Throw n' Mow Tutorial

I’ve had several people sending me PM’s with questions about the Throw n’ Mow Method and I’ve been asked if I would start a tutorial thread showing the steps involved. For the folks who are opposed or who have strong criticisms toward this method…..I’d be glad to continue to debate you on the subject but I’d respectfully ask that we leave that out of this thread and allow this one to just be a Q&A for those folks who are truly interested in trying this approach to food plotting.

Any of you guys who have specific questions, feel free to post them up. In the process of answering them I will also begin to post up pictures of how the process work and what you need to do to begin.

Welcome to the Throw n’ Mow Tutorial……….

I'm very interested. I guess my first questions are - how do you get started? If my fields look like the one in the picture (which they do, plus a whole lot of crimson clover), what do I need to do? My guess would be to make sure my soil ph is in the correct range, and if not add lime. Then what? Plan some summer crops? Wait till fall? Looking forward to this thread. I am going to try it on a couple of plots first and see how it goes. Thanks for doing this.

That picture is a little deceiving. I have really heavy browsing pressure and the deer have kept all of the clover browsed down to ground level this spring while the rye has begun to bolt. There are actually 3 different varieties mixed in there….crimson, yuchi arrowleaf, and durana.

The first step is to get a layer of thatch down over the top of your bare soil. For folks with small plots and really heavy browsing pressure…..this will be one of the biggest hurdles to cross. The reason being is that you need the plots to produce excess of what the deer are eating in order to also grow a crop of biomass to feed back to the soil. This type of plant growth can be tough to achieve if the soil is in poor degraded conditions.

Once you put down a nice layer of thatch across the soil surface then it will begin to decompose and turn into mulch. Basically we are just creating one big mulch pile that’s spread a couple inches thick over the surface of the plot. The microbial community will break it down from there in the same manner that you see forest debris rotting away and disappearing in the woods. Once you have gotten the soil surface to the point that its like potting soil then seed germination will greatly improve.

Below is a really short video showing the current conditions of the soil surface in my field. I am still about 50-60 days away from spreading my summer seed. Between now and then I will let the rye mature and go to seed while the clover continues to cover the understory (if the deer allow it to)….At planting I want the remaining debris on the soil surface to be at a very advanced state of decomposition. When I mow, what is left will almost disintegrate and mix with my seed that I’ve thrown out….creating like a rat’s nest of debris. It’s like replicating the way you sprout seed in a paper towel but we’re just using processed straw instead of paper towel

Current soil surface condtions……….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iACVPPOje3M

So what to do this summer?

If you are just beginning the throw n’ mow process then there is a good chance that right now your soil surface looks something like the one pictured below after last fall's tillage……



You can see the difference in this soil surface versus the one I posted in the video. This bare soil surface is not going to give us great germination success with the first crop that we seed on top of it. That being said, the option to plant something this summer is still up to you. If you do….just temper your idea of success and realize upfront that these aren’t ideal throw n mow conditions. My advice for the first summer is to let the cereal grains and clover mature…..mow it down for your first crop of thatch around the end of May…. and then let nature take its course for this summer. If you want to throw something in this summer then buy a cheap bag of milo and add some in before you mow..

In the meantime, go ahead now and get a soil test sent in. Go ahead this summer and begin making the lime amendments as well as the P&K amendments after you mow in May. This initial summer of converting to a throw n’ grow method we are not as much focused on growing “deer food” as we are just focused on growing biomass to feed back to the soil……high volume grass crops.

Hey CNC do you think through your experience that maybe running a cultipacker over the thatch may push a few more "layed up" seed to the soil surface and may improve germ by another 10-15% from what you've seen? I know some of the seeds like annual rye are very light and may hang up in the thatch. Just curious?

Thanks, CNC. I'll be following this tread and trying the method on some of my plots. Our soil is about as fine as flour and has ZERO moisture holding ability.

Used your throw and mow method in my half acre orchard. I threw out 100lbs of year old wheat seed into some standing grass and mowed it all down. this was back in November or December. The wheat germinated nicely and is now really coming on. Now I have a good stand of wheat in with my naturally re-occurring crimson clover.

The orchard is the only part of my farm I've designated no till so it looks like I'll keep it up. You think spreading ic peas into the standing wheat and clover in may sometime and mowing it down would work ok?

This or maybe lightly discing with the disc turned straight just to cut the thatch a little.

I think it may depend on how thick the thatch is…….I kind of wish I had a cultipacker to experiment with but on the other hand I don’t want to start adding 1 more step to the process until its gets to the point of being just as time consuming as any other method. I think there is still a lot of room left for folks to experiment with different tweaks to the method.

I really haven’t had a problem getting good germination from cereal grains. It may not all germinate in one flush but as the hay settles down after the first rain… it acts just like two napkins pressing together…..One failure I do think I might have had in places though was burying my clover seed under too much thatch. My summer crop last year was a little too thick. I think I could have helped the problem out a lot if I had raised my mower up and only cut about half of the hay down. From what I’ve seen…..once you get your soil surface turned around the seed germinates really easy in the top soil mulch. This coming fall I may try just seeding my fall mix straight into the standing summer crop without mowing at all.

Keep us updated with some pics. I enjoy seeing how other folks are progressing and the different seed blends that people are trying. One of the hardest things about trying to experiment with this is the fact that you have to wait so long in between each new attempt or trial run.

Awesome!..........

I've found that ic peas and winter peas both do very well with this method. This is ic peas in a mix at a rate of 25 lbs/ac. It was the very first thing to jump up after planting.

From a starting standpoint, can plantings, such as, sun hemp produce too much biomass?

Maybe …. but in the beginning I would much rather have too much thatch than not enough. From a germination standpoint the clover seems to be the only thing that is really finicky to being covered over too much. The rye and peas just pushed right on through it. It may be better to broadcast the clover after mowing and just let it work its own way down to the soil…. or maybe mow the thatch at a taller height and only put a portion of it on the ground. The Japanese farmer from the book actually sowed his seed into the standing crop that was already in the field. He waited two weeks and allowed the seed to sprout first... then he removed the overstory of the mature crop…..spreading the hay back out over the field. This is why I think once you get the soil surface turned into mulch….you may just be able to make the process super simple and only broadcast your fall mix into whatever you grew in the summer. Part of being able to do that will depend on how much sunlight is able to penetrate through whatever is standing in the field. It maybe that mowing about knee high or waist high is just right to remove the overstory and only lightly cover the seed. Still some playing around to do to figure out what’s “just right”.

If you felt like you had too much biomass on the surface you could always make an additional pass over the field with a disk after mowing to further chop it up but then again there we go having to add additional steps. I really like the soil health benefits and the use of less fert, etc…..but one of the biggest benefits to me (and many others) is the time savings. Every hunting club I’ve ever been a part of….its always been a major undertaking to try and do all of our fall plots in one work weekend. Not having to make numerous passes over every field really speeds things up. We even made a mixing barrel and combined our seed and fert together so that it was all broadcast on one pass.

I'm thinking that it would be too much biomass for a disc to cut into our soil. Of course, this all depends on how well the deer eat it. I wonder if bushhogging it everytime it gets head high would help keep it from getting too stemy?

That would probably help a lot. From the pics I’ve seen some people post, it would just be too much to handle if its allowed to grow like its capable of. The end result will just depend on soil fertility, browsing pressure, plot size etc….. Its why I always say that the most important part of all of this is to understand the basic principles and concepts rather than just strictly trying to imitate what I or someone else is doing. If you understand the principles then you can assess and adapt.

Great idea. With your help and advice from others on here I've got a pretty good plan for my first attempt. Since other rookies might also be curious, can you comment on spraying before seeding and mowing to cover? I know there can be weed control once the plot gets going, but many of us are working with old fields that have grown up over the years.

CNC, you're welcome to borrow my cultipacker when you get ready to play with one. We're not far from you and I might even deliver it for the opportunity to see your successes first hand. I am going to try to roll over our sunn hemp this year instead of mowing it down. Since the sunn hemp stores nitrogen in the leaves that act as fertilizer upon decay, it makes sense to attempt to get nice, even coverage. Trying to bushhog tall growth like that often leads to large clumps being discharged behind the bushhog. Then you're not getting the fertilizer benefit to the entire field.

I bet with the proper crop selection, you could eliminate the mowing altogether. Spray, sow, and cultipack. I don't see why this wouldn't work.

CNC, I'd like to thank you for taking your time to create a tutorial for us newbies. I've attached a pic of what I'll be working with this year. It was planted with NWTF wheat. I'm going to get my soil sample soon and let it get a little higher before mowing. Thanks again.

The Rodale institute has been experimenting with just this. They have invented/created a "roller/crimper" which is kind of a like a huge cultipacker with chevron teeth all around it. What they found is that they needed a roller that could cut the crop and lay it flat at the same time. By just rolling over it with a large 55 gallon drum filed with water or just by rolling it with a regular cultipacker they found that the crop would not die and planting was not a success. No mowing, no spraying. Just rolling and crimping the crop. You need something to break the stems or cut the plant when rolling, thus their roller/crimper was invented.

http://rodaleinstitute.org/our-work/organic-no-till/

Whether or not to spray will really be a bigger issue in the spring that in the fall. If summer weeds and grasses are allowed to sprout and cover the understory before you plant in the spring then you will need to spray in order to establish your “crop”. At that point mowing the weeds would only clip the foliage and they would spring right back. So basically they have a running head start on the seeds you just threw out because they are already established and growing. The seeds you threw out will take time to germinate and establish themselves…..in the meantime the weeds will be off to the races and your crop will never catch up.

One way to prevent that from happening is to use the same canopy effect on the understory that you likely see happening in many of the pine stands you hunt. If you drown out the sunlight to the understory in the spring with something like a mix of rye, clover, vetch, etc….then all of the summer growth is held in check. Even when you remove the overstory and allow sunlight to the ground…..it still takes the weeds awhile to get going. This window of time allows for the seed you throw down to get a head start on the weeds and summer grasses and canopy back over them with them same shading effect as before. This is why the Japanese farmer in the book threw his seed out into a standing crop 2 weeks ahead of removing the overstory. It gave the seeds time to initially sprout and get even more of a head start on any competition that would later come in. He also said that sowing into a standing crop prevented any issues from birds. My thatch has been thick each time I’ve mowed and I’ve seen no problems from birds.

Something else besides using the canopy effect to prevent spraying is the timing. Crops like cereal rye would just continue to come back from mowing at the stage its in right now and would need spraying in order to establish a crop anytime soon. However, if I leave it alone and let it run through its life cycle and go to seed…..clipping it after that point will terminate it. I’ll make this terminating cut in latter half of May. I will then allow everything to grow during the summer and run through it’s complete life cycle as well until early October. Mowing during the summer or spring will prolong the life cycle of the plants and prevent them from going to seed until later than they would have if left alone.

That's a deal!......





I agree. The only thing I would worry about though is creating a solid mat of thatch. Sunn may be bulky enough that there would still be plenty of air space in between stalks and such but you can make a solid mat out of grasses that will smother out the your seedlings. The no-till farmers I've seen in the videos flatten cover crops like rye in this manner but they then come back behind it with a drill that cuts through the thatch allowing gaps for the seedlings to come through. Rough cutting it with a bush hog leaves everything in a criss cross patter with air space between the straw pieces.

No problem....I enjoy helping you guys out. Keep us updated with pics and we will walk through the process as the summer goes on.

I've posted this video in several other threads in the past, so some of you may have already seen it.... but its a really good video to watch. I'm pretty sure that crimper roller is used in the video. Keep in mind when watching the farmers in the video that we are just trying to replicate the principles that are occurring and not necessarily the exact same process. We can tweak things if needed and adapt them to the tools that we have available.

Undercover Farmers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWXCLVCJWTU

Talking about what is the absolute simplest method we could refine this down to…….

Once your soil surface is turned around and in good condition…simply broadcasting our fall mix of cereal grain, clover, and brassica into a standing crop is a real possibility given that the standing crop is in the right conditions. Some areas of my leave rows were still a little too thick to allow enough sunlight to penetrate through to the ground…..other areas like the ones below worked out really nice. Again, it’s this canopy effect of the overstory that’s playing a role. If the summer crop was too thick maybe we mow the top half of it off to let light to the “forest floor”……If it’s thin enough that the seeds can establish in amongst the dieing summer plants….then maybe we just broadcast and walk away. This is what I’m really shooting for but it may not always work out the way we want and mowing may still be needed.

Much appreciated CNC.

IMO, you need to cut the sunn hemp down when it reaches head high, to around 18" and let it regrow from there. This way it doesn't get as stemy. IMO, the hemp wont get too thick to eliminate germination, because it stalk is so much large than grass specie's. Cereal rye on the other hand can certainly get too thick. It can be like a mat, so you have to be careful not to go too thick with it, along with your oats and wheat. Last year, i noticed a couple spots where my atv tracks pressed the thatch down when spraying, eliminated the seed from reaching the soil surface, and there wasn't any germination there, but i didn't care. The plot looked good and my soil was covered.

If you build it.....they will come.

So let me get this right for the throw and grow 1st attempt

1. let my plot grow
2. throw out some summer seed, but don't expect to much
2a. don't throw out seed
3. bushhog end of may, after 2/2a
4. soil samples, apply fixes during summer
5. come October, throw seed, bushhog, and let it grow

milo as the possible summer crop?

Yeah....in a nutshell that's about right.

Everyone's situation may be a little different though on how things play out from there. My biggest hurdle to overcome, especially at my hunting club, has been overcoming the browsing pressure. When you get to the point that you have degraded soils and high browsing pressure then it can become hard to produce enough biomass to get over the first initial hump. The deer consume most of the above ground biomass and there's not enough to feed anything to the soil to make a change. Getting past that point may mean just growing a vibrant crop of summer weeds and grasses that will thrive and produce biomass rather than trying to grow something that will struggle in poor soil conditions and just get wiped out by the deer. It may be that if your plots are small and deer numbers high....you may never be able to grow summer "crops" other than maybe just some clover and weeds. In these situations I think you will be better off to go with the choice that will end up producing the most biomass. This will help improve your soils and make the fall plots more productive....

Is not doing anything till October an option to have enough grass, clover, weeds for biomass for fall planting

That's going to vary a lot from plot to plot. For folks who have really cleaned up the weeds in their fields in the past....it may not flourish the first year. I had crabgrass come up here in my field at home after ceasing tillage and it really worked well for producing those first couple crops of biomass. The hunting club fields were a little different. I got mostly black eyed susans, dog fennel, and a few various other weeds. It didn't produce near the biomass but I did have enough thatch to work with.

Here is quick video of a farmer using the throw and mow method. The box on top of the cutting head has cover crop seed in it. The seed is being blown onto the ground under the combine and then the silage is blown out the back over the top of the seed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkEUrAroz4E

I'm gonna try in my small field this summer. It did fair this winter with trictacale and plan on using iron clay peas and sorghum with some additives for this summer.

Just to elaborate on this question a little further…This is one of the reasons I mentioned to go ahead and start adding fertilizer recommendations now. Once we stop tillage and begin building organic matter in the soil, then you can begin to look at your fertilization program in a little different manner. It may sound odd to fertilize weeds this summer but those weeds are going to take up some of those nutrients….eventually die…and then begin to breakdown into the soil, recycling those nutrients back to the soil in an organic form. As we continue to do this then we build more and more organic matter in the soil from the standpoint of depth and concentration…we are in essence building up a large reserve of organic nutrients which our plants then use and recycle.

To illustrate what I’m saying…..Here is my first crop of summer weeds today. Its now part of an organic nutrient reserve in the top 5-6 inches of soil (the black dirt you see). That bank vault is capable of holding onto exponentially more nutrients and water than what our sand is capable of. This is what gives us rich fertile soil instead of sand. A soil test is going to show you what your soil nutrient vault is lacking or what you need to do to get it in balance.

Does anybody do this method in plots that stay wet during the Winter and Spring?

No, but I would like to. Reckon it would work here?

Looks like you have plenty of soil moisture.....

Mine's not that wet all the time, however it does get under water from time to time. The water subsides the next day, but the ground stay wet for a long time.

No doubt. Just a typical spring for us on our place. Tough to plan on Spring and Summer plots when you can't get any work done until early June normally. Last year a lot of our place stayed dry and our clover took off. Had better bucks this past fall by far. Incredible what just one year of good spring nutrition can do to a herd. Water started receding this past weekend so hoping it will fall out pretty quickly over the next week or so.

One of the plots that I'll be attempting the Throw & Mow method on this coming fall holds a lot of moisture/water. It's typically very dry in Oct at planting time, begins to hold moisture in Dec and will have standing water in low areas in Jan.

Just got back from a road trip to Iowa. Past millions of acres of farmlands being planted in Iowa, Nebraska, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. Nearly 100% of farmers who I saw planting - and there were literally thousands of them on my ten day trip - were tilling the soil in some way. Verticle tillage, deep plowing, minimal tillage, etc. These are multi-million dollar operations that are feeding the entire world. Didn't see a single bush hog In a field or a single farmer using the mow & throw method. Maybe if CNC could just get his message to them

If you've paid one ounce of attention to CNC and bothered to read any of the info posted about it, the one common theme is that what works for one guy, may not work for the next guy. I don't recall anyone saying that this method was the panacea that would change farming as we know it. I bet there are some crops that it may not work with at all.

Another thing to keep in mind is that people are resistant to change. If their farming practices have been paying the bills, why risk your paycheck to try a new method? CNC's method is definitely more environmentally friendly. It also seems to be yielding good results for him. He's provided pretty convincing photographic evidence of this. Why throw stones at a guy that has a good thing going? I don't get it.

I was a bit surprised myself at the absence of no-till farming operations by the big guys. I personally no-till but think mow and throw is silly. CNC needs rocks thrown at him Maybe it will knock some sense into him and he will begin to realize things like seed to soil contact, seed population, and proper seed spacing are critical factors to successful farming

He isn't farming. He is growing food plots.

I have used spray, throw and mow for my foodplots and it has worked very well especially considering the reduced inputs. I wouldn't use the same method if I was trying to grow a crop to harvest, but harvesting a crop isn't the goal.

I think you're the one not paying attention. What I get from him is ANYONE who doesn't use his method is wrong. I bet others get the same vibe.

Glad to see everyone is still interested in learning more about the Throw and Mow Method.........

And it bothers you sooo much.. yet here you are. CNC's opening comments were that this thread was for guys that WANTED to try his method and respectfully asked those opposed to debate him elsewhere. I for one would like to follow this thread without having to filter through all the bs.

Most folks with hunting property - especially leased land - have very little plantable acerage. Flat, open, plantable land is at a premium. Plant it like professional farmers do using proven methods that have worked for centuries, modern methods like no-till drilling, or simply throw your seed on top of the grass and hope for the best. I'll take what's behind door number 2.

This is said BS I was refering to. If you dont agree FINE! Just dont clutter up this thread with your unwanted opinions. Ever wonder how weeds grow? Do you disc up your yard and plant them? NO! they grow from the seed being spread every time you mow your grass or get blow in or tracked it. Yet somehow those little weed seeds manage to grow in your thick centipede sod. Sheesh, I just dont get why you guys care what someone else does.

……..and they accuse me of being the one that’s calling other folks “wrong”.

A good example of what you are talking about is all of the “throw and mow” clover that can be seen along the roadways right now despite no one tilling up the roadsides every year. I believe you could also find vetch in there as well along with the clover in most places.

No BS LOL , read Yelps post again, please. OK, I'm done.

My brassicas were demolished last fall by the deer browsing pressure. So, with that last mowing that you saw a few pics back…..I threw out 2 lbs per acre of turnips. This was not a terminating mowing of the rye….it will rebound and go to seed in the next few weeks. The idea being that the turnips will fill in any gaps of space and shade out the understory with a dense leaf canopy. This will do a couple of things…..1) It will smother out any weed competition that would eventually come in…and 2) The low to the ground, dense foliage will create a greenhouse effect over the soil surface which will rapidly speed up the decomposition of the remaining thatch……which will give us a more decomposed surface to broadcast our sunn hemp and buckwheat onto at the end of May or first of June. Again, this effect should have been created by one fall planting of rye, clover, brassica….but the combination of the deer wiping out the brassicas and me burying some of my clover too deep under thatch has left more space in the understory than I would like.

You can see the turnips beginning to sprout in the pic below…filling in any gaps. Ideally, you would want you soil surface to be more decomposed that this but I’m still getting plenty enough germination for it to serve its purpose.



I should probably also mention again that a lot of thing you see me doing are experiments to see what works, what doesn’t, the limitations of the method, etc…..Don’t feel like you have to try and replicate everything you see in my testing threads. Just learn and understand the principles of what we are doing and then do your own thing. My hunting club plots are still a good year behind my test plots here at home. I likely won’t do anything to them this again this summer other than adding a little fert during May or June.....letting the summer "weeds" produce biomass.

How much fertilizer do you apply in the Spring and Fall?

I apply Ca, P, & K just according to what the soil tests show. I apply N a couple weeks after a crop comes up or by visually reading the field to tell me it needs N. With all of the biomass I have on the surface, I probably should have applied some N earlier this spring. I wish I was closer to a chicken industry so I could get some litter to spread on the field.

How much does your soil test call for per acre?

I haven't gotten a soil test done yet this spring. I'll probably send one in sometimes in the next 2-3 weeks. I'm curious to see how well my K is still holding and if my pH has come on up into the 6's.

Riverwood, nobody is just throwing seed on top of grass. You spray and kill the standing vegetation, which thins it out and exposes the soil. Sew your seed and bushhog or drag the standing vegetation down over the seed. I've been doing it for several years and i have fine plots. Again, i don't give a rats ass how any you plant your plots, but don't act like this is ridiculous, when thousands of people are doing it. I see people throw grass seed into their yard all the time and cover it with hay. I've never seen anyone plow up their yard, and yet they grow grass, just fine. I'm glad there are some open minded people in the world, or we would all still be living in freaking caves.

Mayday!!....Mayday!!!!.....

Several people have requested that we have one thread on here showing the throw and mow method being used without out any back and forth arguments between us and the folks who strongly disagree. By all means blum....flame away....but let's keep this thread clean and use the Throw and Mow Debate Thread to hash out our differences.

Carry on.

By all means carry on.

What's the status of your plot now? Has it went to seed and started drying down yet?

What did you plant to make your ph increase?

Yes dumbsden. Please jump to the appropriate thread and explain the benefits of mow & throw over drilling

All of my cereal rye and clovers have went to seed, the rye is about 4' tall, but has not started drying out yet. With all this rain, its going to cause some compaction issues, if people get on the plots too quick. I may spray mine next week and let it be drying down some. Killed all the turkeys, i'm going to kill on my land for the year, so it won't mess me up.

I had lime spread at this time last year. There is still lime easily found in the topsoil today. The year I ceased tillage, my soil pH was down to 5.1…The first year I planted this field as a foodplot, which was a few years prior to that….it had sit fallow in weeds and grass for a number of years and the pH was 6.8. After several years of heavy tillage I had burnt up all of the organic matter in my soil. Therefore its nutrient holding capacity was severely decreased since all I had to fall back on without organic matter was mostly sand (very little clay content). There was nothing left to hold onto the 1200 lbs/ac of Ca that the field was originally holding. The Ca dropped from 1200 lbs/ac down to 300 lbs/ac…..so there was nothing to buffer the pH anymore.

I didn’t spread any lime the first year I went throw and mow. I grew mostly cereal rye and crabgrass which both do well in low pH conditions. Once I had a decent layer of OM back on the surface then I brought in the lime truck last year to replace all of that Ca that I had lost. Things looked a lot better on the fall test last year after the lime had a few months to work. I don’t recall the exact lbs/ac but I believe it was back up to around 1,000 lbs/ac of Ca and the pH was up to 5.8….Like I was saying though, there is still lime easily found in the topsoil that hasn’t been broken down yet so I’m expecting that the pH is still going to rise more than what the last test showed.

The really exciting thing now though is that I have actually built my organic matter up to a higher % than what I was working with even in the very beginning. I have a higher CEC value now than when the field was just sitting fallow before I owned it. My CEC was originally 4.1 then it fell to a low of 2.0….and now its up to 5.9… That means I can hold/deliver more nutrients and water…….and I’m still building more OM every year. I’ve brought my OM% up from less than 1%….to 3.4%. I would think that over time the trend upward on the graph won’t be as steep and it will flatten out.

Cool!........

I talked with CNC a year or so ago and got some advice on his methods. Convincing my dad that a disc wasnt necessary has been hard. The compromise was that a few of my fields were zero discing. Some of the fields were planted traditionally with discing the heck out of them. Some were kind of a hybrid between the two. The finished product from all 3 have been very similar. If anything we had better luck establishing the throw and mow at first. We planted and got very little rain if any for the first several weeks. The throw and mow held its own moisture better and got a head start.

Again we saw really no difference in the final product. Deer and turkeys keep them all mowed down regardless of how it was planted. You can tell a difference walking through them though. The traditional fields are much harder and uneven. The surface also dries out much quicker.

After saying all of that, i have no plans of discing again. Just not worth the extra time and effort for a field for a deer or turkey to eat of. Especially if they are going to feed in the field regardless of how i plant it. If i was a farmer i am sure my planting method would be a good bit different from what i would use to plant a food plot.

When are you gonna do your soil test?

That’s awesome man!……The hardest part is behind you now. A year from now I think you’ll really be smiling as your OM builds and conditions continue to improve. Keep us updated.

Sometimes between now and the end of May. Probably just do it one day when I'm headed that way anyways.

Yep. i think i may even have him convinced to cut it down to a hybrid between the two styles for his half while i do pure throw n mow on my half. Will be planting buckwheat and sunn hemp this year for the first time in our 2 big fields. Should work well.

Also went no till for my garden this year. Was mainly from laziness/lack of a tiller. Threw a bunch of leaves and clippings in there and let it grow all winter. sprayed it a week ago and stuck seed in the dirt and left all the crap on top of it. If it grows decent i will not be tilling the garden again anytime soon. soil had pretty much no organic material in it. It really needed this.

The biggest thing holding most people back from trying this method is the mental hurdle that must be gotten over first. Once you plant this way a time or two though and see it for your own eyes….then your whole outlook on how you manage food plots will change. I think back now to when I use to spray, mow, disk….disk some more…..drag….broadcast seed….drag again…yadda yadda yadda….and I think....

“What in the hell did I do all of that for?….

You did it because whoever showed you how to plant stuff, told you thats the way you do it. Thats why people can't wrap their mind around this. "Thats the way we've always done it, and by golly thats the way we'll always do it, come hell or high water." I may wait about spraying some of mine, because i'm planting sunflowers and milo for dove and i don't want to plant it to quick, so i may let mine die on its own.

I like that idea. I would at least wait long enough to give the crimson clover seed time to fully mature. Then, if you have a good stand established, you can just scratch it off of your list of things to buy this fall. Maybe grab a bag of durana or aroowleaf to add to the mix instead. Not spraying and rotating with the natural maturity of the crops will also allow you to avoid spraying, which will allow you to keep growing things like clovers and such non-stop without killing them off. If it eventually gets to where there is just too much clover to establish other things amongst it….which is not really a bad problem to have…..I think a very weak dose of gly at that point would stunt the clover enough to establish an overstory plant like sunn hemp or rye in the fall, while still keeping the clover alive to rebound in the understory. That will probably be a future experiment.

Here is a good video to watch on one of these rainy days like today. that covers many of the very same things you hear me discussing in these threads. I have no idea why it's not starting the video from the beginning. Maybe its just my computer. All you have to do though is slide the meter underneath the video back to the start and you'll be good to go.

Gabe Brown Seminar on Soil Health

Joe4majors (or anyone else)…. when he gets to the part about the cows….don’t let that part pass you by because you think “I don’t have cows…this doesn’t apply to me.” Focus on the principles of what’s happening. We can still replicate many of the same things with or without cows. Here’s just one example of how we can tweak these same principles to fit individual needs. You could use an e-fence set-up on your 1 acre field to keep the deer off of it during part of the summer. Then when you take the fence down, your mob grazers will come in just like the cows in the video. Right now my tractor is my cow herd. I don’t get all of the benefits he is showing but I’m still moving in the same direction from the standpoint of soil health.

For someone like Riverwood….this idea of using cattle as a tool opens up all kinds of new options for land management. It also diversifies their portfolio beyond just timber income, etc. Fire is a great tool but it doesn’t bring you $1,000 per head. Mob grazing cattle around a property is also like having a litter truck constantly riding around spreading manure. Why pay to have chicken litter hauled in or synthetic fertilizers spread when all you have to do instead is to take an hour and run another strand of hotwire around the area you want to set back succession and fertilize at the same time.

I've also heard that the turkey's love pecking in the cow patties......

Thats very interesting on the Gabe Brown Seminar good educational stuff there .

What's the latest that y'all have planted buckwheat and is it shade tolerant?

We've flown in buckwheat nearly til mid August. Don't know about shade but is wet tolerant.

All this buckwheat talk inspired me a new avatar. love the little rascals. Never planted buckwheat before or seen amyone that has. Is it for forage, seed , or just a cover crop? Does it grow well in south bama.

Forage and cover crop.....Yes, it grows well in south bama.

When you changed your avatar, did you put the image into photobucket first? Trying to figure out how to attach an avatar onto my profile page.

I just made that one by editing a clip off YouTube. Find a video you like and click the share icon then select "copy link". Then Google -create gif from video you tube. Follow the directions to paste the video link and edit out the 5 or 6 second part you want for the gif. Once created copy link for the gif- I think it's the middle option-then put link in your profile.

Cool.....Thanks, I will give that a try.

Will the buckwheat shade out weeds?

Yes........

Buckwheat Link

I'll jump on your thread and spread the love Seriously, one of the bigger problems I see with your method is weed control. I've have established winter plots containing everything you can name, legumes, small grains, grasses, etc. but without chemicals I don't see how weeds could be effectively managed and not take over the plot. Continuous mowing definitely don't work. Eventually some of the tougher weeds will over take the plot without the use of chemicals

Crab grass by any chance? Tough stuff to get rid of.

Wish I could list them all. Not that good at identifying weeds by name. I know wildlife don't eat them. Thistle, pigweed, etc

Thistle, pigweed, sickelpod, lambs quarters, henbit, curly dock, Johnson grass, perennial ryegrass, Bermuda grass, wild vetch, Virginia creeper, mares tail want me to keep naming them CNC? Heck corn in a soybean field is a weed if it's undesirable. A weed is no specific plant just a plant that's not supposed to be in a specific place. Just so you'll understand.

Look to your woods and diversity that your are providing. You are not really managing for deer alone will all of that diversity. You are managing for a vibrantly functioning ecosystem of which the deer are a part of…..along with the quail, the squirrels, the turkey, the dove, the fox, etc..etc.. To have all of these animal components of the ecosystem present then it requires you to have that plant diversity which provides all of the different aspects of what the ecosystem needs to function.

The same is true in your fields as well but there are more animals to consider than just the ones we see above ground. To have this same vibrant ecosystem existing in our fields then that requires that we feed the soil with this same type diversity. Vibrant biological activity (soil animals) requires diversity provided to the soil through many different plant species in the same manner that you need many different plant species in the forest in order to support the many different animal species that exist there as well.....

Where do these “nasty” weeds that you guys are naming occur the most often?……In tilled and/or degraded field conditions, correct? When tillage is ceased then many of the weed problems we see begin to cease as well. When soil health conditions are improved and a very diverse constantly growing cover crop is applied to the field…..then the nasty weeds are not given the advantage anymore that they once had. Some chemical treatments may be necessary in the beginning but as diverse cover crops are established and tillage is ceased then there will be less need for these type treatments.

Like 257 said…..a weed is simply defined as a plant that you do not want in a specific place. When I started my no-till experiment, my soil was so degraded that crabgrass was one of the few things that would really thrive in those conditions. It was my mismanagement that allowed it to be able to dominate. It wasn’t a field of crabgrass when I first bought this property. It was a pasture of Bermuda grass with a diverse list of typical broadleaf plants that you might see growing in your woods after a fire….ragweed. pokeweed, etc.. A natural system of diversity and no tillage in our fields do not allow those nasty weed species to get a foothold and take over…..it’s us that set the table for that to happen.

Here’s a question for debate………If we are growing a diverse mix of let’s say 15 different species for the purpose of wildlife management and soil health…..then why would something like ragweed be considered a “weed”? Is it not just the 16th specie amongst all the other diversity?

Here’s another scenario to think about….I wish I had a pic to go along with the question……There’s a cow pasture just down the road from me here that one of my neighbors owns. It is extremely over grazed without ever getting a rest. The cows have it eaten to a nub and thistle is growing EVERYWHERE. Now do you think the solution to the farmer’s problem is to start spraying all of that thistle .....or is the solution to address the root cause of the thistle being there which is his management practices of severely over grazing the field and depleting soil health? Which will fix the problem long term?

This is the same thing we do in our fields as well. Instead of looking to the root cause of the problem, we look for a solution like spraying to treat a symptom of the mismanagement.

Overgrazing hasn't depleted the soil health. If he's that bad of a manager he's led to depleted soil health by not liming not spraying grazon and not applying P and K. You just grandstand on soil health way too much. Look at the big picture don't just point to a single source. There's a thing called BMP and IPM. Both utilize many approaches to solve problems not one single appraoch such as just soil health. It's just one cog in the wheel.

Ok 257……A question specifically for you……

What effect does over grazing have on the root system of the plants in the field?

Effects of Overgrazing on Soil Health

Did anyone notice the part of the Paul Brown video where he talked about how our native prairie lands were managed by the herds of roaming buffalo along with the other residential grazers/browsers that lived on smaller scales such as deer. The buffalo herds did not continually graze an area until it was depleted. The came through…..ate a little….trampled a lot….and moved on. The impact of this short term “mob grazing” by the buffalo was that they fed the soil carbon through the biomass that they trampled down.... along with converting another part of that biomass to nutrient filled, biologically active manure. The result of this process was a vibrant, flourishing grassland or prairie ecosystem which the other resident animals then utilized and benefited from. None of this requied Grazon, lime, P&K applications, nor weed control. This is the same natural system that can be replicated using cattle to imitate the impact of the buffalo…..that is if they are managed correctly.

Ok Yota will you quit quoting google search info because you're getting so much rhetoric going now it's stupid. Thistle didn't grow because of depleted soil health. Thistle grew because of reduced competition by overgrazing. So we spray it to kill it. You don't know jackshit about modern agriculture. The world would starve to death if it was full of dipshits like you.

I think I’m going to do something I have never done before 257 and put you on my ignore list….You refuse to add anything truly constructive to the conversation and you seem to be content on doing nothing more than juvenile name calling and trying to distract others with BS. If you want to keep on trying to persuade folks that the solution to all their problems runs directly though your bottom line….then by all means go ahead. But I’ll leave you with some advice…..The more and more you talk….the more and more you make it apparent that you don’t know how to play anything else other than checkers. Adios amigo….

This is a good video on soil health. It’s a little long but well worth taking the time to watch when you have the time. It will give you a better idea of the importance of diversity in our fields. Again, I'm not sure what I'm doing to cause the videos to start in the middle....just pull your meter back to the start of the video.

Dr Jill Clapperton on Soil Health

257 I'm glad you in the ring now instead of me. Was worn down last week. I've got a serious question that will may get this thread back to more than arguing. Other than weed control, what are some of the benefits of tillage, and why do most of the big commercial farmers continue to till. I'm sure cost is one barrier but I see farmers spend hundreds of thousands on huge, new planters and continue to till. Why don't all farmers simply spray and drill?

one reason these days is soil compaction. We run so many big heavy grain carts combines and tractors over the ground especially the end rows we've started back with more tillage. But the main reason now is resistant weeds. We're back to using more residual herbicides which require tillage to incorporate like Treflan or cotoran and such that were using a lot of turbo tills. It's vertical tillage were using now more than breaking plows and rippers. There are some other reasons but that's the main 2 around north Alabama anyway. Thank god I finally made CNC's ignore list.

I enjoy watching AgPH on RFTV and knew that vertical tillage had really gained in popularity for residue management. Makes sense. Farmers have to have weed control for harvest equipment to gather crops. Thanks. And congratulations for taking my place.

Roverwood……Are you managing your fields for wildlife or row crops? Do you manage your forests for nothing other than timber?

All the above I farm dirty. Weeds not as big a deal for me because I don't harvest but I do spray row crops @ planting and again @ about 30". I'm just trying to rid my fields of invasive species and promote natives to the best of my ability. Chemicals are a huge part of our operation. That's why I ask my original question

Riverwood…..It’s ok to let your guard down man. There’s no need in dismissing the things I’m talking about just out of fear that your pride may take a hit if you don't. If this type of holistic field management interests you….I would be glad to help you the same way that I’m trying to help others on here. No one will call you a kool-aid drinker. Why does holistic management make so much sense in your forests but not in your fields?

CNC,

What are you doing to manage your deer herd? Have you noticed any increases in weight and antler size?

Thanks for your generous offer but I think I'm doing ok doing it the Riverwood way. Hell I may just hook up a disk and plow 40 acs just to add diversity. Hopefully it will dry this week and I can finish my burning, start spraying and have something to do other than read your redundant posts

Redundancy actually isn’t a bad thing when someone is learning or teaching a new concept. Many times people don’t grasp an idea the first time its presented to them or even the second time or third time.

I tried extending an olive branch Riverwood but if you choose to light it on fire then so be it.

That first one is a pretty vague question. On weights.....I don't weigh many of the deer here on my home property. I only average shooting 1 a year off of it. I mostly just observe herd behavior and do food plot testing here at home. It's only been within the last two years that I even shot a doe. They were just getting too concentrated.

So you call telling someone to ride down a dirt road with someone's thing in your mouth an extension of an olive branch? All Riverwood said is basically no thanks to your "scat and forgat" method and now he's burned up the olive branch that you about broke your shoulder out of socket to extend. How could you Riverwood?
I'll put up the definition of narcissist and let's see what the dictionary came up with. extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one's own talents and a craving for admiration, as characterizing a personality type. WOW, that rings a bell.
I'll also take one out of CNC's play book by posting a helpful link. If you don't know Jill Goldson, she's the best. LINK TO HELP

Meanwhile, back at the compound……Uh, I mean ranch.

Here’s a pic of my throw and mow test plot as of today. The cereal rye is going to seed at around waist high now after the early April mowing. The crimson clover is still in full bloom right now and the 1st year yuchi & durana clover are continually filling in more and more. The vetch has not yet bloomed but the first Austrian winter peas are beginning to bloom out a nice deep purple and whitish purple combo. An added bonus that I did not really count on is that I’m beginning to see milo and/or Egyptian wheat coming up volunteer from last summer's crop of seed. It’s looking like I may have a milo/EW component of my summer mix without having to add any additional seed. We'll see how much comes in over the next few weeks.



The first of the winter pea blooms. Looks like the field should really pop with them over the next week or so. The hairy vetch should be blooming soon as well.

how do you know when the seed heads on cereal grains are mature enough to germinate? Do they have to get brown and dry out before you mow them?

http://www.aldeer.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1324353#Post1324353

For those desiring to debate the validity of this technique for growing a deer food plots please go to the link above for that purpose. Some of us desire to read what the man has to offer. Without all the back and forth BS.

thank you,

I.E. Drink the kool-aid, and shut up with all that reasonable non-sence

None of the big commercial farmers, still plow where i live, they all use a no-till drill. The stubble from the previous planting is still visible, but the plot is brown, where they have sprayed, and then all of a sudden you'll start seeing it green up in rows. They don't disturb the weed seed bank. I don't have major problems with weeds and grasses. I also don't have a problem spraying them, if i do. A sreally smart man told me one time that if grass contiually shows up in your plot, then nature is telling you, you need more carbon in that plot, so plant a grass specie's, such as corn,milo,millet,sorghum, or egyptian wheat. That way you will be adding carbon, and also adding food for wildlife. Over time, the unwanted grass will diminish. You can also get rid of a lot of weeds in your yard, simply by raising your ph, by liming, instead of spraying.

I'm not 100% sure at exactly what point the seed become viable for germination later on. I would think that as soon as it begins to brown down they would be fine but it may be ok earlier than that. I'll see if I can find us a better answer.

I'll take a pic later on but I've got a small test plot where I allowed cereal rye to go to seed last year and then reseed itself. The purpose of the experiment was to see how much I could grow without any additional seed added. I probably ended up with about 30-40% coverage compared to a normal stand. It's not a full stand by any means but I'll still take that free seed.

One of the criticisms of this method is folks saying that you have to put down more seed in order for it to work. I disagree. If I'm producing this much seed for free from all of my crops then I'm actually looking at being able to eventually use less.

The clover trio of crimson, yuchi arrowleaf, and durana.....

I'm picking up my buckwheat and sun hemp on Friday. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. My plan is to plant one plot by disking, seeding and covering and the other "throw and mow."

Cool!.......What is the current condition of the plot you plan to throw and mow? Was it disked last fall?

I’ve said this before but let me go ahead and say it again for anyone who is getting ready to do a throw and mow planting this summer. The first planting is not the one you want to do a side by side comparison against. Throw and mow takes advantage of the soft soil surface and abundant soil moisture that comes from having a thick layer of decomposed organic matter encompassing the top several inches of soil. It takes a little time for that OM to build up and for the soil surface to change to that fluffy potting soil texture. Until that happens…..you’re still just transitioning to the throw and mow method. The first planting, especially if it’s a summer planting, is just going to be trying to get down some biomass in order to get this process started. I wouldn’t even approach the first planting from the standpoint of trying to grow a “picturesque” summer plot…..The main goal of step 1 is just to grow a bunch of hay to cover the soil surface and begin building this layer of OM…..Its like making a mulch pile on your soil suface….it takes time.

It is almost a half acre and was planted in NWTF wheat using a disk and drag. I realize that I'm just preparing for the fall with the goal of building some OM. It has been a few weeks since I've been to the camp but I anticipant that the wheat is mid-thigh high. I am not going to spray this weekend since rain is in the forecast, although I will in the fall. I plan to broadcast buckwheat and sun hemp and mow enough to cover.

Bambam, thats a good mixture to plant, and it will do well using this method, as long as you don't have hard crusted clay soil. I grow some fine plots in rocks, so you should be fine.

Here are just a couple examples of why I don’t think that we as wildlife managers should take the same approach to “weeds” as what a farmer might. Do the deer call this a weed? There were several of these scattered around this area and they were all heavily browsed……. and its not just that they are browsed but look at the browse resistance properties that the plants have. Why eliminate this browse resistant broadleaf plant that the deer obviously like, only to replace it with another broadleaf plant like sunflowers that will likely not tolerate the same browsing pressure. Why not just grow them all together?




Same thing…..all heavily browsed……

Anyone who disagrees feel free to comment but please keep it constructive……..

I agree. I've cut half of the 1-acre plot I plan to plant this year. Simply by doing that I have different "weeds" (honeysuckles) coming up as opposed to the other half of the field that hasn't been tended to in years.

Here are a few more plants growing along side the clover in my apple orchard. Why would we want to take these items off of the deer buffet and make it less diverse? Why not just throw in a little more seed and ADD TO the diversity. It’s a 15-20+ way summer mix that nature provides for free. All I did was sweeten it up with a few varieties of clover. I may throw out some milo with it as well next week.

Maybe cause marestail is one of the worst weeds known to farmers ding dong. You think it's a good thing??? Just goes to show how out of touch you are with reality.

Another area where plants such as these help us out, other than adding diversity to the salad mix……is in our effort to produce biomass above ground and in the root zone for the purpose of building soil organic matter. If you’ve been tilling for years and have your soil down to zero organic matter….then these plants will be some of the best options you have in the beginning. Why? Because they will tolerate poor conditions, deer browsing, and still produce biomass for the soil. There is a reason why these type plants start dominating in agricultural fields…..Its because we as humans have created the situation that gives them an extreme advantage over more finicky food crops. Growing in a very diverse “prairie” type mix, with good soil health, that is left undisturbed from tillage....these plants will simply fill their niche and not take over.

What would happen if you terminated all of these plants and planted a crop of say only cowpeas and sunflowers in the same field???……They likely would be decimated and produce little biomass to feed back to the soil. Therefore, you would actually be regressing from a soil health standpoint as decomposition of OM never stops whether you produce more biomass or not.

One more aspect that leaving the diversity provides you from a soil health standpoint is underground in the root system. We are not only producing biomass above ground but we are also producing it below ground as well through the root systems of the plants. An example is the extensive root system of cereal rye. Let me see if I can explain this without hunting down a picture…… So lets imagine we are looking at a soil profile picture from the surface down to 3-4 ft. One of our goals from a soil health perspective is to fill up that profile with plants roots as deep as we can get them. Adding diversity to the field adds many different shaped root systems, which fills that soil profile at many different levels. When the plants die, these root systems rot and become organic matter.

I'm sure your very knowledgeable on the subject, but your childish name calling makes it impossible to take you seriously.

Well, I throwed and mowed for the first time today. The wheat on my test plot was thinner than I would have liked but I'll blame that on the NWTF wheat, which I'll never buy again. Hemp was sold out Friday so all I had was buckwheat and sunflowers. Here's some pics of before and after.

Im with you on these childish posts...........who cares if its bad for a farmer. We are talking about planting and growing food for deer!

Yep

They just can't grasp that concept. Heck the buck my daughter shot walked right past a tecomate plot and was eating something growing in the fire break.

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This is about waste high with mainly trictacale and several varieties of clover I'm considering trying to plant this in a week or two. The main will be I/c peas and sorghum will see how it does the soil has plenty of moisture right now.

Glad to see you guys posting up your throw and mow experiments. Looking forward to seeing how you guys progress. I just threw a little milo off into my field today ahead of this rain coming in. My cereal rye is thin enough now that I may not even mow it again. Probably going to throw in some buckwheat around the end of May still.

bambam.....If we could rewind the clock about 6 weeks, it would have done your plot a lot of good to have hit it with some nitrogen about the time of spring green up. You would have produced more biomass from your wheat. Wheat is a lot more finicky to poor soil conditions and nutrient defiencies (like lack of N)....as opposed to something like cereal rye. If you can get your hands of some elbon or wrens abruzzi rye this fall I would recommend trying it. In the beginning stages is when your field is going to need the most help from synthetic fertilizers. Over time as we build fertility then you will reduce the need for them.

Something I should mention while its own my mind......All of your seed will likely not sprout in one big flush using this method. I usually see a lot of my seed sprout with the first good rainfall but its very common from what I've seen for new seedling to keep sprouting for several weeks depending on the rain. Just something to keep in mind.

Turkey neck......Your standing thatch looks nice but from what I can see of your soil surface, that is going to be your biggest drawback with this first planting. Maybe with all of the rain we've had it won't just be dry and crusty. Probably wouldn't hurt to go ahead and throw out some extra seed on this first go around if you have it.

There could be several reasons for that happening.

Thanks for the tips. Fortunately we got a really good rain at the camp today. It'll be two weeks before I can get back up and will post some pics.

Yellow, red, and purple colors are signs of plant stress from things like rapid temp change, nutrient deficiencies, lack of oxygen, ect…..The next time you go back I would take a couple bags of 17-`17-17 and go ahead and get something out for now to give the plants a boost. The new plants will be growing in the same nutrient deficient soil that caused that poor looking wheat. While your there pull a soil sample and send it in to have tested. It’s something like $7 at Auburn. I’d also recommend taking back a bag of milo with you and throw some of it out before the next rain. It would be a good thing if you have some type of grass specie growing in there this summer. “Grass” species are our biggest suppliers of organic matter….high C/N ratio. For winter and summer try to include 3 components of your mix……grass, broadleaf, legume. They all play a role in making the whole cycle function properly.

I've got all 3 with my fall foodplot. I think I'm gonna allow mind to grow, like I always do. I'm thinking of waiting until my fall planting.

I think that would probably be a good option for a lot of folks. If you have small plots and/or high deer densities, then you will likely be ahead of the game to just grow lush crops of native browse in the summer time along with some clover. There’s nothing wrong with that. Continue adding to the fertility needs and produce a good crop of biomass for the soil. Doing this will likely allow you to turn the soil around a lot quicker than trying to do it with “crop” type plants that may struggle or get wiped out by browsing.

N2turkey…….You said awhile back that you were afraid your plots may be too wet for this method. Unless your talking about just straight up flooding, I actually think the wetter plots will be the ones that do the best with this method. The reason being, the more soil moisture you have….the better germination you will get. Here’s a pic of a low area in my field that stays moister than other areas. Look how well the turnips are germinating. That has to be nearly 100%. The other areas of the field are doing well but you can tell a difference where there is more moisture. This is a rate of 2 lbs/ac.

Here’s another pic showing the turnips filling in the understory and casting a canopy over the soil surface. This area was a leave row from last fall where the standing thatch was just too thick and didn’t allow anything to establish. No harm, no foul though. I now see my “too thick” threshold.

It'll be awhile before I can get into our plots. They are pretty wet right now.

The turnips in the pics as well as the milo I threw out before this rain were both planted with just my legs and a bag spreader. It just depends on the current conditions of last year's fall planting as to whether you could get by without mowing right now.

Ours still have water standing in them. The clover and chickory from my fall plots are taking off, though.

Turnips are really beginning to fill in after all the rain we've had. The Austrian winter peas are still growing and providing browse even now during May. Hopefully they will provide me with some nitrogen as well. There's a pretty nice crop of 'em across the field.

Got a pass today and was able to check my buckwheat. The timing was good and I got two solid days of rain on my throw and mow test plot. As you can see, my thatch is very thin but I'm working to change that. I did notice there is more germination in my tracks but it's also coming up outside of the tracks. Per CNC's suggestion, I will sling some 17-17-17 as soon as I can. Half acre plot. Total work time 35 minutes.

That ground looks broken. I hope it works for you not matter how you did it. Keep us posted.

The neighborhood hog gang has taken an interest in the throw and mow concept too and decided to rough up a few spots after it was planted. The plan was to simply throw it, mow it and see what happens. I was pleased with the 7 day results with such little effort. I'll be sure to keep you posted going forward.

Nice!.....I think you're off to a good start bambam. If the plot is only 1/2 acre then throw out 1 bag of 17-17-17 now and another one in about a month...rather than two upfront. Soils with low CEC values can only hold and deliver a small amount of nutrients. The more you throw out beyond that holding capacity, then the more fert-$$$ that's just sitting out there waiting to be washed away. Be sure to get a soil test at some point. Right now we can take an educated guess and pretty well assume that you are deficient in most areas but once you get things turned around you don't want to just blindly throw out fert and lime.

That grass I see in the plot is going to jump on you eventually. That is not a bad thing right now. Of course its going to mess up the orderly look that some will think makes it a failed planting.....but to turn around the soil OM, that grass is what we need right now. We can't just keep perpetually producing that thin thatch that we had for this planting. If we do, then a year or two years from now, we will be no farther along than we are right now. Thin thatch = very little OM. Keep us posted.

I grow buckwheat all the time using this method. I let it go to seed and bushhog it down and the seed sprouts and grows again. In Alabama, we can triple crop it, really helps when your wanting to build your soil.

A lot of what we are doing these days, from a food plot perspective, is a direst result of the marketing strategies that have been used by the commercial BOB seed market. For years now you have heard pH and proper seed bed preached over and over and over. Now I’m not saying pH and soil surface conditions aren’t important as they most certainly are….but just thinking those two aspects are the keys to successful food plots is being very short sighted. It’s kind of like if you took the stance that wind speed and humidity were all one needed to consider when prescribed burning. There’s just a lot more to it than that. With that being said……

I think the role of water is the most under appreciated aspect of food plotting and is likely having a bigger impact on your field than either of the two prior mentioned. I see folks go to all kinds of lengths to get lime into a field or to make a pristine seed bed…..but rarely do you ever hear someone talk about managing for soil moisture. It’s like folks just don’t even give it consideration and rely strictly on the hope and prayer method when it comes to water.

Take what has just happened this spring as an example. It’s been rain, rain, rain up until this point. Now folks are starting to throw down seed to grow summer plots and what has all of sudden happened??? The rain shut off just like someone cutting off a water hose. The long range forecast I saw on the news last night was nothing but sunshine and rising temps. It’s not like this is an unusual pattern either. In fact it seems to be more the rule instead of the exception……Same thing happened last fall.

So how did you manage all of the moisture that fell this spring? Where is that moisture now? Is it in your soil for your plants to utilize or is it in the creek or lake? Has your soil been freshly tilled and drying out for weeks or is it covered over and conserving soil moisture? Does your soil have structure and allow rainwater to infiltrate the ground or does the water just runoff?? Are you only relying on the rain that might fall after you plant or are you efficiently utilizing all of the rainfall that we receive even prior to planting? Just some things to think about.

Consider this too……Where your water goes, then so goes your fertilizer.

Our plots are still wet. It'll take alot of dry, hot weather before I can even bushhog our plots.

Wow, you must have some low lying area's full of clay.

Probably right on the river is my guess....

There really shouldn’t be a whole lot of need for most folks to do much in their fields before mid May. I experimented some this spring but had I not smothered part of last fall’s planting then I would have just watched it grow all spring. There might be a need to throw out some fert during early spring but that can usually be done by hand or with a 4-wheeler.

The crimson clover is still not done blooming and the vetch and peas are just really starting to bloom. Still plenty of food in the field at this point and I want all of this stuff to reseed itself. The natural transition of crops occurs here during mid May when last fall’s mix matures. We all tend to want to plant as soon as possible so lots of folks start doing things in April or even late March but really about mid May is when you want to transition to summer stuff.

You can see here that the deer are just hammering the clovers right now.

I'm a long way from the river.

Our fall plantings are producing on into June, at least. I usually start bushhogging about June, just to keep it from getting too tall.

Are you growing any durana clover in your fields? If you've got that kind of moisture then it should thrive and possibly even last all summer for you. I'm fortunate here at home that I have all kinds of soil conditions to play with across a very short span. Where I have my really moist areas the durana is growing like mad.

Yes, it's really starting to take off now. It's in the mix that I plant. I'm in the process of converting one of the fields to a predominantly clover plot. I've got an area in one plot that has some shade to it. I'm thinking of doing some crimson clover and cereal rye this fall. This will be the first planting for the shaded area.

CNC, check your PM's.

The cereal rye is fully mature now and should start turning brown really soon. A lot of good grain heads in the field that will likely be eaten by the deer once dried. Hopefully some will find its way down into my thatch and come back this fall as volunteer rye. There’s also a lot of good standing biomass to return back to the soil. Going to let it brown up and then toward the end of this month I will likely mow it down. There is no need in having your fields either tilled up or burned down with chemicals during the spring when you can keep providing food all the way through May.

I've been providing food with boot top high soybeans for a month now. I disked under a few standing beans in Feb and now they're nearly boot top high. They're eagle beans. I burned down my standing wheat cover crop this week so I'll give your throw and now method a chance on a few acres with sunn hemp next week as I bushog and cultipack it.

Oh no!!! 257 drank the kool aid. Just kidding. I'm gonna try to scatter a few small seeds into some plots I didn't drill, just to have a side by side comparison.

I will cultipack mine as well

257, i use this method with my sunnhemp and buckwheat mixture and it works well. Good luck.

Just keep staring at the Yoda fellas......

It's because we went from too wet to too dry in 8 days. Not disking anything right now.

A closer look at the mature crop. Notice all of the other plants growing in amongst the rye such as the winter peas, vetch, clover, turnips…..diversity! This also serves as very good weed suppression. Sorry about all the moisture on the camera lens...

X a bunch

Guess you will be next

It was at that moment that 2dogs peered down to see the red solo cup he had clutched in his left hand moving closer and closer to his lips. He tried to resist but he was helpless to the allure of the red liquid inside…….Drink up Brother 2dogs…..Drink up.

257......Try mixing in some cowpeas with your sunn hemp. Winter peas and cowpeas both have worked really well for me.

Seconds before the kool-aid touched my lips, I heard one of my 160's whisper " if it ain't broke, don't break it". I quickly poured the red elixir down the drain and replaced it with a Silver Bullet from the fridge .

Haha Busch light here for me too pal. I just can't do it. My disk is hooked up I'll roll it once more and pack it. Just can't bring myself to utter failure.

I'm still drinking my Coke Zero. I just scattered some left over seeds. Not ready to get rid of my drills yet this is the first time I've broadcasts seed in several years. One thing that is immediately obvious is just how efficient and accurate no-till drilling is. I've got a Vicon spreader, the ones with the spout that goes back and forth. Vicon is a really good, accurate spreader compared to the red ones you see at tractor supply. Still, no comparison to drilling. Maybe it's just me but I use many more times the amount of seed when I broadcast compared to drilling. Probably 5-10xs as many seed. One of the toughest parts of no-till farming is gaining confidence in your drill. You will plant several acres, look in the seed box, and recheck the seed rate. It is amazing just how efficient a drill is. If you are planting many acres, or expensive seed, it's worth going to the local Soil Conservation office and renting a drill for $10/ac. You will be a believer in farming like a farmer. You too will pour out the kool-aid, take off the tennis shoes, and put on your farmer boots

Right now now over here in the real farming world we've gotten too dry to plant even in no till. Man it sealed the ground up tight with all the heavy rains this spring. A lot of farmers are working up no till fields just so they can lay seed up in the dust planting for a rain. It's tough out here right now

Moving along………….


John sent me a couple pictures yesterday of his 2nd year throw and mow plot. He’s working in very sandy conditions similar to my test plots at home. The overall productivity of his plot has greatly improved this year over last. Last year around this same time his field looked very similar to the picture bambam posted of the struggling wheat with zero grain production and very little clover. No offense intended bambam. This year conditions have improved and he will actually produce some grain as well as a decent little stand of clover and a some leftover biomass to add back to the soil…..Nice job John…..

I'm throw and mowing my sunn hemp and peas tomorrow. Will be disking up a field to plant corn too. I just can't let the corn sit on top.

I'm gonna check on my fields tomorrow. I'm guessing that they are still too wet to get into with a tractor, though.

Its very tempting to go ahead and plant now with this increased chance of rain next week…… but I think I’m going to stick to the original plan and wait another 1-2 weeks before doing any throwin and mowin. A lot of hairy vetch is still blooming and I want it to reseed itself. I also want to let the rye really brown down this year before I make the switch. I think it will mow much easier that way. Hopefully we will see another flurry of rain toward the end of the month.

Purple blooms of hairy vetch.......

Cereal rye is going brown nearly overnight…………

Still pretty wet, but was able to bushhog my plots today. I got lucky because I wouldn't have been able to after this upcoming rain.

Using cereal rye in the garden…………

Where is this upcoming rain you speak of?

I'm torn here. Ground isn't working up worth a flip. It's too dry. Do I throw and mow on the left and compare to disk and cultipack? Ground on left is rolling and rocky. What to do. What to do.

Go ahead and add some milo into the throw and mow mix as well. It's cheap and does well with this method.

I got a pile of grain sorghum seed. Thinking that and sunflowers together. I'm planting corn into my worked up ground. Then sunn hemp and peas going on my back 6 acres over the hill.

I like the idea of having diverse mixes. That left hand side looks thin enough that I think you could just broadcast seed into it and then cultipack. If it were really thick thatch then you might smother out the seedlings but I think that shorter thatch would work well that way. What do you think?

It's waist high volunteer wheat I burned down last week. It's not super thick. I'm going to seed then try to pack. If that doesn't look good I'll bushog then pack. Gonna try it without bush hoggin first.

I put in my plots at the house yesterday. They were chest high with rye and waist high with arrowleaf and crimson clover. Spread sunn hemp/buckwheat/ and some IC cowpeas and mowed over the top. Got a little rain over night, more arriving Friday.

What? No pics!! .......Sounds like you had plenty of thatch this round. Did you have any trouble getting the hay to spread fairly evenly?

I got some pics, i'll post them in your thread on QDMA.

Instead of dragging out the final weeks of the fall mix.....these last couple weeks of hot dry weather have brought the whole test field to abrupt halt within just a few days. Everything is pretty much toast now with the exception of a few hairy vetch plants still hanging on. The clover is going semi-dormant and the turnips are either doing the same or just terminating. In any case, I'm looking very good for planting next week. I went ahead and spot sprayed a few stray spurge nettle plants and a little around the edge of the field to minimize encroachment.

I'm going with a mix of milo, cowpeas, and buckwheat. I threw out some milo seed a couple weeks ago but with this dry spell we went through I think I may go ahead and put out a few more lbs/ac next week with the peas and buckwheat. I may regret that later. Too much milo and all you will have is milo.

One more pic of the field terminating naturally before we mow it down. That’s durana clover you see in the understory going semi-dormant. It will return later on……A good window of opportunity now to establish my summer plants. No major spraying needed...just some minor spot spraying with a back pack sprayer.

Checked my test plot today and spread one bag of 13-13-13. We had one bag left over from last fall.

Looks like a fine stand of buckwheat. Good job Bambam.

Nice job bambam......

On my small lease (40) acres, I have small food plots (2) about 1/2 acre each. I have a field about 2-3 acres but it is grass, I think its Bahai and I have tried to disc this up and plant parts of it but the grass just comes back and it is hard to disc. I thought about the possibility of keeping it mowed down to build up thatch and try the throw and mow method. Any advice?

I'd try coming in around the first couple weeks of September and nuking it with some glyphosate. Give it a couple weeks to brown up....broadcast your fall mix into the dead grass and then mow. I like a base mix of cereal rye and crimson clover. You can get more diverse from there if you wish. Depending on the conditions of the field, you may want to do a midsummer mowing of the grass just to keep it more manageable. Post up a pic if you get a chance.

Scratch crimson clover seed off the list of things to buy this fall………….

After this rain "if it even happens" I'm going to disk and cultipack the rest of my farm. I'll get it good and level and plant grain sorghum and sunn hemp on 5 acres each. That is on my rockiest poorest ground so I'm going to use these 2 as my base thatch layer for establishing those 2-5 acre fields into dedicated clover fields from this fall on. I hate disking them cause of terraces and rocks. We shall see how this endeavor turns out in due time.

We want to throw and mow in some plots that have a good bit of Johnson grass. What would you suggest to plant that may get ahead of it, or do we need to spray first?

I haven’t dealt with JG personally but here is what I would give a try……

If you could possibly get to it pretty soon then I would go ahead and nuke the field with some gly now. Give it 10 days or so to get a kill……then broadcast on a heavy crop of milo and buckwheat and mow. We’re going to assume that you will still have some JG present this summer so in a couple months or so (before any JG goes to seed) mow the field again. The milo will come right back and the buckwheat will reseed if its already bloomed. Just make sure the JG doesn't go to seed this summer.

Later this fall around September I would nuke the field again…….wait for it to kill….then broadcast cereal rye, crimson clover, and hairy vetch. The following spring I would repeat the same process but hopefully by then you will have reduced the JG down to levels where you can just spot spray instead of nuking the whole field.

Has the JG already went to seed, if so it will definately come back.

You're not going to plant anything that will get ahead of Johnson Grass except maybe kudzu. I have 1 field that I've been fighting since I bought my place. It used to be thick 6'-8' tall. JG is a prolific reseeder, but it will also survive the winter and resprout from rhizomes. I started spraying it with a hot mix of gly to get it under control (sprayed with a tractor with boom sprayer). After several years I have it mostly knocked back but still have to spot spray every time I'm at the camp during summer.

One thing that is very important is try your best not to spread the JC seed. If you mow a field with JC, stop at the exit and sweep your mower and tractor off the best you can. An ounce of prevention is worth a 55 gallon drum of glyphosate... err I mean a pound of cure.

I’ve got a question to pose for debate or discussion if anyone wants to play......

Looking above at bambam’s throw and mow plot that he has growing and considering the weather conditions we are experiencing……..which of the following do you feel like is more important for him?

1)To disk up and cultipack the field in order to achieve a pristine seed bed

Or

2)To cover the surface with hay and conserve soil moisture

You know me, i vote #2. Freshly plowed dirt looks moist, for about an hour, then it starts to dry out. Lift up some cut grass and see how moist it is underneath.

Too many variables though. Depends on seed. We talking corn or clover? Different situations warrant different approaches. But moisture is always key however you get your seedbed ready.

What about a mix of cereal rye and crimson clover?.....or buckwheat and milo?

Throwin and Mowin.......

Had to call it ear;y with about 3 strips left to mow this afternoon. Lighting starting popping off close to me right before dark. I'll have to get a finished pic tomorrow.

By not spraying and terminating the whole field…..the clover and turnips in my field are able to keep right on growing along with the summer mix I just planted. They should really jump now after being released and getting some rain. I thought they were just about to all die it was so dry but they seem to already be perking up after a couple of decent showers over the weekend.

A closer look…………

One more pic of the standing thatch being mowed down over the seed. You can agaim see the clover and turnips in the understory.

I didn't spray mine either, this year, clover and turnips aren't the only thing enjoying some sunshine, summer weeds are showing up on my fields. I hope i don't regret not spraying.

Have you gotten any rain up there over the last few days??

Mowing complete.....Now we wait.

At this point after the mowing, the vast majority of the seed has worked its way down into the hay you see. Its not really that difficult for small seeds like milo, buckwheat, clover, etc to find their way through the hay to the soil surface. Underneath the thatch is a moist, humid environment that’s ideal for seed germination. The topsoil is no longer anything like the nearly pure sand I started with……..

I thought I would post this pic up right behind that last one to show how much the soil has changed over the last few years. This is what the soil looked like in my plot the last year I tilled it……pure sand. Now look back at the other pic above that was taken of the soil today.

I didn't do a pure throw and mow with the lack of rain we were having. We bush hogged most of my main field then ran a disc over it one round after the seed was sewn. We did no bush hogging on the other two fields. I have a lot of thatch in my main field still on top and a little in the other two since they were thin. I've got a lot of seed sprouting right now and with the rain yesterday I think they will bust out in the next few days. A lot of my clover is coming back alive so it should be interesting to see how they come out.

Yea, i got two good rains Saturday and the first part of Sunday was misty. Looked like it may have had a light rain Sunday night.

Cool!.....Snap some pics if you get a chance. I like to see how these techniques are working out on other people's fields.

I hope I can catch one more passing shower this afternoon. If so, I should be off and running later this week. Things are moist under the thatch right now but I'd really like to saturate everything down one time. That thatch on top will soak up a ton of water itself.

........and just like that...48 hrs later we have buckwheat sprouting. That chit don't waste no time!

One more "after" pic of the mowing with a little better afternoon lighting………..

I've got buckwheat beans and corn showing up in mine. I hope to get them kicking next week if I can get some fert rained in. I will be putting some 17-17-17 down this weekend.

I planted corn Wednesday night. It's up hand tall today. I love humid wet weather! Sunflowers are at V4. I'll spray my imazamox on them next week then 150 lbs of urea and it'll be off to a good start! Sun hemp and milo going in next week.

My soil test called for a little bit of P....That's what the white stuff was in my mix. The test didn't call for it but I think I'm going to go ahead and add a little more K too. It had fallen off a little from the last test. I hope we can get at least one more follow up rain on the field before things turn dry again. It's coming. It's just a matter of when.

Pics or it never happened........

Guess you planted clear field sunflowers?

I did.

I planted clear field for couple years. Best I've ever seen. Drew doves like crazy. Best looking flowers I've ever seen. Actually had some pics of my field in a couple of outdoor magazines. My had bare dirt unders flowers which the birds love.

Only problem is the expense. I can do corn with atrazine & gly for about 1/3 the $. I used the clear field system to get rid of Bermuda grass in cow pastures. Works as advertised. Good luck. Bet you will have a great dove field

BTW sure wouldn't sling those seed on top of the ground

Haha I sure didn't. I disked covered and cultipacked. But mine is an 8 acre "test plot"!!!!

Crimson, i got sunflowers coming up in one field and buckwheat, cowpea's, and sunn hemp coming up in another. We still need some good rains.

Yep, we’re going to have to get some good saturating rains before everything really gets going. I’m going to have to call false alarm on my buckwheat sprouting so soon. I knew that was too quick. It looks just like a little buckwheat plant though.....but I think if it were then it would be sprouting all over the field by now and its still just that one little spot. Probably just a weed. I do see beans sprouting tails though.

What is really depressing is to watch a frog strangler like this miss you my about a half mile and never get a drop. That one had tigers in it too….I could feel it in my foot.



On a happier note…..My vegetables are doing well.

This is my first year to grow an Indigo Rose tomato. Not sure how its going to taste but it’s a cool looking tomato anyways………..

I’m beginning to see a number of patches of volunteer EW perking back up now in the test plot……….

First cowpeas showing up this afternoon. If we could have just caught that storm yesterday it would have been ideal. Looks like we have to wait until Monday now.

Just remember farming is full of if's!!!

The biggest “if” I have in these sandy soil conditions revolves around water. That’s one of the reasons why I’m willing to sacrifice optimal seed bed prep in order to have optimal moisture infiltration and retention. It doesn’t bother me if my fields aren’t “orderly”. By having a diverse mix going like I do now….I know my field will fill up with plant life and the deer will be there just the same. My focus is on good plant health and pushing the productivity of the field. Even if I still have some spots of crabgrass come in (which I’m sure is going to happen)…..I want to see it healthy and vigorously producing biomass. If it’s struggling to grow and turning colors, then that means that I still have soil issues that need addressing. I want my engine finely tuned and turning over some RPM's....not just struggling to idle and going put put put....

It's good for us that use tillage too to watch the forecast close. It's not too hard to figure out what's right and when it's wrong. Planted 6 more acres of corn today. I'm staggering my planting dates hedging against a dry spell and deer browsing. Got 8 acres of ankle high sunflowers. 4 acres of hand high corn. Today planted 6 more acres of corn. Sunday I'll plant 5 acres of milo and 3 acres of sunn hemp.

What kind of soil are you dealing with up there 257 ??? What's the average CEC value of your fields?

Abernathy silt Loam undulating phase and Decatur silt Loam level phase on my farm. But here

Cool maps!……Mine is a Conecuh Fine Silty Loam. The CEC when I began was around 2.1…,,I’ve gotten up in the 5’s now with the increase in OM. My OM has gone from less than 1% to 3.8%.

Alright Two Fitty…….It’s on like neck bone now.

I didn't know this was a contest? You asked I answered

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The top three pics are of my bottom field which always does the best. It has good soil for the most part. We bush hogged it spread seed then went over it one time with the disc. There is still a lot of thatch on top in most of the field except where it was thin. The last pic is my top field that is really rocky with poor soil and we just seeded it then ran over it one time with the disc. I have a lot of seed coming up and plan on fertilizing this weekend with rain back in the forecast next week. I'm looking forward to the results this year.

That looks really nice Turkey....That's a really nice crop of biomass you produced in that first pic. I think you'll appreciate having that hay layer on top of the soil as our temps keep getting hotter. One day last summer I checked the soil temps each hour for one area of my field that was covered and one area that had bare soil. I then compared them on a graph and the difference was pretty substantial. Ideal growing temps for most plants are in the low 70's...Once you start climbing higher and higher then plant growth is effected. If it gets hot enough then the plant will just shut down.

My buckwheat is filling in nicely. I over seeded with sunn hemp and milo today. The buckwheat is flowering. How can you tell when it goes to seed? The 13-13-13 I added last week really gave the plot a boost.

Really, really nice bambam. Congrats!...You've just done what many said is not possible. Welcome to the Throw and Mow Method........

Does anyone need their Kool-Aid freshened up?...... 257 and Riverwood are coming around with a fresh batch.

I'll be filling a cup before long. Just ordered a new rough cut mower today and I plan on trying some throw n mow on my gas line. I'll have 11,000 questions within the month.

Ask away......

This is pretty much my first time growing buckwheat but I would think that you will see the flowers start disappearing once it goes to seed.

257......Are you familiar with buckwheat?

Only experience I got is we usually fly it on some wet holes in July to duck hunt over. It's a very short maturing plant. But that's about it. I tend to stick with the traditional type crops I'm more familiar with.

I'm getting it now, Throw n Mow allows for more liberties than disc and cover.

I've never had anything eat the buckwheat that I have planted, unless I count bees for the pollen. It is a good soil builder though and I still use it. I had a land owner tell me deer down there wouldn't eat Çrimson Clover yet they tear it up when I plant it.

I think a lot of it has to do with how many deer you have and the quality/quantity of the other forage present on the property. Deer will eat just about anything.....whether or not they have to is a different question though. I think some of these crops like buckwheat, which are not at the top of the preference list, will be a good indicator to help folks figure out where they fall on this sliding scale of browsing pressure from property to property.

Something else to throw in here as well that I've said in the past....I think for many folks, especially the ones with small plots, you will see better long term results if you concentrate summer planting more on improving soil health rather than feeding deer. There can still be an attraction component to the field but making the first priority for summer plots be soil health improvement. The winter plots will reap the benefits as a result. For someone with 1/2 acre plot or a 1 acre plot.....(heck even larger than that really)....your main goal for having that food plot and the goal that is the most realistic to accomplish is winter time attraction for viewing/harvesting. We're not going to make any significant differences with trying to feed deer off of 1/2 acre in the summer but we can realistically improve the productivity of the plot.

Good discussion.......

Come on rain chances should be done planting all 30 acres by dark today.

Things are looking promising for most of the upcoming week. I'd love to see an inch or two of rain over the next few days.

DONE!!!! 2015 summer plots are in. Come on rain

Fertilized with the first round this morning and just got a good rain. I see plants jumping this week.

Fun stuff.....Come on rain!!!!

257…In case you want to do the rain dance…here is a quick tutorial showing the steps.

Toe, heel, stomp…..Toe, heel, stomp….. Whhhat???…..Yayyyuhhh!!!…..

Rain Dance Tutorial

I don't believe in that mess

What about the farmer's almanac???

Ehhh don't read too much into that. A broken clock is still right twice a day.

I never could buy into any of it either. My grandparents were what you would have called Ol’ Timers. They grew some beautiful gardens but they wouldn’t plant until the “signs” were right. I’ve heard stuff like that if you plant greens while the signs were in the bowels then it would tear your stomach up when you ate them…..and I’m like…..Uhhh, you think its maybe just all that grease and fresh greens hitting your stomach like a dose of castor oil??? My mother is a hardcore flower and vegetable gardener and she swears there’s something to some of the stuff in there. She won’t plant anything while the signs are in the killin times. I tend to just see it from a straight “scientific” standpoint…..moisture, soil temp, etc….

Just got through throwing some ammonia on some green briars honey suckle and black berries and it's pouring again.

Big rain on my farm in limestone co this Am. Loading the family up and going to check gauges now

Nary a drop here so far but that looks like its about to change real soon. I couldn't resist stealing the bag of sunflower seeds we were using in our bird feeders and spreading it across the field this morning.

Big ol’ fat rain…….

1.7" up at my farm!!! Couldn't have ordered it any better!

We're dang sure gettin the rain down here 257....This is going to turn out really nice. We're actually getting some heavy storms hittin from time to time. My wife said earlier...."Wow! It's coming a gulley washer!"....I responded..."Not in my field it isn't"... These are those kinds of rains that can reek havoc on a field that has been tilled to nothing but bare soil. Lots of runoff and erosion can occur.

Actually all my fields are tilled and terraced and I don't have any washes or runoff in 2 big rains now. Terraces do their job.

The test field is already perking up with this rainfall……There’s about to be an explosion of growth when the sun comes back out.

Krrrrrr!!……"Houston, we’re clear for take off….."

10, 9, 8, 7……........

I'll have some good red soil pics this Pm in worked up ground and I want lay down next to the plants to take the pics either! Ha

I figured I'd show some results. I didn't count down and say game on like you did.

You’re not really fooling anyone. You’re intention is to do nothing more than distract folks from what I'm showing. If you don’t have any interest in the throw and mow method then start your own thread.

I'm not trying to distract anyone. Why are you so defensive about things?

CNC needs a drink of kool-aid So far my drilled fields are well ahead of my mow & throw patches. Still can't figure out how pics work on here

You and a number of other folks have been thrashing my posts on Throw and Mow since day one and you find it odd that I'm a little defensive? Am I suppose to believe that you've suddenly had a change of heart? I suspect its more a change of strategy but I would be glad to be proven wrong.

Look pal all I did was say I'll post pics of my results. I mean crap you acted like it's a contest. I don't really care how or what you plant. I'm not changing tactics at all. I did consider mow and throw but deep down I know what MY dirt responds best to ok. I disk every acre. I cultipack. I don't have a row planter or no till drill or I'd be doing something more as reduced till. Until then I will prepare my seedbed accordingly. You can't honestly tell me I'd have the stand of corn and sunflowers I have today scattering my seed out and mowing grass on top of them? So no need for your paranoia to set in. That's all I was doing. I'll have pics up tomorrow pm I had to get a real row crop sprayer up and running this Pm.

I’m not trying to tell you anything other than to get off of my thread just trying to be a “one upper”. You don’t have any true interest in the method being shown here so stop just hanging around waiting to post up a pic and stick your chest out.

So you now own this thread. Ok

This is much better reading material vs when y'all were getting along

I know it I had no intentions of this getting started up again but someone did.

I’m just through playing along with your charade now 257. This is a thread for folks who are interested in learning and experimenting with the Throw and Mow Method. This is not 257’s Summer Tillage Plots. Your plantings have nothing to do with what we are discussing here other than you just trying to continue to distract folks as you’ve been doing the entire time. The only thing different is that you’ve changed your strategy from slandering the messenger to now trying to one up me. Again, this thread is for folks who are experimenting with the Throw and Mow Method. If you aren’t doing such then post your pictures on your own thread.

Maybe you should try and help Riverwood post his pics. Photobucket seems to just be too much for him to grasp.

Once again some folks don't have time to "experiment" around when proven methods have worked for decades.

Well….some of us have ample time to do these kinds of experiments and would like to share with others the results of said experiments. You seem to have some stake in not allowing me to do such though without constant interference. If all of the stuff I’m showing is such horsechitt….then what are you so concerned about? Why don't you just stop trying to refute everything and allow folks to decide for themselves?

In between, measuring rain fall, and how tall your shallow root grass is, and the amount of tonnage.. yada yada.. How about changing that cooter cork sometime..

Man, I'm tired of reading all this back and forth. Obviously, there are folks who feel strongly about their method and they are certainly entitled to their opinion. It doesn't matter to me who threw the first stone or who throws the last. But if you want to keep throwing, can you throw them on the debate thread?

(Krrrrr!) ”6….5….4….”

The durana clover is also perking back up now. Some of you guys with better soils may have to tweak how you use the durana in a mix like this….it can be pretty aggressive when given enough moisture. My test plot is a sand pit on top of a hill so its likely not going to be a big concern for me. Others may find that they have to spray a light dose of gly over the top of it in order to establish a summer crop amongst it.

Why would you want to kill already established clover?

You’re not really killing it if you keep your gly rate light….you’re just stunting it for a moment to give your new seedlings a chance to establish before the clover returns. Were talking about in fields of thick established clover. This is where the flexibility of this method comes into play though. You can really choose to do whatever you want from that point. If I had a field that would grow a nice crop of durana all summer mixed with a smattering of weeds and grass then I might be apt to do very little during the summer. Other folks may want to add some things to the mix and grow a summer crop. In that situation the clover may need to be suppressed for a moment depending on the conditions. In the book I posted a link to awhile back….the Japanese farmer in the book flooded his field for a week before spring planting in order to weaken his white clover and allow the other plants to establish. This is not really an option for the majority of us so alternative methods will have to be used. Some of you who see flooding in your fields may be able to do it just like the Japanese farmer and plant right after the floods. Again though, these are just options that folks may or may not choose to do.

Actually there is a movement back to this type of farming in the midwest where moisture can be a problem (not this year). It is a similar method in which they sow a cover crop then roll it down as a thatch barrier once it matures. Then they use equipment specifically designed to only disturb the soil where the seed is being planted. Basically a much larger than normal no till planter. The results so far have been, higher yeilds, more drought tolerance, less weed competition, and more profit. So don't make the mistake of believing just becuase something has been done a certain way for years that it's the best method. And as this board proves many times over, people are very reluctant to change, especially when it's their livelyhood. The farmers using traditional methods are making a living and see no need to change. But other farmers who are a little more open minded are willing to trial new methods and processes to see if there is something better out there. And many are finding out there is actually a better way. The healthiest soil is definetly soil that is undesturbed, allowing high populations of microbial activity. When soil is disturbed it kills much of the microb popluation, which hinders the soil break down process as it was designed to be. It also causes the soil to become hard and crusty on the surface, which affects water absorption, and causes much more water run off. Soil is kind of like a crack addict, once your hooked it's hard to go back to normal. Once traditional farming techniques are imployed and the soil becomes dead with microbial activity, you have to keep pouring the fertilizers and other chemicals to the crop in order to have a decent yeild.

What rate are you mixing your gly for these results? Are you traveling at a higher rate of speed when spraying?

Strip till sounds like what you are describing. Some peoples geographical location decides their farming options for them. In the delta everything gets hipped up due to the low ground and the favored economics of furrow irrigating with poly pipe vs pivot irrigation. Farmers over there are very modern and utd but have limited options. I don't sway one way or the other. If throw and mow works for you great and if you like to break ground hook up the disc. I'm just saying from a farming standpoint some guys decisions are made for them.

I haven’t experimented with it yet but I’ve seen numerous other folks report that they’ve had clover come back after spraying it. It a pretty tough plant. If I were going to test it I would probably try something like ½ quart per acre.

Good post....good discussion.

What summer plantings do you find more beneficial to the wildlife than established clover?

Corn!!!……..JK

In my opinion clover is the single best plant you can grow during the summer if you have good soil moisture. When I’m done experimenting here in my test field….all I plan on doing in the future is growing clover and “weeds” during the summer. All of that other stuff like sunn hemp, cowpeas, etc… is really not necessary for most folks nor will it really change much when you’re talking about growing ½ acre of it or something similar. Folks love to plant summer plots though so I’m going to play with a few options before going plain Jane with it. Once more folks like bambam and turkey neck begin to have success using this method, then folks will begin using their own variations of it and it won’t be as important that I show the different possibilities with my test plot. Right now I’m just trying to show what all can be done.

ok CNC, I haven't been to my place since mothers day, at that time there were no weeds in my fields to speak of. I plant on planting roughly 5 to 6 acres of IC peas this weekend with the throw and mow method. I have not sprayed a single field, nor do I know if there are any weeds to speak of. Can I still make this happen?

A lot of that will be dependant on the condition of last year’s fall crop. IF you had a really thick stand of say rye, clover, vetch….then it would likely still be shading out the understory and suppressing weeds. However, if your fall mix is thin and allowing sunlight to the ground then its highly likely that you already have abundant weeds establishing themselves and growing. To be safe I would probably expect to see weeds coming in after this rain.

You’ve got a couple options……Peas will grow in amongst other plants. Most people plant other plant species along with them anyways in order to give them something to vine on. If your weed encroachment is minimal then you could just go with it as is and allow your “weeds” to be those other plants. Its not going to look like a traditional clean planting but it will most likely still be just as effective. Just keep in mind that in the end our main goal is to grow forage in an opening for goats….not to put pictures on the cover of Farmer’s Digest.

The other option would be to throw, mow, and then spray. Most people are going to say not to mow and spray….and I agree its not optimal…..but it will still get a pretty good kill anyways. Most of the time between the cut stalk and the remaining bits of foliage…enough poison is absorbed to get a kill on most things.

If your planting peas then try to be sure you have enough thatch to mow down that’s its going to give you a good covering over the soil. Play around with your mowing height and RPM speed so that you get a nice even coverage and not wind rows in your tire tracks.

Forgive me if this link has already been posted (too many posts to read them all) but here is a real good discussion on the matter. It really breaks down the advantages of using cover crops and no till systems to better enhance and utilize the natural process taking place in the soil. In other words, letting the microbes in the soil do most of the work. I know this is not necessarily "throw N go" but it's untilizing the same principles only in a larger commercial operation setting, which requires the main crop to be planted with no till planters for more accurate planting rates, and costs controls etc.

Note: It's a long clip but at 20:20 in you will see a side by side comparison of tradition methods vs no till with no irrigation other than rain fall. Pretty impressive...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWXCLVCJWTU

That's a great video that anyone who is interested in trying this method should definitely take the time to watch. It's actually one of the videos that originally sparked my interest to try a different way.

CNC it's raining so hard in N Bama I even think mow and throw would erode right now. We've had 3" in 2 hrs now.

Yea it's rained like hell here for 2 1/2 hrs.

A thatch cover over the soil helps slow the water down but good water infiltration really depends on good soil structure….. which takes some time. You need the soil to form aggregates and create pore space between those aggregates……which allows water to then infiltrate through those pore spaces and down into the soil. The presence of worms and worm tunnels also greatly improve water infiltration as well as tunnels left behind by plants like diakon radishes. Keeping the structure intact is important in times like these.

(Krrrr!!) 4…….



3……….



2…………

CNC,

What is the broad leaf plant in your last picture?

Those are turnips. I didn’t really think they would come in quite that thick. A few weeks ago I threw out a couple lbs per acre to fill in some areas that were “leave rows” last fall. The leave rows were where I left last summer’s milo, EW, etc. standing and didn’t mow. Some of the leave rows were so thick that my fall mix didn’t establish well underneath it. Fast forward to this spring….those areas left gaps in the rye et al…… I threw out those turnips to fill those gaps and any other thin areas instead of just allowing weeds to do so. My original plan was for them to get mowed when I planted my other stuff. Due to the dry spell we went through…they just sat there like they were frozen in time at only a few inches tall for a couple weeks. Well, now that they have plenty of sunlight and rain….they’ve exploded. It didn’t work out like I wanted but its no big deal really. There’s still a lot of room in the field for the other plants to establish. It’ll end up being like a big salad mix filled with numerous species of plants.

I don't know bout y'all but I'm ready for a few days of good sun and no rain. My fields are needing a boost of no rain.

I've gotten a chit load of rain this afternoon. It's been pouring now for a couple hours. Areas of yellow and red on the radar have just been sitting right over me barely moving.

What kind of row cropping do you do?

I'm liking the rain, cause we weren't getting any when ya'll were gettin it. I'll take the rain anyway i can get it, beats the alternative. Ideally, if it would rain once a week, we would be in paradise, but that ain't gonna happen. Crimson, might as well pick them greens and boil em up, might have to add a little sugar to em but they'll still be good.

Bout to cook some up this weekend to go along with some squash…..

Paging Westflgator. how many acres of row crop ground are you working?

None. I have a small farm (92 acres) that I'm transitioning from pines to farmland. Not planning to row crop, will be planting mostly Perennial Peanut for high quaility hay. I have been researching and experimenting on my plots with alternative fertilization for lower costs, and long term soil building techniques, that I plan to utilize on my hay fields in the future. So far the results have been very good.

To get back to the subject at hand, while researching a year or so back, I ran across the youtube video that I posted above, which explains the no till concepts(same principles as "Throw & Mow"). I thought those on this thread who were interested in those concepts might enjoy the video as well. For those who are not interested I would say don't watch it...

No till is a great farming practice. I've never said otherwise. There's a major difference between no till and mow throw however. Westflgator you got a major undertaking converting from pines back to tillable farmland. Good luck and be patient with it. We got a lot of that going on. Remember chicken litter can be your best friend in the process.

I agree there is a big difference in planting techniques but the soil concepts are the same.

Foodplotting is not row cropping either.

This was the test field late yesterday evening during an absolute monsoon. You can see that the field was infiltrating the water without major ponding or erosion. There are lots of fields standing in puddles around here this morning. After rains such as these subside is a good time to take a look and see how well your field is infiltrating water. Do your see erosion occurring? Do you see areas where major run off is occurring? What is the condition of your soil surface now after the heavy rains? Just some questions to ask yourself and be mindful of….. What is just as important as the amount of rain that falls is the amount that your field can soak up. Most of our summer rains come in fast, heavy downpours similar to what we just saw. The green you see are the turnips perking back up.

Understand. But I treat my plots same as I do row crop to give me max results.

Max results?? What results are we trying to maximize….Is it kill deer or produce pics for Farmer’s Digest? The goals of food plotting and farming are nothing the same. Do you consider “cost” in there anywhere with food plotting?….or what about the return on your (cost)investment? Do you have twice as many deer for all the money spent? Do you have an additional 10 inches of antler on every buck for all the coin it costs to imitate high yield row farming?

…..or…..

Are you still just attracting the same local goats to the same openings as I am doing for a fraction of the cost or input?


Our main goal for the vast majority of food plotters out there is to simply keep attracting the local deer to our openings in the woods……..Its not trying to produce high yielding, high cost row crops that give us back very little real return on all the money spent. Most folks with only a few acres of food plots aren’t changing anything about the deer herd no matter what they grow nor how high yielding it is…..The end result is still the same. You’re just accomplishing the goal of attracting the local goats to that opening. I could spend hundreds of dollars this summer and hours of time trying to grow 2 acres of the highest yielding corn ever grown in Alabama or I could spend a fraction of that money and grow 2 acres of clover and weeds……Come October 15th it won’t make a damn bit of difference. The same deer herd will be walking out in front of me waiting to get stuck with an arrow.

Again…….we are food plotting not row cropping....

Well as stated before you're like talking to my 6 yr old. I never said a damn thing about horns or any crap like that. I just apply the tools I've got and knowledge I have of fertility and seed and chemicals to grow 100plus bushel corn for deer and birds. The faster I can grow a stalk and get it to maturity the more food I can grow there fore it last longer into the season. Maybe I just enjoy doing it too. Maybe resources don't matter to me.

Good lawd, what a difference a week makes. A week ago we all thought you two were gonna go for a roll in the throw-n-mow clover, now ya'll fussin' and fightin' again. Worse than an old married couple.

I need to get back in the field soon. Too much time on my hands.

I'm like 257. I really enjoy the whole farming thing. Sort of like painting. Nothing better looking than a nice, weed free, soybean or corn field that you've done own your own. I don't golf, don't fish, just enjoy my tractor time. Yeah it cost $ but everything does

(Krrr!!!) …2…1…”Houston, we have lift off.”



Seedlings are sprouting up out of the hay everywhere now. In this picture you can see milo starting to shoot up through the turnips. It looks like there’s going to be plenty of milo. There was some millet in that bird seed I threw out so I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of it before its over. Some of it is going to be volunteer Egyptian wheat as well. Lots of diversity in the field. You can also see hairy vetch that’s bouncing back after just being mowed and not sprayed. Hairy vetch is a great provider of nitrogen.




Here you can see buckwheat, milo, and cowpeas just beginning to poke through the top of the hay filling in the open spaces between the turnips. They’ll likely be new seedlings popping up for a couple of weeks.



One more pics of the new seedlings filling in……I'll probably throw out a little N in a week or two depending on how the rain plays out. I'll go with 50 lbs of 33-0-0 per acre.

Are the deer using that field? Is it showing sign of browsing?

Yes….the deer never really quit using the test field now. Usage has peaks and valleys throughout the year depending on the state of the natural forage. I’ll be lucky if anything I just planted other than the milo and volunteer EW make it to actually do much. That’s one of the reasons I’m planting turnips in the spring. They were wiped out last fall. I want the soil health benefits that things like turnips and radishes provide so I thought I would see if I could grow some in the spring. The turnips were dirt cheap to throw out a couple lbs as an experiment before doing it with radishes. They should go to seed some time this summer and reseed for fall.

Last summer the peas stayed alive and kept trying to put back out but they were ate up as quick as they could grow. That’s why long term my summer plots will just likely be clover and weeds….. and possibly radishes. I’m not really accomplishing anything different with a plot like this than I would with a plot of clover and diverse weeds….other than just spending more money on seed. The same deer are using the plot either way. The reason I don’t sweat some weeds coming in is because once all this stuff gets wiped out….I still need something to produce biomass and keep feeding the soil OM. If that’s what’s going to happen anyways then why not just skip straight to the part where you are growing clover and weeds. Growing a heavy crop of biomass in the summer would benefit most folks much more than providing the deer with a few hundred dollars of seedlings to wipe out.

My corn sunflowers and grain sorghum will need topdressing with urea once it dries out enough to get over it. How many units of urea should I put out CNC?

If you're just wanting to provide biomass, then why pay to plant anything?

I don’t give a damn how much you use…..I’m experimenting with using legumes such as clover, vetch, and winter peas to produce N. I’m periodically adding small doses of synthetic N to help the field “jump”.

Do my plants look N deficient?

Exactly…..What I’m doing right now is just experimenting to show what is possible. The only thing though is that you can grow durana (and others) clover during the summer for little more than adding a couple lbs of seed to your fall mix every few years. Hairy vetch is the same way. The vetch in my field now is from some I threw into the fall mix two years ago. Most folks could probably attract deer to their plots during the summer with weeds alone. The clover just sweetens the pot a little from an attraction standpoint. What the clover and vetch really provide you though are N producers to drive the growth of the other plants in the field. Your legumes are major drivers of the nutrient cycle.

My sunn hemp is up to a fine stand only after being planted 4 days. Have you planted sunn hemp yet since it's the primo in providing biomass? I see you're list but you don't mention this one?

While were on the topic of adding N…..let’s jump back in time a couple months and recall what I just terminated……….

Does this recycle N to our next crop?

How often do you fertilize and how much do you put out? Have you done your soil test recently?

Depends on what the next crop is doesn't it and how many N credits you're giving your terminated crop. You do realize that to grab full N credit a legume has to fully nodulate and fixate don't you?

I’ve been adding 50 lbs/ac of 33-0-0 about every 3 months. I added a bag at fall planting last year…..one around Christmas…….one during March when the rye started actively growing…..and now I’ll likely add one more around mid June when my summer crop gets up a little better. My soil is really sandy with a low CEC so its better to throw out smaller amounts more often anyways.

On the other nutrients I just go by the soil test. Yes I just got my soil tested a couple weeks ago. Not really a whole lot of change from last fall. My Ca was still rising slightly from last fall's test. It was up another 50 lbs/ac. Lime added 15 months ago. The K had fallen off from 210 lbs to 155 lbs but the test still didn’t call for adding any. The P was slightly low so I went ahead and mixed in 50 lbs of 0-46-0 with the seed I threw out. The crazy thing was that even though my Ca was still rising….my pH had actually dropped slightly. Still in the mid 5’s. The test was calling for adding another ton of lime. I’ll may mow at some point this summer and double crop the biomass. If I do I may throw out a little palletized lime mixed with 50 lbs of 0-0-60……positively + charged ions. My test will most likely call for K later this fall anyways.

Dang your ph is low. Why not just go ahead and put a ton of lime to the acre. Bump it up in larger increments that Pel lime will do? You invest so much time and effort in thatch. I bet if you put a half ton every year you'd be in great shape with your biomass.

Dang, your ph is pretty low. That's what ours was 3 seasons ago. We had never limed before. We added lime and brought it up to 7. It's stayed that way for 2 years. This will be the third year, but I haven't sent in a soil test, yet. I have to let our plots dry out, first.

I just don’t really want to fugg with going to get a lime buggy.

Actually, I can still see bigger chunks of lime in my soil. I suppose the gradual break down of those larger pieces of lime is what is still bringing my Ca up. It was at 300 lbs per acre when I added 2 tons of lime last spring. It came up to 900 lbs per acre by fall and up another 50 lbs by this spring. I ‘m thinking about just adding a little pelletized lime this summer and a little more this fall. The fall in my K as well as the natural fluctuation in pH is what I think probably made the pH fall slightly. The real test will be another year from now….or the year after that…..Where is my Ca then? Will it be back down to 300 lbs or will it be holding steady?

Before I touched this field with a disk years ago…the first soil test I had done showed a pH of 6.8 with Ca over 1,000 lbs/ac. Even if you are going to use a disk then there is only a need to slightly disturb the soil. Plowing the hell out of the soil with burn up all of the OM just as I did to my field.

We're naturally P derived up here in these silt soils. I put my $$$ toward 18-46-0 and lime. It's my biggest return for results.

If you dig down in my soil to around 8-12 inches the pH is 5.0....That soil runs down to a depth of 50 inches before it hits a clay layer. Even then its a sandy type clay. It's the pH in my upper horizon of OM that I'm really effecting. That black layer that you see in my soil profile pics.

Why did you dig down 8-10" to send off for a soil test?

I think this sunn hemp is gonna be the real deal. I like what I see so far. I put down 250 lbs of 17-17-17 per acre and 15lbs of seed.

To compare the pH and nutrient levels in my upper horizon where I’ve built up the OM versus the “subsoil” with no OM………

Its $100 a bag though…..

A bag plants 3.5 acres though. $30 an acre for seed is not high. You need to look at it as investment in your biomass not a cost of $100 per bag.

Why is your ph still so low?

CNC, I don't think anybody is saying your way "Won't" work. I just think they are saying don't cram it down thier throat, that this is the best way. Yoh have took some simple ??? And made them complicated. You are try to argue with someone, who makes his sole living doing this. He's not saying your way is wrong. Your just trying to say your way is better. Imo. That's hiw I'm reading this. And yiur taking some comments like a puss, and blowing them out of proportion. Just the way It seems to me.

If anything is being crammed down your throat then its because you keep coming back to this thread and sticking it in your mouth…..Thanks for your analysis of the situation though……257 makes a living selling “inputs”. The more inputs you guys are using….the more 257 is selling…..the less inputs you are using…..the less he is selling.

My guess is it’s likely that my base saturation levels of Ca and maybe K aren’t high enough. I wish they provided a little more detailed report on the soil test but heck it is just $7. I figure I probably need to be running around 1200-1400 lbs of Ca in my soil before the pH will balance out in the 6’s. So I’ll be adding more lime….but its in order to keep filling up the bucket and not replace Ca that I’m losing. That's an important thing to recognize on your own soils.

Are you trying to keep your ph in the mid 5's?

CNC what a douchebag way to address what I do for a living you idot. I'll tell you this I treat every one of my customers fields as if it were mine. A lot of the time I have to tell them not to spray this or plant that when they give me the opportunity where I could have said do this or that and it would have been more expensive. I stay on acres that way. You need to get a grip on reality cause you're head is way up your ass.

Heck no….What gave you that idea?

I really didn’t mean for it to be either sugar coated nor douche baggy…..I was just trying to put it in simpler terms that Ol’ DW would understand better.

Seems like you're adding just enough lime to sustain the current levels, but not enough to raise it.

Why don't you come up to my dove shoot. And explain it to me the same way. Then maybe I can understand it!!!! See how that works.

Just got mine most of mine planted this past week as well. Hopefully I will get a good stand. Looking forward to see how this affects my soils tests next year. Like I was saying in another thread I have't used any traditional fertilizer in the last few years (other than lime). I've been using sea minerals along with a couple other things (that you would laugh at) that are low cost but have shown really good results so far. Here are a couple of my plots that I just planted. I will post some more pics once they get up good. I too planted 15 lbs to the acre. I will probably move to a Throw & Mow/No Till type of planting this fall. I've been looking at it for a few years but haven't made the transition yet.

I added what the soil test called for a year ago….actually more because the truck showed up with closer to 5 tons. I waited 6-7 months and tested and my pH and Ca were both on a sharp climb upward. Now I’ve tested 6-7 months after that and I’m planning to make adjustments as needed. I don’t see how I could have done it whole lot differently other than just brought in more lime blindly this spring. One thing to consider too is that my OM% is on a steep climb in these first few years and that means my nutrient holding capacity is also on the rise. So as my ability to hold more Ca goes up then it requires filling the bucket on up to balance things out between the positives and the negatives. Even when I get my Ca up to 1200 lbs per acre….if my OM% is still going up and my holding capacity is still climbing….then I will still add more lime at that time as well because then the balancing point may be 1600 lbs/ac or 1700 lbs acre. The idea though is that we are getting more fertile and more fertile along the way. Having 2000 lbs of Ca per acre available to your plants is a whole lot different than having 300-400 lbs. This is all dependant though on which direction you are going with your organic matter…..increasing or decreasing.

How many acres are you doing all this on?

Would it not stand to reason that your nutrient level could be increasing because they aren't as available to the plants due to low ph?

Your posts on here have a me a little uneasy about attending with all of your homosexual references to shoving stuff down each other’s throats. What kind of dove hunt is this exactly anyways? Do y’all have a name for it?

All joking aside, he's offered his land up to young hunters and adults whom otherwise may not have a place to hunt.

Fact. Ol milk man is good people. I seriously doubt he gets sexually excited over dirt.

Now milk cows is a whole different ball game. Oh and he has been known to hit a ass a time or two.

Yep, there's video proof of hitting an ass, I've seen it.

^^^^

Yea Cmon..

My test plot is progressing nicely. The milo is starting to fill in.

Looking good bambam....Thanks for the update. Something to start training your eye to is plant color. When conditions are right then your plants will be a DEEEP green. Plants that have a very light green color or geenish yellow....or if you're seeing any reds and purples....then these are signs of nutrient deficiencies or stress.

Lighting can make a big difference in a picture but from what I;m seeing your field still has a greenish-yellow look to it. My guess is its needing some nitrogen but it would be good to send in a soil sample just to see how everything else looks like.... P,K, pH......Go ahead and add your other bag of 13-13-13 next trip. It would be good if you had a little 33-0-0 as well to put out but its no big deal if you don't.

I think I'll drink the kool-aid and do the throw-n-mow thing.

Yoda will then give me a pass on proper Ph and throwing down good ol' trip 13. No pass if ya plow.

Don't do it man. Be strong my friend. May the force be with you.

As much as you seem to be enjoying the thread you might as well......

So this is right in line with what nt2 and I were just talking about with producing summer biomass. This also goes back to what I’ve said in earlier posts that if you are just starting out and your first goal is to produce biomass to cover and feed the soil….then you would be better off just growing summer weeds and clover…..

Here is a case in point. This is my apple orchard where I’m growing clover and “weeds”. You can see that in the time I’ve been fiddle fuggin around with planting the test field, that will ultimately just be wiped out,….my weeds and clover have already produced a nice crop of summer biomass and is now ready to mow, release the clover, and produce a second crop of biomass. If you are just starting out and trying to get OM to your soil…then which way is going to produce faster results??…..2-3+ crops of OM like in my apple orchard??…or 1 struggling crop of cowpeas and sunflowers or whatever??



I've already mowed between the rows. No shortage of clover in the understory. You can see in the tree rows the type of standing biomass I mowed down.

I got up to the property yesterday to test this out in a spot on our gas line only to find out it got mowed by the gas company. Ended up having to break out the disc.

Mines coming along good but the deer are starting to nibble on the new growth.

That's a bummer. Really the fall is an easier time to do your first throw and mow planting anyways.

Mines not really getting hit to hard yet but its likely just a matter of time. I've got the understory of my property in pretty good shape and there's a lot of native browse for them to feed on with the rain we've had. Plums and peaches are falling right now too and they're hammering them as fast as they fall.

I've got 17 acres of 5 year old long leaf with plenty of natural browse in them. I'm planning on putting some ribbon around the fields tomorrow to try and keep them off a while.

Them deer wouldn't get a plum though I like them green.

This is from a different variety…..AU Producer I believe. The other pic was Chickasaw Plum.

These are Santa Rosa plums compared to the Chickasaw....but I digress. Back to throw and mow

Too ripe for me but I bet the deer and coons love them.

Could you, would you if I made it into jelly?.....

I might could make a biscuit or two out of some. I'll eat them ripe but I love a green plum with salt.

I thought this was the thread where guys interested in the throw and mow method could share idea's, but it seems the debate thread has taken over. Might as well delete the other thread.

It's all good blum.....Let's talk throw and mow.

Germination is beginning to peak now. Very pleased with how things are coming up. I knew I shouldn’t have thrown in that extra milo though…..its starting to look like it might be pretty thick in some places. This was the first time planting buckwheat but I’ll have to agree with what other folks have said in that it sprouts very easily. You can see it coming everywhere in this pic. Also notice those reddish brown stalks…theres a cluster toward the right of the pic. That is yuchi arrowleaf clover that’s putting back out now. The other clover right next to it is the durana. The stuff that looks like blades of grass shooting up is the milo. Looks like we might have a stray weed in the center.

Buckwheat is the easiest plant i know of, to grow.

this is how all 9 of my fields looks after I broadcast my sunflowers, iron clay peas, millet, sorghum and soybeans into them and pressed everything down on top of them. I know the White clover will compete with the summer stuff but I want the deer to eat it so it'll be like a buffet. first time doing this, and no one in my clubs believes it will work so I hope it does. It's gotten roughly an inch of rain over the last 12 hours. just so the seed has time to germinate I spread crack corn and feed wheat up and down our main roads to keep the turkeys away from it.
whatcha think CNC?

Cool!! I think that will work out good for you Turkeymaster. I’ll be interested to see how much the white clover competes. Give it 2-3 for everything to get up and going. It’ll take the little seedlings a minute to get up above that thatch. Nice job…….

Turkeymaster……Did you run a cultipacker over those fields?

Should I wait 2-3 weeks once everything gets up to fertilize it?

no it was half leaning over when I broadcast the seed into the fields, then I just ran my bushhog up to where it just cut just above the clover. I also tried to strattle each set of tire tracks I made to press anything I missed down.

Have you had a soil test done lately? Its good to know what your Ca, P, K levels and pH are doing in order to know what you need to throw at it in terms of fert. These nutrient levels need to be addressed before the seed every hits the ground. You want to throw your seed off into a fertile growing environment from the beginning. If all of those things were already in balance then you would just need to hit it with some N to give everything a boost.

Without a test the best option is just to assume you are low on the all and add 13-13-13 or 17-17-17

Ok cool........I’d like to be a fly on the wall when some of you guys try to explain to your other hunting club members that you want to try the “Throw and Mow Method”…..

We had the soil test done last year and put lime out accordingly, as our pH averaged out to be 5.2 in all the fields. the average for P and K levels were roughly 60-80 lbs of both in each field. it didn't ask for much N

Those P levels are fine. P builds really easy and hold really easy in the soil compared to the other nutrients. That is low for K levels though….K also has an effect on pH as well and is part of getting things in balance…..it’s one of your cations just like Ca. It has a positive charge…. K levels and Ca levels will both build up and hold better as you build organic matter into your soil. I’d bring back a bag of 33-0-0 and a bag of 0-0-60 per acre on the next trip. Just for future plantings you would have wanted to have already added your 0-0-60 several weeks ago. You’re really feeding the 0-0-60 to the soil…not the plant. You feed the soil to get the nutrients levels where they need to be and the soil feeds the plant. Add another bag of 0-0-60 per acre later this summer before fall planting. This will start getting your K levels up. You could really go ahead and add two bags of 0-0-60 right now if it doesn’t get into your planting budget too deep. You probably won’t need any P for a while so skip the 13-13-13 and use 33-0-0 and 0-0-60 for your fert needs. If you add two bags of 0-0-60 now then I’d test later this fall again to see where you’re running around September. It may be that you only need to add a little N this fall. I made a mixing barrel that I throw all of my seed and fert into for an acre and mix it altogether instead of making multiple passes for seed and fert.

CNC you do realize only a bag per acre of 0-0-60 is only adding 30 units don't you? He needs way more than 30 units.

most of my food plots are 1/2 acre, would one bag per field be ok for the 257?

Yes…. but most people on a hunting club budget will chit when you start talking about the cost of fertilizing it optimally. That’s one of the reasons I’m recommending him to spread the cost out a little adding some now and some in a few months. I would ideally like him to go ahead and put out 60 units now but that may be more than he’s wanting to spend this summer. Just giving him options.

Gotcha.

??? if my plots are only a 1/2 acre will 1 bag be enough?

Yes one bag on a 1/2 acre would be fine. Fertilizer is based on a 100# per acre analysis.

Turkeymaster, we have had more than 1 discussion about the throw-n-mow method. I believe it will work for our club.

Here’s a comparison from “planting” until now……….

After mowing………….



Two weeks later (today)……..



There are still a few holes filling in slower than the rest of the field but there is no shortage of seedlings in those areas so all is good. I would really like to see how long the field would go before running N deficient but that would require letting it actually run deficient to see. We’ll wait till next year to try that.

Claybird I know we did but we were the only two who agreed it would work, the others were and are still skeptical

Read the planting instructions on the back of a bag of seed. It says to prepare a weed free seed bed, and then firm it up with a cultipacker or drag. This is for most small seeds, like clover,brassica's and such. Years ago, i started thinking, why plow the field and then have to level and firm the seed bed, so i started skipping the disking, leveling and firming. I found that when i would spill seed, while loading into the hopper of my spreader, would grow like crazy. It showed me that you didn't have to disk, for seeds to germinate and grow. Weeds are spread by birds crapping out the seeds, and no one disturbed that soil. Probably 5 years ago, is when i started experimenting with a no-till method and it has evolved over the years to the throw and mow method. I used to just spray and kill the grasses and weeds, way in advance and sew the seeds and drag over it, but the thatch would thin out so much over several weeks that it would take a lot of rain to germinate, but it always did. I give cnc credit for showing a more efficient way of doing something that i was already doing. I've yet to have a failed planting since doing this. If it germinates and starts to grow, then it was a success. If it quits raining, or the deer decimate it, well thats out of your control. The soils that i deal with are sandy and sandy loams, not hard baked clay soils, this makes a big difference.

up until we started taking care of our fields by Liming, fertilizing and rotating stands our soil was as white as the sand on the beach, now its gradually getting darker and just looks better. I'm not really sure how I'm going to go about the fall planting. I feel like once the peas and everything are eatin to the ground I won't have anything to cover my oats and Rye with. I guess I could rent a drill for the weekend when fall planting comes around. What about CNC and Blumsden, what do you do when everything has been eatin down and you don't have anything to cover with?

If you find yourself getting to the end of summer and you haven’t grown enough biomass to even cover the fall seed…..then you need to take a step back and reassess your summer strategy. Unless you have massive amounts of acreage to deal with….the main goal of your summer plots should be soil improvement with a secondary goal of deer attraction…..a 60/40 split or even 70/30…the point being the #1 emphasis is first improving soil. Look to grow more grass species such as milo, Egyptian wheat, millet, or just let nature takes it coarse and grow dog fennel, ragweed, etc.. along with your clover. Work on your fertility needs and come out at the end of the summer with something to show for in terms of biomass. Remember the foundsation of throw and mow isn’t really about just germinating some seeds….its about improving overall soil health and to recreate naturally functioning soil. That means constantly feeding the soil as well as the deer.

Checked my test fields today. Wish I knew how to post pics. My mow & throw plots are not doing very well compared to the disked and drilled portions of same field.

That makes me smile!

Its prolly due to all the rain...It makes me smile...

Or it could be to planting it the right way???

Turkeymaster…….To answer your question more specifically…..From the looks of you plots I think you’ll be fine. They look like they are pretty productive so even if what you just planted gets wiped out then you should still likely grow a crop of weeds in behind it. If you think the thatch is going to be too thin though then throw out your seed….take about half the angle out of your disks…..and then run it over the top of everything without mowing. Just scratch the surface enough to hide your seeds form the birds. If it looks like its going to rain right behind your planting then you could probably just broadcast your seed and pull a drag over it.

Turkeymaster, as cnc has already said, plant multiple plantings. I like sunn hemp, buckwheat and pea's. Milo is a great addition that has some attraction as well.The deer seldom eat all the buckwheat and grasses and weeds will fill in where they've eaten the pea's down. With the right conditioned soil, you can still grow great fall plots without a lot of thatch, you just need more rain.

I figured yours and riverwoods plots would fail, because in all honesty, you want them to fail. I read your posts, and i'm not sure why you two are even on this thread. It was supposed to be set up for people interested in this method, which clearly ya'll are not.

Mine didn't fail cause I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Discussion of no till and cover crops by the doc.

im all for no till. It's a good practice.

this worries me

There are more and more folks showing interest in this method now and lots of them beginning to do their own trials. I just wanted to throw this out there as a reminder even though I know its being redundant…..

It will take some time to get your fields turned around when you begin to convert to this method from traditional tillage methods. A lot of the success of germinating seeds this way depends on the condition of the soil surface as well as the moisture being held in that topsoil once you’ve built up several inches worth. It will take putting down a couple good crops of thatch and giving it time to decompose before this happens. For folks who want to convert to throw and mow I would not even bother trying to plant a summer crop the first year. I would instead spend the money addressing fertility needs and growing biomass to cover the soil surface, get your OM on the rise, etc….This is step 1. I’m not saying this to be a arse so you guys don’t take this the wrong way but step 1 is not to try and grow beans, peas, sunflowers, or whatever. I know everyone like to do that in the summer but you have to start seeing this method not just as a planting method but as a long term process of changing the soil….it’s efficiency…and its productivity…

Getting your topsoil to look like the below pic is the most important thing to do in the beginning. Summer grasses are your best friends right now. Just think about it as if you are cutting hay this summer off of your field but instead of bailing it and hauling it away….your instead feeding it to your soil. You’ve got to grow the hay though to make it happen.

Good video Joe......How did he say he was planting his wheat and clover? Did he say he was broadcasting it into standing beans?

That's what I heard...

How did he say he was planting soybeans??

will 1 bag of the 0-0-60 be enough for 1/2 acre plots?

To know exactly how much you need we would have to know your CEC value and your base saturation rates......but adding 1 bag will put you in a lot better place than you are now. Is this really sandy soil?

Grant drills everything no-till. Know him well and have been to his place several times. Never heard him speak of the ole mow & throw method. He convinced me to start no-till drilling

.

Really? Really? You think that I "willed my mow & throw plots not to succeed" just so I could burn more fuel & spend more time planting? You silly . I plant, fertilize, and spray every which way you can imagine, just to see what is most efficient in my operation. I'm running side by side test to see how each method works. I'll figure out photo bucket one day or you can come see for yourself.

3 week old broadcast corn



1 month old sunflowers

10 day old grain sorghum

Yes it's really sandy, I'll have to look at my soil samples tomorrow

If its really sandy then you have a low CEC.....or low nutrient holding capacity. Just go with the one bag right now. Once you start building more organic matter in the soil then your holding capacity will increase. Test this field at the end of the summer and lets see how things look then. It would be good to do after the lime you added anyways.

Joe.... Here’s another good video that's only a couple minutes long. Notice the diverse cover crop that he’s growing in the background. This is the same thing that I’m replicating in my test field you see here in this thread.

Here’s something to think about too….We as food plotters have an advantage over the farmer in this type of system. The reason being is that the farmer actually has to grow a cash crop with one of his rotations. We as food plotters can simply grow one diverse cover crop after another…summer, winter….summer, winter…..So where as they may fuel a field of corn off their diverse winter cover crop to sell at market….we can simply fuel a diverse summer cover crop which will then fuels the winter cover crop and so on. First though you have to get things turned around and your soil up and running properly. This takes some time and patience. Its like taking a piece of property that’s had the hell shot out of it and implementing mature buck management goals. It takes time to change but with patience and proper management you’ll see things gradually get better and better.

Short Cover Crop Video

Then you need to tell him someone has hacked into his videos and inserted his twin using a hand spreader to broadcast seed. He ain't even mowin'....just throwin'

He could be putting a 50# bag of 0-0-60 per acre!!!

With all my plants up 8-12" and having done my first round of fertilizer two weeks ago would y'all throw the second round down now? I won't be able to do it next weekend so I was gonna go ahead and hit them now.

That's what I'm about to do. Looks like we may have some better rain chances coming back in to the forecast next week. I'm going to wait until Sunday just to make sure the weather guessers still feel the same and then hit it with some N....

Another short video……..

All kinds of diversity showing up in the field. I didn’t expect to see any of these guys show back up. I threw out some seeds last year but all of the vines were eaten and didn’t produce any melons that I know of. Must be coming back from some seeds that were still hanging around in the seed bank. Cool!

Looks a little thin to me....

This was only 2 lbs per acre of turnips but it looks like we’re going to have about 30-35% of the field occupied by areas like these. There is some clover mixed in there in the middle of this patch. This is a good reason to keep your brassica rates down low. Too much of it and all you get is brassica. Once you get your soil turned around then 1 lb per acre is probably plenty in a mix.



More room in areas like these for the milo and other plants to come in. A really important thing to notice is the plant color. In the last video I posted the speaker was talking about how building organic matter over time would begin to feed your plants organic nitrogen. I believe I have now started doing that even if I’m still in the initial stages of taking advantage of such process. We’ll continue to keep nudging it forward toward being more and more fertile.

I planted some watermelons in my cutover two years ago. The deer didn't let them get big enough to do chit.

Idk DW I can lay down and make clover look like an oak tree too if I really wanted to!

Deer will eat dang near anything. They really are just about like a goat. I had some okra in my mix last year as well and it got hammered just the same. I’m starting to build up some false hope that I might be able to get out ahead of the browsing pressure this year but it usually seems to happen over night so I’m not going to hold my breathe just yet. If we get some rain next week though and I get this dusting of N down….look out, we may have something.

The buckwheat is dam near waist high today…..

Haha yea waist high to a grass hopper! In all seriousness it looks like it's getting going. Need some rain this week though. Got dry fast again.

Still holding pretty good soil moisture here but I'll take the rain for sure. Today is 3 weeks to the day since planting and some of the first buckwheat plants to jump out of the ground are actually starting to send out some blooms already. That stuff grows fast!

My test field is 2 acres…I’m now adding 17 units of N to the field or 50 lbs/ac of 34-0-0 in order to give a little gas to my engine. My K levels are 155 right now and even though the test is not calling for any….I’m going to be a little proactive and mix in 25 lbs/ac of 0-0-60 anyways. Very small amounts of fert.

I’ve decided to do a little experiment over the next year with my Ca additions. Last year I brought in 4,000 lbs of Ca per acre like the soil test recommended. After one year my Ca has went up 700 lbs per acre on the soil test. To me that seems like some very inefficient chit going on there. Over the next year I’m going to add Ca in much smaller doses and see what happens comparatively.

Bring on the next round of H2O……..

I put 80 units of 46-0-0 on my corn today. Sunflowers and grain sorghum each got 60 units. Let it rain now!

257……I’ve got a little bit of ragweed here and there coming in. Would it bother you to have some ragweed in your dove field?

Ragweed yes. Croton no. Reason being common and giant ragweed are now being documented as RR resistant in Midwest states. I don't want to chance it becoming that way here. Palmer pigweed and marestail are bad enough.

I was reading that ragweed seed is 47% crude protein and the plant itself is 25%. I also read that it’s a major food source of both mourning dove and quail….as well as being on the preferred food list of deer too. If I were managing for wildlife and not row crops….wouldn’t I be happy to see a plant like this growing in my fields? Why spend the money to plant sunflowers if ragweed will do the same thing for free? Just posing a question.

So far my other plants are growing amongst the ragweed in the places where it’s coming in. It’s mostly some encroachment around the edges. ….We’ll see how things progress and if the cowpeas can vine on the ragweed.

Man you read way too much and don't believe everything you read. But if you're so hard up to grow ragweed we'll have at it. Not real hard to grow it. It grows about anywhere. And don't run a sunflower down comparing it to ragweed. Not anywhere in the same category.

What category is that?….growth rate?….browse tolerance?……seed production?……nutritional value?…..attractiveness?…..cost to grow?

Sunflowers aren’t really much of an option to grow down here …..too many deer. Maybe if you had a really large field you might be able to get some to grow.

I've got a small test plot of sunflowers growing in the backyard and can't get the deer to eat them. Not sure what's up with that.

I planted a bit over 8 acres of sunflowers. Gotta figure in some to deer loss.

You can rest assure that your deer aren't hurting for anything to eat right now then. Sunflowers are tough to grow for a lot of folks because they get wiped out before they can produce. They're not overly browse tolerant either. I had them put back out after browsing last year but they were just quickly browsed again and eventually bit the dust. Give it some time. When it starts getting a little hotter and drier....and native spring forage begins to harden off...then the deer will very likely turn to the sunflowers. They may get wiped out within 5-7 days if the plot is small. Deer density is going to play a role as well.

What part of the ragweed are the doves and quail eating?

The seed....

If it's on the preferred list for deer and your density is high, wouldn't it be in the same boat as the sunflowers?

Oh great so now I'm sure we get to hear grandstanding for ragweed for weeks to come. How come grant woods isn't recommending ragweed???

Not really an issue with ragweed. Another good attribute is ike 257 was saying…it will grow just about anywhere and thrive on poor soil. This can be a great benefit when you’re also trying to produce biomass on crappy soils.



Little bastages are quick…………..



Deer browsing ragweed……….

I’m just trying to show that wildlife food plot management doesn’t have to be row cropping…..

I think I'd just concentrate on fertilizing my honeysuckle and forbs and eliminate invasive weed species.

I don't think I've ever seen ragweed mowed down by deer anywhere. I've seen them nip the top out of a few, but not like something that is planted(regardless of the method) for the deer.

Fertilized yesterday. 1" of rain so far today. It's all good!

Damn deer done figured out what my summer plantings mean. Them Heifers done started hitting my plots pretty hard now. They wearing out my buckwheat and sunflowers quick. I fertilized again today I need some more rain now.

Yep....It usually doesn't take long. Not sure what's going on with mine. So far I'm just seeing minimal browsing pressure. I'm shaking off loads of peaches on the ground each day though so that may be helping to keep them occupied with something a little "sweeter" than my plot.

Sho' nuff gettin the rain this evening.......

I wish I could get some it's damn dry here.

Throw and Mow IC peas, first time doing it. heres what my fields look like after 10 days. It's the only pic I could get before the monsoon hit my camp yesterday

That looks real nice TM.....Got to make you feel a little better to see peas start popping up like that. Better hurry and show the other hunting club members before the deer wipe 'em out. They'll never believe you!

ooo don't you worry, I've sent photos to every member

cnc
just checked a new plot last week, that i wanna try this on. sandy soil, not much growing in it right now, so nothing to cover seeds with. what is something i could top sew to get started

Are there any kind of summer grasses and weeds coming in at all?

I have planted all my plots with SH the tradtional way, but I have one plot left that has a really good stand of Euchi Arrow Leaf clover,and I think I'm going to try the Throw and Mow method on it. I was thinking about seeding in some more clover. What would you recommend that might come up over the summer and start kicking in earlier in the fall? I usually overseed my plots in the fall, but the clover really doesn't kick in until after the fall season. Perchjerker is the clover expert if memory serves me correctly, but I haven't seen him on here in awhile, maybe one of you guys can recommend something that will come up this time of year...

Check out Alyce Clover as well as Joint Vetch......

Well, it was only a matter of time. The carnage has begun....

I should have been a little clearer on the above post. I'm going to broadcast the SH and probably throw in some beans, peas, and a little more clover as well. Just wondering how the clover will do planting this time of year. Also wondering if anyone has tried planting Lab Lab in the mix with Throw & Mow method. Lab Lab seed is too expensive to waste...

Clovers like durana or yuchi aren't going to do well planted right now. You need to wait until this fall and add some more to your fall mix.

I’ve never tried lablab but cowpeas come up pretty easy if you get ‘em covered over with some thatch. Keep in mind that this method is really most ideally suited for planting a mix of cereal grains, clovers, and brassicas in the fall. Small seeded plant species are always going to do better than larger seeded ones.

I tried lab lab last year I wouldn't advise it.

Good little crop of turnips in the field. Should make for nice OM to add back to soil. Next spring I'm going to try a crop of diakon radishes. I haven't been able to grow them in the fall due to deer browsing.

Got lucky and spotted a small volunteer radish growing in amongst the turnips. You can see that the deer really like the tops of these guys.

.

Dang 257...apparently the turnips liked that little shot of N. They're nearly as big as oaks. These will soon be over my head!

You keep laying down to get your " glamour shots" and those fire ants that build up in no till ground are gonna get you!!!! Ha. Naw keep on with the pics it's entertaining to say the least

Just for chits and giggles I grabbed a small $1 pack of collard greens the day I bought the turnips and mixed ‘em in. I figured I’d cook ‘em up if nothing else. This looks like some of them coming in. What do you think 257…..isn’t that collard greens?

not sure what it is but its not very tall and spread pretty thin, no grass

Maybe try throwing out a heavy dose of millet seed the next time you are there and drag it in. That should get you something going in the form of "grass". It'll help to go ahead and start addressing some of the fertility needs as well.

I got the impression he was refering to the last pic you posted, but I may be wrong...

the plot is probably 120'x60', so a bag of triple 13 ? How much millet, what type. I think they throw a little fert every year, but not sure. Since its a dog hunting club they plant several small plots that usually arent hunted. some wheat and oats usually, but I like the location, and there a shooting house from a hunter that hasnt been there for 5 years, but the club was still planting it, but Im gonna try to plant it this year.

That's less that 1/4 acre....you could probably just go with about 10 lbs of brown top millet. One bag of 13-13-13 will be plenty.

I have a little open area just off from a field where my trophy rock is set up. Deer are eating a lot of the native vegetation while at the site. Is there anything I could plant that might come up this time of year (only partial sunlight). I realize whatever I plant will get murdered and will not really help the deer herd. I just want to play around and see what, if anything, will come up. Or should I just fertilize what's already there?

The best thing you could probably do would be to mow the area so that fresh new vegetation comes back in. The farther we go into summer the more the native vegetation matures....hardens off and becomes less and less desirable to the deer. Buckwheat would be an option if you just wanted to throw something in during the process.

Thanks, and good thoughts. The 1-acre field bordering this spot has been cut with the past month so there should be a lot of new growth off of that.

Only mow it once….maybe twice per summer. If you continually mow it then you will start suppressing your broadleaf species and moving more toward a grass dominated system. Try to time your mowings with periods of good soil moisture as well. Don’t mow when its hot and dry as bone.

Whole sections of peas and buckwheat are being taken out nightly now. Might as well bring on the weeds and crabgrass at this point and fill the areas in with plant growth. The quicker it happens the better.

Can someone ID this plant??…..Referring to the plant in the center of the pic with the small yellowish flowers about to bloom and leaves with serrated edges.

Tomorrow will be 4 weeks since planting...........

Looks like cut leaf evening primrose. The yellow flower that is

I believe you are correct. Good call 257....Thanks!....

The brassicas are beginning to flower now. I’m noticing that there are actually a decent amount of volunteer radishes around the field. The deer had a lot of them eaten back to nothing but they still managed to throw up a shoot of flowers. The deer are hammering the flower shoots of the radishes much more than the shoots of the turnips. Look at all the nipped stems toward the base of the plant.

CNC I'll have to say I thought I was the most OCD person alive, but starting to think you may have me beat with this passion you have for throw & mow. Just curious what size acreage you plant and are you 100% throw & mow? Ever do light discing to help thick layers of thatch decompose faster?

I think it’s more ADD than OCD……I’d describe it as feeling like restless brain syndrome. Probably why I read too much as 257 says.

The test field where most of the pics are coming from is around 2 acres. I also have another 3-4 acres of orchards where I’m doing some minimal throw and mow and another 14 acres at the hunting club. I’m not 100% throw and mow or for that matter 100% anything other than trying to 100% understand how soil is suppose to properly function…..understand the different tools at my disposal…..and understand how my use of those tools impacts the proper functioning of that soil and the plant communities that sprout from it.

I was actually considering taking a little angle out and running my disk over this summer crop but after seeing the turnips sprout earlier in the spring I decided to go ahead without any disturbance. My topsoil is literally like a bag of potting soil now and getting a seed to sprout is not an issue. The only challenge now is just managing surface residue. I was still verging on having too much residue on the surface to get my seed down close enough to the soil surface but it still worked out pretty well even though it wasn’t optimal. What I want to have happen now is for the current plant community to go ahead and quickly canopy over all of this surface thatch. Once it does then it will change the conditions on the soil surface to where the thatch will stay continually moister and more like greenhouse conditions. That will speed up the decomposition process. Ideally we would like to have most of the surface reside in a well decomposed state when we get ready to broadcast on our fall cereal grains and clovers. I think that once it gets a dense canopy over it then the thatch is going to quickly disappear well before then. If this happens then I’m going to mow the field in another 4 weeks or so and “double crop” the summer biomass.

I’m still very likely going to pull my disk across the field this fall but it won’t be for the purpose of traditional sod busting. I want to have a dove hunt this fall but it requires me mowing the field down several weeks ahead of when I want to plant my fall mix. I’m going to go ahead and mow for the dove hunt but later when its time to plant my fall mix I’m going to use my disk in the manner of a hay tedder. I’ll broadcast the seed and then just pull the disk across the surface enough to stir things up and get the seed down to the surface. I think this should work well. A disk is just a tool like a hammer. It can be used to do more than just drive a nail.

I still plan on top seeding clover wheat and oats into my standing grain sorghum and sunn hemp this fall. As cold and wet as this spring was my red ground needed tillage to loosen it up. Also I may have found a 4 row pull type planter and just bought a sprayer this week so I will be no tilling more finally.

I saw a 7000 series on craigslist. It was a 4 row. It looks like it needed a little work but was priced right and like you told me parts are easy to find.

My peas beans and sunflowers are doing decent in my two bottom fields and are from a foot tall to 2 feet. My field on the hill the corn Is maybe a foot tall in most of it. But everything else is 6" or less and the plants are very small. What do y'all think is going on? I've put 200lbs of 20-20-20 down in two apps and were only talking 1 1/4 acres or more.

How does the plant color look?

They're pretty green.except last year I had peas in this field that did great. It's a pretty hard field I think I may have to keep disking it pretty hard. I'll post pics in the morn I don't have enough service to get photobucket to work at the house.

In hard ground I have seen subsoiling to break the hard pan make a huge difference in corn.

Yes. Fall tillage with a chisel plow works wonders.

I've actually got a no-till sub-soiler. Neat implement. I'll figure out photo bucket one day

The likely cause of it being "hard" is because its high clay content with very little organic matter in the topsoil. It'll take getting some OM over the surface and giving it some time before that will ever change. It'll also take more than just one or two crops of biomass. Its something that has to be changed over the time period of a few years. Continuing hard tillage will insure that you will always be doing so. You'll have to be willing to devote a couple summer crops to growing biomass instead of beans if you want to make a change in this manner on soil like you're dealing with.

Do you have an account set up already on photbucket? What are you having trouble with?

Case IH and DMI make zone builders similar to what a para till did. We actually ran some this year and I'm very impressed. It's like strip till but a bit better in my opinion.

Like this.

I'm using an IPad and the app gives warning that my device my not achieve optimum experience. Next step takes me to a page that says select a theme??? Then I'm at a dead-end

All I see now in no-till cotton is para-tills. But with all of them, you better have a helluva tractor and a close by fuel supply. Gonna need both!!

That is same implement I have except mine is green. Renovated several former Bermuda cow pastures to nwsg. Pull it with a 150 hp John Deere. When I would cross a cow path it either stops the tractor or breaks the shear pins. Tractor burns about 18 gallons per hour

With new ground I use a riper behind my dozer. Do you not have a ripper? Your root rakes wouldn't be better to start with?

This implement is very similar to a ripper with coulters positioned just in front of the rippers. It slices the sod and allows shanks to sub-soil without disturbing the thatch layer. Then I used chemicals to kill Bermuda grass & no-tilled in nwsg

I bet it is a load on a 150HP tractor. We're running them on no less than 275 HP and its a load. But we had way less sidewall compaction on corn this cold wet spring where we ran them. Where we didn't corn is still struggling. And after this upcoming week it may be toast.

All of that is way out of the realm of the average food plotter. Just being able to use a drill alone is never going to be a feasible solution for the vast majority of folks....much less anything beyond that.

My tractor is under sized but it will pull it

What are those sub-soiler things called that are about 1" steel shanks that are about 36" long. They turn with a large radius out to 90 degrees and the rear is tilted up? They create like a earth quake effect under ground. When you look across a field it's been used in you only see little lines, it does it's damage deep. Takes a BIG tractor to pull about 7 shanks. Know what that is?

V ripper or sub moisture plow?

I guess , but it's not a V at the bottom, more like a big hook.

This?

I think you talking about a para till

Nope, however, that little unit would make the black smoke roll too.

This is what my top plot looks like. [img:center]http://[/img] [img:center]http://[/img]
This is my newest small plot and it's had heavy browsing in the bottom half as you can see. [img:center]http://[/img] [img:center]http://[/img]
This is my best plot and it's doing pretty good. [img:center]http://[/img]

[img:center]http://[/img] [img:center]http://[/img]
You can see the difference in the top field and the two fields in the bottom.

Last couple pics look really good. First couple look like my mow & throw field

I'm asking this as a serious question...not to belittle or anything like that.....But looking at the first couple of pics....What is the biggest issue you see if you were assessing the field?

Very nice Turkeyneck!!.....In your 6th picture in the bottom right corner I see a plant that you want to spot spray if you get a chance before it goes to seed. Its called "sicklepod".

There is a good bit of it in a few spot in that field.

Any ideas why the top field is doing so poorly?

You'll want to start trying to rid the seed bank of that stuff. It doesn't have much benefit to us that I know of and it spreads pretty prolifically. It'll probably be best for you to go ahead and sacrifice those patches of the field now and spray it. You'll likely still deal with it for a couple of years until you get it out of your seed bank. Don't let new ones go to seed.

The bare soil surface is what jumps out at me. This will have several negative impacts on growing conditions.

Look at the third picture down. You can see in that one area its on the verge of “gulley erosion”. There are several different classifications of erosion depending on the severity. A couple more that I recall are rill erosion and sheet erosion. If you look in the field where you see the little places that look like rows of dirt with pure sand between them...that is rill erosion. The pure sand is caused from the individual soil particles separating and then falling out of suspension as the water flows across the surface. Gulley erosion is one of the more severe forms. It’s not just the messed up little ditch in the field that is the problem. What we are more concerned about is the massive of amount of water flow across the surface of the field that had to occur to cause this type of gulley to form. The top inch of dirt across the field was likely eroded and at least partially leached of nutrients. There was large amounts of water running out of that field during these heavy rain showers we’ve been getting and with it goes a lot of the fert. This is one of the reasons why water flow is so important.

Another negative impact that’s occurring……If we have that much water flowing out of the field then its not going down into the soil. That means when the rain stops and the hot and dry conditions get cranked back up like we’re seeing now….then your soil dries out very fast because it didn’t actually absorb a lot of rain deep into the soil profile. This drying out process is also hastened by the fact that the bare soil is directly exposed to the sun. Soil temps will soar this coming week in that plot to temps near 110 degrees while the plots with a thatch roof will stay more moderated and likely not get out of the 80’s. These types of soil conditions can toast a crop of seedlings.

Do we still consider these unwanted “weeds”? Here’s the ragweed bring browsed in the field………



I think this one may be called pepper weed. Correct me on that one if I’m wrong 257. All of these have the tops nipped out as you can see on this one just above my thumb.



I don’t know what this one is called but I would have to rank it right up there with any other plant in the field (including peas) on its browsing preference. It gets hammered wherever it grows on my property. What is this????

Turkeyneck…….There’s a good chance that you’ve lost a lot of your nitrogen fertilizer to runoff in that plot. The #1 goal that I’d make for that field this summer moving forward is to pamper it along and use the grass and other weeds coming in to grow a large crop of biomass. Getting a good heavy crop of straw down over the soil surface is the first step to correcting these issues. If you were going to check on the fields every couple weeks or so… then each trip I would take a small amount of nitrogen and broadcast over the field. I’m talking about like a shoulder bag spreader worth. You will be better off in the beginning to just throw out small amounts more often.

The test field is really thriving now and producing loads of deer forage and biomass through multiple species of plants. These are seed pods that the turnips are sending out.



The deer must see them as no different than a being a pea because they seem to be getting hammered. These same plants were loaded with little peas just a couple days earlier.

Growth is kicking into high gear this week on the plants that have managed to avoid being browsed. I think a lot of it is going to make it through that initial stage where it’s the most vulnerable. Even the plants that have been browsed are putting out new growth. The weather pattern is looking at little ugly now though. The weather guessers are calling for high 90’s and dry for as far out as their crystal balls can see.

Don't want to see my corn right now. It'll hurt my feelings. But my sunflowers and sunn hemp are loving it.

Mine is all 10 - 12 ft. tall with 2 ears to the stalk.
I still can't see any difference in what I sidedressed and what I only put down at planting.

Mines waist high was growing fine til we hit the wall this week. Mine outta be ready just in time for deer season if we get a few more rains

The next week is going to be tough on a lot of fields. I hate to see it like this when the forecast has no end in sight to the intense heat and lack of rain.

I hope I'm wrong but I'm thinking this is the way its going to be until Oct-Nov.

I have 2- 5 acre fields in great shape that will be ready in about a week. It will stay on the stalk until we cut it for deer or dove. My dad left a field that would have had corn until March 15 if he hadn't bushogged it first of March.

Especially when your livelihood depends on it!

Holy chit it's hot out there today fellas.....

YOU GOT THAT RIGHT!!! I'm through with my outside activities for the day. I disked some fire breaks and was surprised how much moisture was still in the ground. Another week and it won't be there.

It's bad. Real bad

The plant in question a few posts back is called "Purple Vervain".....

Never heard of that. Interesting

Coming up on week 5. Got a pretty good canopy across most of the field now. There’re still a lot of small patches of thatch showing though due to the heavy browsing on the buckwheat and peas. You really want to have a green “umbrella” over your thatch at this point. The canopy effect combined with the thatch over the soil surface will help hold onto moisture through periods of hot, dry weather. This is just a salad bar of lush browse for deer now. It simulates a diverse, natural prairie but sweetened up a little with the species that I choose to keep, add, or eliminate.



The buckwheat seems to be tolerating the browsing pressure so far. Most of it has branched out and while the deer eat the top out of the plant….the rest of the plant seems to stay alive and continue to grow. The ability for a plant to withstand browsing pressure and bounce back from it is a function of plant health and vigor.



My watermelon sprout is still hanging in there and finding a niche amongst the milo. It actually ended up in a pretty good spot where it has a little room to vine out. I think it’ll grow just fine under this milo if the deer don’t demolish it one night. Going to have a few crimson sweets before the summer is over.



Actually still have a little hairy vetch blooming here and there around the field as well. That would be something I would to add to your fall planting mix this year if you are going to throw and mow long term. A good plant to have in the mix.



Will the field be able to withstand this???? I’m really not sure but it’ll be a good test.

CNC I didn't take any pics but my fields are doing considerably well. since I've mowed the white clover has really started growing and is seeding out. The peas, and sunflowers are about 8-10 inches tall and there are a few weeds starting to grow because I didn't spray. my question is should I fertilize my fields even though there are some weeds coming up. I just really don't want to fertilize the field and have all the fertilizer wasted on weeds. what do you think? I'm on day 20 after planting

Any fertilizer that is being taken up by a plant in your field and growing biomass for future OM gains is not wasted. When those plants eventually die and begin to decompose back into the soil then those nutrients are recycled. Do you remember the short video a couple pages back where the professor was standing in the field looking at a soil profile and talking about how much organic N was available to the plants in that field on a continual basis due to building organic matter? This is where those nutrients come from. It comes from biomass taking up nutrients…decomposing…and recycling them. The vast majority of the real wasted fertilizer that food plotters are throwing out is coming through leaching and washing due to poor soil structure….no holding capacity…erosion..etc.etc..

Look at the pic of my field as an example. The whole field is a nice green color no matter what plant specie you’re looking at. The field has all kinds of plants growing in it that folks would call a weed. The deer are also hammering nearly everything in field. The deer will consume some of the vegetation and some will be recycled back to the soil to increase fertility. The more I increase my organic matter and my fertility,,,then the more you’ll see the field boom with lush growth. The cycle will feed on itself sort of like a snowball effect. If you just keep trying to grow only beans and sunflowers and eliminate the rest of the plants in the field….then when those plants get wiped out, you won’t have any biomass to add back to the soil and your fertility will not change.

So to answer your question….yes, go ahead and fertilize the field. Don’t worry about the other stuff that’s growing in the field unless its just something really nasty like the sicklepod. Spot spray those kinds of things and let everything else just grow as much biomass as it will produce. It will actually benefit you greatly long term if something like crabgrass would produce a good crop in your field this year. That would be a nice crop of hay to get the soil OM headed in the right direction.

Here's that video again. Only a couple minutes long.......

Nutrient Recycling

I had some soy beans in the mix but they've eaten all of them already, I do have some millet in the mix as well. the majority of my fields are white clover though and I figured as much N as the clover is putting into the fields along with the peas that I might need to use a fertilizer with no nitrogen in it. any suggestions? I don't know too much about the different types of fertilizer is why I ask

The need for nitrogen can usually be seen with your eye. The field should be a nice deep green color. The more it starts running N deficient then the more it will become a lighter shade of green and then more to a yellowy green.

You may have told me this already….Have you had a soil test recently? What has been added since the soil test?

I hate to just blindly throw fert out. I like to know what holes in my bucket need filling and concentrate my money on those areas. If K is lacking for example, then you will get a lot more bang for your buck to throw out a couple bags of 0-0-60….rather than spending the same money on throwing out a couple bags of 13-13-13 blindly. It may be that adding lime might be the best use of your money if that’s the most limiting factor. What is the pH??

its lacking P and K. I put out the recommended lime last summer and have not retaken soil samples. my average pH was 5.2 before liming average P and K recommendation was around 60- 80lbs/per acre of both

Sunflowers

Sunn hemp

Corn. That badly needs some rain.

Was this 1/2 acre?

Nice 257.....Fields are looking good.

no per acre. but my fields are half acre

JUST NEED RAIN!!!!!!

You could basically use a shot of everything so go ahead with 2 bags of 13-13-13 for now….retest around the end of Aug or first of Sept and we’ll make further adjustments from there.