Oats or Wheat

[MoLandOwner]

The oats I planted in late March were starting to grow seed heads last weekend, so I ran over the oats with a brush hog to prevent the seeds from maturing. The oats were nearly waist high in the areas with the better soil and less than knee high in some of the sandy spots, but the seed heads were forming in both places. I was pretty happy with the amount of green manure that was generated in that strip, but the brassicas didn't really add much to the mix. They had a tough time competing with the oats, so they were tall and spindly. Maybe next time I'll plant some plowdown type red clover with the oats to see if that grows better than the brassicas. This chopped up oat strip will be planted to soybeans next week and brassicas in early July.

My adjacent sandy area that I planted to peas and oats in mid-April is also doing pretty well, but the oats aren't forming seeds yet. My soil test for this lot returned last week and I need to add some lime and potash to the oat/pea field, so I think I'll let that field grow until both the oats and pea seeds are mature and then I'll add lime, fertilizer, rye seed and maybe some brassicas in early August. My organic matter for that plot is 1.1%, so I'm going to try to build up the soil first and hopefully feed some deer in the process.

Oats left to go to seed, then left standing can be a great fall food plot by its self.

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

We've had really good luck during bow and gun season when we plant this specific strip into soybeans in mid/late June, so this oat strip's goal was more to build up the soil than anything else. Since the ground was going to be open until June, I figured it wouldn't hurt anything to throw out some oat seed and lightly disk it in as soon as it was dry enough to get in the field. I did a little test and grew seed oats next to feed oats and I couldn't notice any difference using my broadcast and lightly disk under planting method.

I left a strip of oats as a late season food source a couple years ago, but the turkeys cleaned them out before the deer seemed to care for them. The deer seemed to prefer the soybeans first, but I'm sure they would turn to the oats after the beans were gone. But the turkeys just went crazy for both the oats and buckwheat. I'll be planting a little oat and buckwheat strip shortly and hopefully a fall tom will spend a lot of time there during the fall turkey season.