Peas and oats

[Boone]

Anyone planting peas and oats? What date do you plant them?

 

[wiscwhip]

Peas and oats can be spring or fall planted. I am assuming you are speaking towards a spring planting. As soon as possible for you now Boone, probably should have had them in already, many guys plant them as early as the end of April. If you are going to do it, do not wait any longer. If you were waiting for the danger of frost to pass, I think you are totally good now, but keep in mind both young peas and young oats can survive early frosts as long as the temp stays above about 24 degrees, so don't worry too much about planting them earlier next time. What type of peas are you planting? 4010 field peas would be a good choice for you right now.

 

[scott44]

I've never tried just peas and oats but I do use peas and rye/oats for my cereal grain mix in the fall and usually plant around labor day.

 

[Boone]

We've never planted peas, how long do they last when planted 9/1? How tall do they get? We would be planting 1 acre. My idea is to provide as much food in oct, nov, dec with the 4 acres we have to plant.

 

[wiscwhip]

How long they last in any situation is highly dependent on if your deer find them when they germinate and hoover them to the dirt, which they WILL do once they figure out what they are. With Scott being in 5b, he can get away with a Labor Day planting and still get good tonnage, in 4b(which is were I think you are) that scenario is less likely. A few weeks late on planting date can make a HUGE difference in the amount of tonnage in a pea/oat plot. Field peas planted as late as 9/1 will not yield much green tonnage before the growth starts to slow from cooler temps and they succumb to frosts later in Sept or early Oct. You would have a far better chance at large amounts of food if that mix were planted in August. Bad thing is, you are completely at the whim of rainfall and we know Aug can be a challenge in that department. Worst case scenario, they germinate and then get no rain for the next few weeks. The best tonnage would be a spring planting in Late April up until mid-May, but since that ship has mostly passed, do it right away or wait until Aug and roll the dice before a forecasted rain event and pray for the best. If you wait until fall I would suggest using Austrian winter peas(AWP), if you plant soon, 4010 field peas or Trapper peas would be a good choice. If the August planting ends up a failure, you could still always plant rye in that area as a last resort. We have planted rye as late as Sept 21st and still ended up with a green field within a few weeks. Here are some good links down this page from UW that answer many questions, sure these are for ag purposes, but the planting dates and rates and resultant yield information holds true either way...a bit "sciency", but still easy to understand....

http://fyi.uwex.edu/forage/altforage/#cp

Another good one from UW-Extension written by UW's Dr. Dan Undersander(guy is a damn genius when it comes to this stuff, especially alfalfa)........

http://www.uwex.edu/ces/forage/pubs/Pea_and_Small_Grain_Mixtures.htm

Here is one more "paste" from a Cornell U paper on small grain and pea mixture yields....

In 2007 we planted Esker oats and peas on 8/20 and Esker oats and vetch on 8/31. By late fall, before

winterkill, the earlier‐planted oats produced 4184 dry lb/acre aboveground biomass, while the oats

planted 11 days later only produced 2307. We had a similar situation in 2011. In the pictures below,

notice how much heavier oat growth was when planted in early August, compared to a month later.

The take home message from this is that a couple weeks delay in planting oats and field peas in August

can cost heavily in production of biomass and N.

 

[Boone]

OK thanks!! We are planting beans in 2 weeks so I think I will hold off until the end of July when we plant our brassicas.

 

[wiscwhip]

You could put some of the pea/oat mix in with your brassicas, or vice versa. They can be successfully mixed together, unless you want strictly a brassica plot and a separate cereal/legume plot. You could play with different seeding rates to see what worked best as well.

 

[scott44]

We've never planted peas, how long do they last when planted 9/1? How tall do they get? We would be planting 1 acre. My idea is to provide as much food in oct, nov, dec with the 4 acres we have to plant.

If you are looking for peas to make it into season they probably won't, like DBltree used to say they were the candy of this mix.