essentially it is the practice of planting cover crops like wheat, rye, oats, etc into your corn and beans during the fall and allowing it to head out in the spring. Thereafter, you no till drill your corn into the cover crops in the spring. Some spray herbicide to terminate the cover crop while others use a roller to crimp and kill it.

For me, I sprayed herbicide and used a Great Plains 8 foot no till drill to drill my corn this spring. Here are my good and bad points.

Good:

1. It saves a tone of time.
2. It eliminates at least one and maybe two applications of herbicides.
3. It conserves moisture and keep soil temperatures down when the heat of the summer hits.
4. It builds organic matter.
5. See number 1 again.

Bad:

1. My overall yield was down quite a bit from traditional plow disc and using a corn planter, but I think I can improve it dramatically next year through some things I learned.
2. With a thick thatch of rolled cover crop, I believe it is very difficult to get the nitrogen as well as the potash and phosphorus into the soil when you only broadcast fertilizer.
3. I plan on getting away from 22.5 rows next year (drill plants every 7.5 inches and last year I blocked three openings between each row drilled. In 2022, I am going to try to plant the population that worked best for me in 2021 which was 34,500 ( I tried everything from 28,000 to 37,000 this year). I will plant two rows 7 inches apart and then block off the drill to skip 30 inches and then plant two rows 7 inches apart. My thought process is the drill does not evenly space plants like a planter. By planting two rows close together it will fill the rows better and hopefully more evenly space the plants. I will also broadcast my fertilizer 30 percent of it before I drill and then the remaining 70 percent will be spread when plants are 8-18 inches tall.

For me time is more important than overall yield. I am hoping this is a good balance between saving time and getting a better yield than this year.

For those wanting to know my yield was down about 15-20 percent.


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Try switching your fall blend to half rye, half hairy vetch. You won't get so much tie up, and you'll still get weed suppressing biomass.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Are you putting down starter fertilizer in the spring with your drill at planting time or putting your P and K on in the fall with your cover crop?

 

[buckdeer1]

check out some of the seed blends from green cover seed co.Growing deer tv has some good info on these.Looks interesting.I currently broadcast ww into my soybeans

 

[swat1018]

I've planted beans, corn, and a beans/corn mix with the GP. Honestly, I think the drilled corn on 7.5" rows was best. I can't remember the population I planted, but the yield was descent, even though it looked unconventional.

 

[Bassattackr]

A few have touched on it here but if planting Corn or Milo after rye you need to terminate at least 2-3 weeks before planting corn due to N tie up. Many use hairy vetch (per SDs comment) or clover, etc for a N boost. It will still take some time to break down and mixing with rye would still dock yield IMO unless terminated much earlier. Soybeans after rye however is a perfect companionship.

Agree with ST, if broadcasting and no til - You need to get P & K in during the fall, not planting at spring. Needs time to work in.

Good luck! Great feedback! Keep us posted on your results and population used with 7.5” rows.

 

[WTNUT]

Did you consider planting clover as your cover crop?

Sorry for the delay, I did not. I probably didn’t want to go to the expense of clover and I normally plant the cover crops a little late for clover.


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[WTNUT]

Try switching your fall blend to half rye, half hairy vetch. You won't get so much tie up, and you'll still get weed suppressing biomass.

That is a good idea. Thanks.


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[WTNUT]

Are you putting down starter fertilizer in the spring with your drill at planting time or putting your P and K on in the fall with your cover crop?

I keep a good supply of P and K year round applying whatever the soil test indicates is needed each spring prior to planting the corn. Normally 50 pounds of P and maybe 60 of K. I also broadcast the N then too.


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[WTNUT]

I've planted beans, corn, and a beans/corn mix with the GP. Honestly, I think the drilled corn on 7.5" rows was best. I can't remember the population I planted, but the yield was descent, even though it looked unconventional.

There is a lot of literature out there on planting double rows, the yield is not better. I just think it will work better with a drill. Will find out next year. I am going to drill about 50 percent of the field and plant the other 50 percent with a corn planter.


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[SD51555]

There is a lot of literature out there on planting double rows, the yield is not better. I just think it will work better with a drill. Will find out next year. I am going to drill about 50 percent of the field and plant the other 50 percent with a corn planter.


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Check out this video. This dude is doing double population corn in 60" rows. So they're running close to 50,000 population densities in row, and the yields are coming up 95% of what 30" corn would do. The bonus is that you could do soybeans in the alternating boxes. I don't know enough about corn planters, but if you could set it to 25,000 seeds per acre and plant the same strips twice, so you'd have 50K corn rows, and 50k soybean rows, I think you'd have a hell of a plot, and room to get a fall plot up in the open strips as well.

if you're rolling, that'd be a special kind of hell going against the direction you laid down the cover crop. You'd have to circle around and go the same direction twice.

 

[SWIFFY]

So you are saying do 60" rows of corn at double the population... and then 60" rows of soybeans? So 30" rows, alternating, and double populated??

What else was tihis guy planting in the cover crop? He had sorgum, radishes and cowpeas or something in that center row??? I didnt catch all that?

 

[SD51555]

So you are saying do 60" rows of corn at double the population... and then 60" rows of soybeans? So 30" rows, alternating, and double populated??

What else was tihis guy planting in the cover crop? He had sorgum, radishes and cowpeas or something in that center row??? I didnt catch all that?

I don't know what's all in there. But I wouldn't get hung up on that anyway. Remember, we don't have the same constraints as farmers (i.e. we don't need to cleanly harvest that corn). If I had the equipment and space to do this, I'd say the hell with soybeans, and try to find an indeterminant vining bean to climb up that corn. I would also find a way to get 6 or more plants into that blend: Buckwheat, sunflower, flax, WGF Sorghum, barley, oats, rapeseed, fixation clover.

You'd have a phenomenal stand of summer through winter food, cover, and plant harmony going in there. Your biggest issue would be figuring out how to get the deer out of it.

 

[Kooch]

This is getting closer and closer to the the three sisters. What once was old, now is new.

Don’t forget the squash.


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[SwampCat]

Sorry for the delay, I did not. I probably didn’t want to go to the expense of clover and I normally plant the cover crops a little late for clover.


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I actually consider clover the least expensive crop I can plant. Durana is $5 per lb in 25 lb bags. 6 lbs per acre is $30 per acre at initial planting. Lasts five years plus, so $6 per acre is pretty reasonable.

 

[Catscratch]

I actually consider clover the least expensive crop I can plant. Durana is $5 per lb in 25 lb bags. 6 lbs per acre is $30 per acre at initial planting. Lasts five years plus, so $6 per acre is pretty reasonable.

It's not uncommon for me to terminate clovers the yr after I plant them. If that's the case then they can be pretty expensive.

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[SwampCat]

It's not uncommon for me to terminate clovers the yr after I plant them. If that's the case then they can be pretty expensive.

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Why do you terminate your clover after a year? My Durana doesnt even get going good until after the first year. Even wheat here will cost low $20’s per acre to plant - and it is once and done.

 

[SD51555]

This is getting closer and closer to the the three sisters. What once was old, now is new.

Don’t forget the squash.


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We're beginning to understand why those things worked, and that is enabling us to utilize the old info in new ways. I sometimes wonder what Lickcreek would be working on now if he were still around. He seemed like the kind of guy that would always be at the forefront of using new info to push the envelope. Just seeing where the innovators are going, we won't recognize the process of growing things in ten years from the way we do them now.

Think back to 2011. Most of us were still trying to figure out the difference between winter rye and rye grass. In another ten years, I bet you the entire chem ag complex will implode. Fertilizer, pesticides, and traited seed will be gone.

Write that one down.